Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England 2013006887, 9780415316132, 9780415316125, 9780203795859
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Copyright © 2013. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Katherine J. Lewis
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/durham/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from durham on 2023-06-12 11:57:16.
First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Katherine J. Lewis The right of Katherine J. Lewis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lewis, Katherine J., 1969– Kingship and masculinity in late Medieval England / Katherine J. Lewis. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. 1. Great Britain--History--Lancaster and York, 1399-1485. 2. Monarchy--Great Britain-History--To 1500. 3. Masculinity--Great Britain--History--To 1500. I. Title. DA256.L49 2013 942.04--dc23 2013006887 ISBN: 978-0-415-31613-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-31612-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-79585-9 (ebk)
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Typeset in Garamond by Taylor & Francis Books
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/york-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from york-ebooks on 2023-06-12 11:57:53.
CONTENTS
vii viii
Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction
1
1 Kingship and masculinity in late medieval England
17
2 Approaching Henry V and Henry VI
45
PART I
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Henry V
65
3 Son and brother
67
4 The new man
84
5 Agincourt
103
6 Hegemonic Henry
120
PART II
Henry VI
139
7 The king who never grew up?
141
8 The beginning of personal rule?
156
9 The unwarlike king
170
10 Marriage and chastity
193 v
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oxford/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from oxford on 2023-06-12 14:08:44.
CONTENTS
11 Recovery and breakdown
214
12 Margaret of Anjou, Prince Edward and a substitute kingship
229
Epilogue
253 260 278
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References Index
vi
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oxford/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from oxford on 2023-06-12 14:08:44.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When I arrived in York over twenty years ago to undertake a Master’s course devoted to the study of medieval women I did not anticipate I would one day write a book about kings, although it has become the logical outcome of my interest in medieval gender. This project has been in many respects an instructive and fruitful counterpoint to my earlier work on St Katherine of Alexandria, who was represented as a sovereign queen. I have accrued several debts in the process of research and writing. First I must thank Vicky Peters for showing such patience during the long gestation of this book. I am extremely grateful to Mark Ormrod and Craig Taylor for reading and commenting on portions of it, as well as for general encouragement as I navigated areas of later medieval English history which had previously been relatively unfamiliar to me. Many thanks are also due to Joanna Laynesmith who advised on the chapters involving Margaret of Anjou. In addition I have benefited greatly from discussing kingship and warfare with David Green, and I thank him and Craig Taylor for allowing me to read some of their forthcoming work prior to publication. John Arnold, Pat Cullum, Joanna Huntington and Victoria Whitworth have all been very generous in the amount of time they were prepared to spend talking through the ideas and approaches which have informed this book. Barry Doyle and Paul Ward provided invaluable support at crucial moments and Rob Ellis made a lot of very welcome coffee. The insights of my students have helped to shape parts of the analysis and I thank them for regularly allowing me to see the Middle Ages through fresh and eager eyes. I would like to mention Tim Greenhalgh in particular, whose sharp observations on a range of subjects I greatly miss. I must also thank my parents, Carol and John Lewis, and my sister Liz Lewis, for knowing when to show an interest in my work, and when to distract me from it. The final and greatest debt is owed to Graeme Neath, with thanks for his limitless tolerance, thoughtfulness and good humour. Katherine J. Lewis
vii
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ABBREVIATIONS
Allmand Brut:
Chronica Maiora CSPM
Curry English Chronicle
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EHD English Life The Governance of Kings and Princes
GHQ
Allmand, Christopher, Henry V (originally published 1992, this edition New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997). The Brut or the Chronicles of England, (ed.) F.W.D. Brie, Early English Text Society original series, 136, 138 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1906, 1908). The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (1376–1422), (trans.) David Preest with introduction and notes by James G. Clark (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts in the Archives and Collections of Milan 1385–1618, (ed.) Allen B. Hinds (London: HMSO, 1912), available online [http://www.british-history.ac. uk/source.aspx?pubid=1038 accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. Curry, Anne, The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000). An English Chronicle 1377–1461, (ed.) William Marx (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999). English Historical Documents volume 4: 1327–1485, ed. A.R. Myers (London and New York: Routledge, 1969). The First English Life of King Henry the Fifth, (ed.) C.L. Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). The Governance of Kings and Princes: John Trevisa’s Middle English Translation of the De Regimine Principum of Aegidius Romanus, (ed.) David C. Fowler, Charles F. Briggs and Paul G. Remley (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1997). Gesta Henrici Quinti: The Deeds of Henry the Fifth, (ed. and trans.) Frank Taylor and John S. Roskell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
viii
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ABBREVIATIONS
Gregory’s Chronicle
Griffiths Hoccleve, Regiment
Laynesmith Maurer Neal ODNB
PPC
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PROME
Secreta Secretorum TLF Watts Wolffe
Gregory’s Chronicle, The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, (ed.) James Gairdner (London: Camden Society, 1876), available online [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx? compid=45548, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. Griffiths, R.A., The Reign of King Henry VI (originally published 1981, this edition Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998). Hoccleve, Thomas, The Regiment of Princes, (ed.) Charles R. Blyth (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), available online [http://www.lib.rochester. edu/camelot/teams/hoccfrm.htm, accessed 26 Jan. 2013]. Laynesmith, J.L., The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Maurer, Helen E., Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003). Neal, Derek G., The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online edition available to subscribers [http://www.oxforddnb.com/, accessed 27 Jan. 2013]. Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, 7 vols, (ed.) N.H. Nicholas (London: HMSO, 1834–37). The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, (eds) C. Given-Wilson (General Editor), P. Brand, A. Curry, R.E. Horrox, G. Martin, W.M. Ormrod and J.R.S. Phillips (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), available online to subscribers via British History Online [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx? pubid=1241, accessed 27 Jan. 2013]. Three Prose Versions of the Secreta Secretorum, (ed.) Robert Steele, Early English Text Society original series (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1898). Titi Livii Foro-Juliensis, Vita Henrici Quinti, (ed.) Thomas Hearne (Oxford: Sheldonian, 1716). Watts, John, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Wolffe, Bertram, Henry VI (originally published 1981, this edition New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001).
ix
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I N TR O D U CTIO N
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This Kyng Edward was forsoþe of passing goodnesse, and ful gracious among all þe worthymen of þe world; for he passyd and shone by vertue & gravce yeven to hym from God, above all his predecessours þat were noble men & worthy. And he was a wele hardherted man, for he dred neuer of none myshappes, ne harmes ne evyll fortune, þat myȜt falle a noble warryour, and a fortunable, bothe on lond and on þe see. And in all batayle & assembles, with a passing glory and worship he had euere þe victory. And he was meke and benynge, homely, sobre & softe to al maner men, as wele to straungres as to his owne subiectes, And to oþer þat were vnder his gouernaunce. He was devoute & holy, boþe to God & holy chirch … He was treatable & wele avysed in temperall & wordly nedes, wyse in counsel, and discrete, soft, meke & good to speke with … And he gouerned gloriously hys kingdom into his age. And he was large in yevng and wyse in spences. He was fulfilled with all honeste of good maners, & virtuous; vnder whom to lyve, hit was as for to regne; wherfor his name & his loos sprang so fere þat it came into hethenesse and Barbarye, shewyng and telling his worthynesse & manhode in all londes; And þat in no lond vnder heven had be brought forth so noble a kyng, so gentill & so blessyd or myȜt reyse such anoþer whan he were dede.1
This summary of the superlative kingship of Edward III comes from the fifteenth-century incarnation of the extremely popular Brut chronicle. It has its origins in the 1380s which witnessed the inception of Edward’s reputation as the embodiment of all kingly virtues.2 This derived much of its substance from the realities of Edward’s achievements during his half-century reign, as W. Mark Ormrod’s recent magisterial study demonstrates.3 The idea of Edward’s greatness drew especially (although not exclusively) on his status as a great warrior leader; he was immortalized by his tomb epitaph as the ‘unconquered leopard’ who ‘ruled mightily in arms’.4 Moreover Edward possessed what Ormrod has identified as ‘a winning personal style’ and an understanding of the importance of projecting a display of regal magnificence both upon his immediate coterie and to his subjects more widely.5 Edward’s employment of political theatrics in combination with incidents demonstrating his personal courage and chivalry secured him widespread support for his war with France.6 This image of him was also very much inspired by the tumultuous circumstances of the years following his death in 1377 and the accession of eleven-year-old Richard II, which helped to create an understanding of Edward’s reign as a golden age.7 This tradition of 1
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INTRODUCTION
Edward’s outstanding kingship achieved wide currency during the fifteenth century and he became the epitome of both warcraft and statesmanship whom later kings sought to resemble and against whom their actions were measured.8 The Brut’s iteration of Edward’s character and qualities also discloses the extent to which his excellent kingship was held to be inextricably entwined with, and enabled by, his exceptional manhood. For it emphasizes that in his person Edward comprised an ideal blend of desirable qualities; fearsome, yet compassionate, imposing, yet approachable, a celebrated warrior, yet meek and thoughtful. Edward maintained these attributes in an effective and profitable balance thanks to the temperate self-mastery which was the bedrock both of his kingship and his masculinity. The extent to which ideal kingship was predicated on ideal masculinity is underlined by the Brut’s concluding comments about Edward. Following directly on from the acclamation of Edward’s rule quoted above it continues:
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Neuerþelesse, lecchery & mevyng of hys flessh haunted hym in his age; wherefor þe rather, as it was to suppose, for vnmesurable fulfillyng of hys lust, his lyff shorted þe sonner. And herof takeþ good hede, lyke as hys dedys byfore bereth wytnesse; for, as in hys bygynnyng all þynges were Ioyfull and lykyng to hym & to all þe peple, And in hys myd age he passed all men in high Ioye and worshype and blessydnesse, RyȜt so, whan he drow in-to Age, drawyng downward þurgh lecchorye and oþer synnes, litill & litill all þo Ioyfull and blyssed þynges, good fortune & prosperite decresed and myshapped, And Infortunat þynges, & vnprofytable harmes, with many evele, bygan for to sprynge, and, þe more harme is, conteyned longe tyme after.9 The explanation for this decline in Edward’s manhood and kingship lay in the increasing influence which his mistress, Alice Perrers, exercised over him in his later years and the belief that she had diminished his authority as well as drained his vigour.10 The Brut’s depiction of Edward is thus clearly informed by contemporary understandings of masculinity as a property which could be threatened and even eradicated both by the failure to control lustful urges and by advancing age. Also significant is the perceived link between a king’s ability to maintain a correctly balanced gender identity and the fortunes and security of his realm, because self-mastery was widely regarded as essential both to kingship and manhood. Thus here Edward’s reign is both a glorious period and the origin of subsequent misfortunes, while Edward himself presents an example of hegemonic masculinity compromised by the indulgence of sexual desire and reduced to disgraceful effeminacy, with disastrous results which went way beyond the merely personal. This account of Edward therefore sheds light on the operation of gender within the ideology of kingship. It also suggests the function of ideal 2
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INTRODUCTION
masculinity as part of the criteria against which the performance of kingship (and indeed public authority more generally) was assessed in this period. The study of kings and kingship has been a mainstay of medieval history since its inception as an academic discipline. Yet there continues to be relatively little discussion of kingship as an office, or of individual kings, that includes gender, either in terms of the role which gender played in creating and maintaining historically specific social and political hierarchies, or of gender as part of individuals’ sense of self and place in the world. The prohibition on medieval women holding formal political office (whether in national government, civic administration or rural society) has inspired a wealth of scholarship informed by gender.11 But the monopoly which men held over these systems and structures has not.12 Joan Wallach Scott’s comments on the resistance of high politics to gendered analysis, first published in 1986, still broadly apply to medieval studies.13 Scholars of later periods have demonstrated the fruitfulness of including consideration of masculinity within the analysis of politics. As John Tosh notes:
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Whether in identifying the ideological basis of exclusionary practices, or exploring the relationship between civilian and military masculinities, or ‘gendering’ the body politic itself, historians have deployed masculinity in highly illuminating ways. The political order can be seen as a reflection of the gender order in society as a whole, in which case the political virtues are best understood as the prescribed masculine virtues writ large. Conversely, formal politics may be seen as a dynamic factor in maintaining and strengthening the gender order: the state acts to reinforce masculine norms.14 But the potential for masculinity to illuminate medieval politics, and indeed for politics to illuminate medieval masculinity, is still left largely unrealized.15 This is not to say that medieval politics remains completely impervious to gendered analysis, however. Over the last twenty years the study of medieval queens has flourished, providing a vital antidote to their prior omission both from conventional political histories, and from the histories of medieval women that began to appear in significant number from the 1980s onwards.16 When queens had been considered previously it was usually in terms of the colourful exploits of individual women, involving a largely biographical approach and frequent resort to value judgements identifying the exponent as a good or (more frequently) bad woman. However, more recent studies of queens stress the importance not simply of examining their individual lives and experiences, but also of investigating the nature of queenship as an office.17 These have produced insightful discussions of the role which gender ideologies played in determining both what was expected of the ideal queen and how the conduct of actual queens would be represented and judged. Serious consideration has now been given to both the 3
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INTRODUCTION
possibilities and limitations of femininity as a discourse within the political arena; the interplay between gender and social status, and the influence of different socio-cultural settings in determining particular forms of queenship.18 The extent to which the conventional female roles of wife and mother offered royal women important forms of agency despite their exclusion from formal positions of power has been a profitable focus for studies of late medieval English queenship in particular. However, the growth in studies of queens and queenship has had the sideeffect of compounding a perception that taking gender into account in an examination of medieval high politics essentially means studying the few women who were involved in its machinations.19 Such an attitude is testament to a wider conflation of ‘gender history’ and ‘women’s history’, and of gender as something which therefore only ‘happens’ or needs to be taken into account when women are present.20 As Theresa Earenfight puts it: ‘Arrayed by discipline, queenship scholars, armed with feminist and gender theories, study queens, while kingship scholars, trained in law and political theory, study kings.’21 The gender of kings, or more specifically the masculinity of kings, has remained largely invisible, emerging as an issue only in the case of kings who ‘do it wrong’; whose deviation from the norms of manhood forms part of the explanation for their status as ‘bad’ kings. In a later medieval English context this means Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI, whom medieval commentators criticized for failing to display correct manly qualities and, in particular, for failing to be warriors. Such gendered criticism formed part of the grounds for their depositions both when these events occurred and in later medieval accounts (as well as in more recent historiography).22 It has often been pointed out that earlier scholarship on medieval queens predominantly assessed and judged them on the basis of generalized notions of femininity, or else those which pertained to the setting of the commentator.23 Similarly when comment has been passed on the varying ‘effeminacy’ of these three kings it has rarely been informed by an awareness of the derivation of gendered standards of conduct within contemporary discussions of ideal kingship, or of the particular meanings with which the properties of manliness and unmanliness were invested by medieval people. Nor have the precise situations or fashion in which these kings’ gender became an issue usually been explored in detail, due to a more or less explicit assumption that the fundamental explanation for their unmanliness lies in character or disposition.24 However, studies of the ‘bad’ queens Isabella of France and Margaret of Anjou have demonstrated the fallacy of this approach and provided alternative methodologies which can also be applied to their consorts.25 The failure to consider the extent to which a king’s gender identity may have been formed by environment and circumstance or by other factors such as life-cycle stage suggests an understanding of ‘true masculinity’ as fixed and universal.26 This is similarly observable in approaches to ‘good’ kings such as Edward III and Henry V, often presented as innately manly 4
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INTRODUCTION
individuals who appear to have no palpable gender identity at all, or at least not one which requires any sort of serious consideration. This leaves them as the uninterrogated norm from which others deviate and does not allow for the possibility that their manhood could have been created and presented in particular forms in order to serve specific political needs. The wider problem of ‘men’ in general standing as an unexamined default while women’s gender identities were being so thoroughly unpicked inspired the growth of studies focusing explicitly on medieval masculinity in the 1990s.27 In common with developing scholarship on masculinity in relation to other historical periods the pioneers in this area approached it from the ideological and methodological perspective of women’s history.28 There is now a range of studies available which examine the varying ways male gender identities were perceived and made socially manifest across the medieval period, within different settings.29 As a tool for historical analysis gender is understood as the socio-cultural construction of certain qualities and behaviours as being proper to men and women, approached with an awareness that past societies generally viewed these as being both biologically determined, and divinely ordained. Gender is also examined as a foundational element of personal identity and thus as part of an individual’s ‘social self’ as Derek Neal puts it.30 Investigations of medieval gender identities often begin with a survey of available contemporary definitions as to what it meant to be a man and a woman, articulated in scientific, religious, legal and moral referents, amongst others.31 Across a variety of discourses (the vast majority of which were authored by clerics) meanings of manhood were presented in relation to meanings of womanhood in ways that delineated the inherent superiority of male over female; masculine over feminine. A commonplace emphasis on the shortcomings of women, physically, intellectually and morally, was interwoven with contemporary patriarchal religious, social, legal and political structures, rationalizing a status quo in which all positions of public authority were occupied by men. Here follows a representative example, taken from a translation of the Franciscan Friar Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ encyclopedia De Proprietatibus Rerum (On the Properties of Things), originally written in about 1245, and rendered in Middle English by the cleric John Trevisa at the very end of the fourteenth century: The male passiþ þe femel in parfite complexion [and wirkyng, in wiþ and discrecioun, in miȜt and in lordschippe: in parfit complexioun] for in comparisoun to þe femel þe male is hoot and drie, and þe femel aȜenward … Also þe condiciouns of man and womman beeþ diuers in discrecioun of witte … So seiþ Aristotel libro 6. þerfore a man passiþ a womman in resoun, in scharpnes of wit and vndirstondinge. So seiþ Austyn. And be auctorite of þe apostil he se [tt]iþ a man tofore a womman in dignite and worthines of þe ymage and liknes of God. In þis dignite a man passiþ a womman in 5
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INTRODUCTION
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auctorite and myȜt of souereinte. Auctorite of tecchinge and of souereinte is igrauntid to man, and denyed and iworned to womman as for custome and vsage … þanne men beþ more hote and drye þan wymmen, more strong and myȜti, more bolde and hardy, more wise and witty, more stedefast and stable, and loueþ women cherischliche.32 The references to Aristotle and St Augustine of Hippo remind us that such definitions were part of a very well-established learned discourse which drew variously on Classical, Arabic and Christian originals.33 This ascribes meanings to gender and gender difference in essentialist and normative terms. But the vital question for historians is the relationship which such prescriptive conceptualizations maintain with what we can observe of the enactment of gender identities by the men and women actually living at the time. Accurately assessing the dynamic between the ‘theory’ and ‘reality’ of masculinity or femininity in any given historical setting is difficult, not least because, as is often pointed out, this is a false dichotomy. Texts outlining ideologies of gender (or underpinned by these) did not exist separately from ‘reality’ but were produced within it, nor do they simply ‘reflect’ that reality, they reshape and potentially distort it too. Similarly ‘documentary’ sources such as court records or wills should not be seen as inherently more objective or reliable than ‘literary’ ones.34 Hence in addition to issues of genre and discourse it is important to consider, as far as possible, the circumstances in which different types of evidence were created and to whom they were available. For example, academic texts written in Latin would perforce have been read only by an educated (and overwhelmingly clerical) minority. But their definitions also informed texts and discourses which achieved a wider circulation among a lay readership, such as vernacular romances or chronicles and also in sermons, which were something akin to ‘mass media’ for this period. Medieval people did not react in a uniform way to these, and individual texts could be read both as a confirmation of gender norms and as an indication of possible challenges to them.35 The fact that prescriptive definitions also inform didactic texts designed to inculcate distinctive forms of ideal behaviour in boys and girls (and men and women) suggests an awareness that gender did not proceed straightforwardly from the configuration of one’s genitals, but was a property that also needed to be nurtured and trained to ensure that it developed correctly.36 External factors such as diet and exercise also played a part in accounts of how to develop ideal masculinity in particular.37 In this respect gender becomes something to be honed and displayed for the recognition of others, a matter of conduct and deportment rather than simply an unchanging essence.38 This can also be traced in the use of language to describe certain attributes as ‘manly’ or to identify particular individuals as embodying ‘manhood’, both contemporary Middle English terms.39 Medieval uses of ‘manly’ usually signify 6
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INTRODUCTION
courage and combat, often with more or less explicit connotations of nobility, and ‘manhood’ was frequently associated with notions of honour and reputation.40 But while it seems clear that gender was understood by medieval people, in some sense at least, as a performance, this does not mean that they were free to choose how to be a man or a woman. Both the theory and practice of medieval gender were contingent on other aspects of individual and collective identity; within late medieval England perhaps the most important of these were age, family, social and marital status and profession.41 These factors would condition the precise ways in which a person’s gender was formed, and the sense which they made of this in terms of their place within society. Also important was a person’s relationship with the institutional structures governing and policing daily life (church, law, economy and polity).42 At work here too were more intangible variables such as personal accomplishment or aptitude, and even the pleasure that individuals could take in different occupations and pursuits. Medieval queens provide an obvious example of the extent to which the ‘rules’ of gender could be modified by social status and circumstance. Women may have been inferior to men, in theory, but the queen was inferior to no-one except the king and could sometimes ‘stand in’ for him. Moreover, in her exercise of queenship she could exhibit qualities such as reason and prudence of which she was supposed to be inherently incapable. However, the accomplishments of individual queens did not lead to any fundamental overhaul of the basic patriarchal principles underpinning systems of government and society. Although medieval theories of gender often defined masculinity as part of a binary with femininity, it is apparent that, socially speaking, medieval manliness was defined not so much in opposition to women but more usually in relation to other men.43 Given the ‘natural’ subordination of women they were arguably irrelevant to many men’s sense of self as a man; far more important was where they stood on a spectrum of established masculine qualities occupied by other men, both above and below them.44 Exploring the diverse meanings of masculinity which such an arrangement entailed has become a means of refining existing understandings of the historical manifestations of patriarchy. Such an approach reveals the extent to which patriarchy rested not solely on the subordination of women, but also on the subordination of many men, who did not all benefit equally from the arrangement.45 Manhood was also understood as the end product of maturation and as a specific stage in the male life-cycle.46 The notion of the ‘Ages of Man’ and the relationship these bore to acquiring the necessary qualities to take on adult roles and responsibilities was well established in the Middle Ages.47 There were broad similarities between different articulations of this scheme, such as the division of life stages into seven-year segments, so childhood or pre-adulthood was often articulated thus: birth to seven infancia, seven to fourteen puericia and fourteen to twenty-one adolescencia.48 At the end of this phase one was iuventus and had become an 7
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INTRODUCTION
adult. But in some versions adolescencia lasted beyond twenty-one and there was no uniform, fixed opinion as to when a boy became a man.49 This formula rested to some extent on understandings of the human body and its physical maturation but biology was not the only factor in determining adulthood. There were a variety of legal, religious and socio-cultural definitions and standards too. Some of these coincided with the ‘Ages of Man’ texts, such as canon law fixing the age of discretion for boys at fourteen (the age at which they could receive communion, or consent to marry) or feudal law establishing twenty-one as the minimum age at which a man could inherit land held by military tenure.50 There were rites of passage through which a young man would be seen to have moved from childhood to adulthood, such as inheritance, marriage, or participation in warfare, but no single, universally agreed moment. Another reason for this diversity of definitions is that the passage to manhood was never just a matter of theory, or even formal ceremonial. It depended on individual ability and attributes too. This was acknowledged by Giles of Rome in his influential educational text De Regimine Principum, when he observed that the seven-year pattern was not necessarily applied rigidly to the upbringing of individual children:
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For we distingwen ages of children fro seuen Ȝere to seuene Ȝeere and sayen þat þey scholde be rewled in þis wise forto þei ben seuen Ȝere olde and in þat wise from seuen to fourteen Ȝere, and suche tyme of seuen Ȝere may be take lengere oþer schortere by diuersite of persones for somme ben more stronge of body in fourtene Ȝeere þan oþere in sextene, þanne for in suche doynge we may not Ȝeue a rewle þat may not change, som what mot stoned in þe maisters doom þat techeth þe children so þat he may take suche a tyme lasse oþer more as hym semeth þat i[t] is spedful.51 Within this understanding of manhood as an achieved stage in the life-cycle adolescence formed a vital transitional phase during which it was recognized that young men would adopt forms of homosocial conduct which ran entirely counter to the patriarchal norms of moderation and sobriety enjoined upon them by courtesy texts.52 The figure of the immoral, pleasure-seeking young man was a very familiar one in contemporary literature.53 In the poem ‘The Mirror of the Periods of a Man’s Life’ a man of twenty is depicted as being advised by Reason to go to Oxford and study hard. But Lust recommends he spend his time playing instruments, fighting, and drinking all night in the pub with women and wild fellows, although Conscience warns that this would be a waste of money and time.54 Lust replies: ‘Ȝouþe can not kepe him chaste’, and the young man himself decides: ‘Al my lust y wole ful-fille. / I wole spare no womman’.55 For women immorality, especially sexual, generally had an irreversibly disastrous effect on their reputation, but this was not necessarily true for men.56 The qualities of manhood offered 8
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INTRODUCTION
them the tools to repair the effects of misconduct. There was even a tacit acceptance that it was desirable for them to sow the proverbial wild oats and then transcend this sort of behaviour through the medium of mature selfmastery.57 Thus becoming a man was, in part, dependent on the individual providing evidence in his conduct that he had left behind the rowdy and dissipated habits of youth and was ready to take his place in the world as a responsible adult, with all that this entailed (heading a household and supporting a family).58 However, manhood, once secured, was not limitless, but could be lost if encroaching old age led to a diminution of faculties and selfcontrol, as we have already seen in the case of Edward III.59 Thus manhood was not simply a question of being male, or even of being an adult; it was a status defined by specific virtues of honour, constancy, probity and self-mastery which had to be attained and which also assumed the possession of independent means and access to forms of social power. It was also defined in opposition to the ‘unmanly’ which encompassed youths, old men and women, but also men of lesser social status or public authority. For this reason it is often discussed in relation to the notion of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, a concept to which we shall return shortly, with specific reference to the connections between kingship and these definitions of manhood. Having sketched out some of the meanings attached to masculinity in the Middle Ages, and the academic approaches to these, it is worth noting that just as queens were left out of earlier studies of medieval women so kings did not form a significant part of the nascent scholarship on medieval men as men. Indeed sometimes kings were left out deliberately as part of a wider commitment to shifting the basis of historical inquiry away from the exceptional hegemonic figures who had traditionally dominated so much of the historiography, on to a broader range of social groups and types of sources.60 This is also partly testament to the disciplinary divisions noted above which meant that those who were interested in medieval masculinity (and gender more broadly) were usually not those who studied high politics, and those who studied high politics tended not to consider gender at all within their work.61 With respect to later medieval England Ormrod noted in 2004 that ‘little attention has been given to the possibility that a gendered reading of monarchy might contribute to a deeper appreciation of the dynamics of politics.’62 In adopting such an approach himself Ormrod was influenced by J.L. Laynesmith’s important work on fifteenth-century queenship.63 Laynesmith examined in detail the crucial validation that a queen could provide for her husband’s rule, which entailed consideration of the intersections between kingship and gender.64 This validation was to be found not only in the queen’s capacity to produce an heir, but also in her status as the ideal feminine foil to his dominant masculinity, and the means by which his power could be tempered on occasion. It was recognized that a queen could be a source of good advice for her husband, and the medium of intercession gave her the opportunity to moderate his judgements too. Although whether 9
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INTRODUCTION
that necessarily signalled a queen’s personal agency or was simply a means of allowing the king to change his mind without looking fickle is debatable in individual cases.65 What emerges clearly from Laynesmith’s work (and from Helen E. Maurer’s study of Margaret of Anjou) is the extent to which the gender identities of kings and their queens formed a relational dynamic in which a queen’s capacity to match prescribed ideals depended as much on her husband’s performance of masculinity as it did upon her own abilities and conduct.66 Building on an understanding of the monarchy as encompassing both masculine and feminine properties Ormrod asserted that ‘masculinity was in fact a deeply contested issue in the public debate on monarchy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’.67 Ormrod’s own gendered reading of the monarchy focused on the posthumous representation of the deposed kings Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI. He described the ways in which the problematic aspects of their gender which had formed part of the justification for their depositions were re-presented as masculine within a discourse of holiness, in order to meet the needs of subsequent rulers.68 In a later essay Ormrod developed his analysis of the role of gender in the posthumous reputation of Edward II with specific reference to the king’s sexuality. But not (as many others have done) by analysing this as an empirical reality which could or should be labelled in terms of one or other modern understanding of sexual orientation.69 Instead Ormrod examined how Edward’s sexualities were constructed in differing ways and for differing purposes by fourteenth-century political culture, and traced the ramifications of this for the representation and function of Edward’s masculinity. Ormrod’s approach can be seen as part of what A.J. Pollard identified in 2000 as a recent trend in later medieval English political history which called for ‘a fuller recognition of the role played by ideologies and principles in fifteenth century politics’.70 So, for example, John Watts’ study of Henry VI, published a few years earlier, provided an important reassessment of the operation of politics and government during his reign by reading events against the conceptual norms of kingship circulating at the time.71 Challenging traditional accounts of Henry’s disastrous rule Watts identified the central problem as lying within the very institution of monarchy itself, and its failure to cope with the shortcomings of an individual who was unable to fulfil the fundamental expectations of his subjects. In his 2002 study of fifteenth-century English political culture Michael Hicks stated that political historians should not confine themselves to ‘those ideas that are overtly political’, emphasizing the importance of including non-political ideas and ‘those ideas which are not primarily political, but which nevertheless have political implications’ in an analysis both of political principles and political conduct.72 He also noted that such ideas were significant ‘particularly if politicians promoted or offended established norms’.73 He explored religion, attitudes to women and concepts of worship and service as examples of ideas ‘which underpinned all 10
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INTRODUCTION
areas of life including politics, but only occasionally impinged directly on it and determined political behaviour’.74 The influence of ideas about gender (understood as attitudes both to women and to men) has now informed a number of studies exploring the concepts of medieval rulership. For example Cynthia Herrup drew on Ernst Kantorowicz’s influential thesis exploring the symbolic distinction between the king’s body natural and body politic, to contend that the exercise of monarchy was conceptualized as a process which required individual rulers to display and employ both masculine and feminine qualities in balance.75 Herrup, Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt and Nicolas Scott Baker, among others, have analysed the implications of the frequency with which good rulership was equated with masculine self-control and its opposite, tyranny, understood as the inevitable result of an individual’s effeminacy.76 As Herrup notes, this had the important effect of rendering tyrants different from good kings ‘in degree rather than in kind’ and it also placed an absolute premium on the king’s correct performance of both kingship and gender in his direction of politics.77 However, to date, only one full-length study has engaged with the influence of attitudes to men on the late medieval English polity, or on the perceptions and actions of an individual king: Christopher Fletcher’s study of Richard II.78 Fletcher’s nuanced analysis of Richard’s manhood abundantly demonstrates the value of informed interrogation of a king’s gender identity. He explores with far more sophistication than any previous study the employment of gender as a means to criticize and ultimately depose Richard. Moreover, Fletcher suggests the significance of ideals of manhood not simply in rhetorical terms but as a vital factor in determining both the priorities and actions of Richard himself and those about him.79 This allows Fletcher to question established depictions of Richard as inherently unmanly, even effete, or as attempting to embody an alternate version of masculinity. Instead Fletcher convincingly characterizes Richard as ‘an unimaginative if vehement adept of certain conventional qualities associated with being a man’, noting, for example, that Richard’s lack of distinction in the crucial realm of warfare was not the result of pacifist conviction, or of a temperamental indisposition suggestive of defective manliness.80 Instead Richard was prevented from realizing a desire to prove himself as a warrior by practical issues and circumstance, and reacted angrily at missing the chance to thus prove himself a man in the early 1380s.81 In concluding his analysis Fletcher states that: ‘[a]pproaching Richard II’s reign in terms of manhood makes it possible to discern with greater clarity not just the rhetoric being used by his opponents but also the way in which commonplace ideas of how a “man” should act could inform the practice of politics.’82 Studying a king in terms of gender identity becomes a means of enlightening not only our understanding of politics, but also of ideologies of masculinity as they pertained much more widely within late fourteenth-century English society.83 11
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INTRODUCTION
It also allows conclusions to be drawn about the manner in which these ideas influenced or interacted with behaviour, and not just at the apex of society. Thus Fletcher’s work conveys valuable lessons about the utility and necessity of including ideas about men within the analysis of kingship and politics.
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Notes 1 Brut, pp. 333–34. 2 Thomas Walsingham’s summary of Edward’s character and achievements was influential on later accounts, Chronica Maiora, pp. 32–33. 3 W. Mark Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2011), see pp. 587–93 for discussion of Edward’s posthumous reputation and its functions. See also D.A.L. Morgan, ‘The political after-life of Edward III: the apotheosis of a warmonger’, English Historical Review 112 (1997), 856–81. 4 Ormrood, Edward III, p. 583 for the full epitaph and the implications of Richard II’s involvement. 5 Ibid., pp. 600–1 and pp. 446–71 for more detailed discussion. 6 Ibid., pp. 601–2. 7 Ibid., p. 587. 8 Ibid., p. 591. The Brut survives in over 180 mss, but until relatively recently had not been much studied in its own right. See Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 1982), pp. 220–28; Lister M. Matheson, The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998); Mary-Rose McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in Writing (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2002); William Marx and Raluca Radulescu (eds), Readers and Writers of the Prose Brut, Trivium 36 (Lampeter: University of Wales Press, 2006). 9 Brut, p. 334. 10 Ibid., pp. 329–30; W.M. Ormrod, ‘The trials of Alice Perrers’, Speculum 83 (2008), 366–96. 11 The website ‘Feminae: medieval women and gender index’ offers an invaluable compendium covering the vast range of scholarship published in this area which can be searched by subject [http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/Default.aspx, accessed 26 January 2013]. 12 Cf. John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005), p. 7 on imperial history as ‘one of the last bastions of gender-blind history’ which ‘reflects the near-monopoly which men had on the colonial enterprise itself’. See also Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh (eds), Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). 13 Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Gender: a useful category of historical analysis’ in her Gender and the Politics of History (revised edition, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 28–50 (esp. pp. 46–50). 14 John Tosh, ‘Hegemonic masculinity and the history of gender’ in Dudink, Hagemann and Tosh, Masculinities in Politics and War, pp. 41–58 (p. 41). 15 Nicholas Scott Baker, ‘Power and passion in sixteenth-century Florence: the sexual and political reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de’Medici’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 19 (2010), 432–47, 433 notes similarly that in studies of the Italian Renaissance, gender has been most often considered in social, not political terms. 16 John Carmi Parsons, ‘Family, sex and power: the rhythms of medieval queenship’ in John Carmi Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1994), pp. 1–12. 17 For studies of English queenship: Maurer; Laynesmith; Lisa Benz St John, Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
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INTRODUCTION
18 E.g. Theresa Earenfight’s study of Maria of Aragon’s rule on behalf of her husband as Lieutenant-General of Catalunya, The King’s Other Body: Maria of Castile and the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 19 I do not mean to imply that this is the perception of those working on queens. A comparable example is provided by gendered scholarship on the crusades which is overwhelmingly about women, although see Andrew Holt, ‘Between warrior and priest: the creation of a new masculine identity during the Crusades’ in Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (ed.), Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 185–203. 20 John Tosh, ‘What should historians do with masculinity?’ in his Manliness and Masculinities, pp. 29–58 (esp. pp. 30–31). This essay was originally published in 1994. 21 Theresa Earenfight, ‘Without the persona of the prince: kings, queens and the idea of monarchy in late medieval Europe’, Gender & History 19 (2007), 1–21 (7). 22 For detailed discussion of this point in relation to Richard II see Christopher Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics 1377–99 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 23 Laynesmith, pp. 9–22 for approaches to fifteenth-century English queens which have interpreted them in terms of generic female stereotypes and subsequent challenges to this approach; see also Benz St John, Three Medieval Queens, pp. 6–8. 24 Although there are some significant exceptions to this rule, discussed below, pp. 10–11. 25 In addition to the works cited in note 16 above see also S. Menache, ‘Isabella of France, queen of England – a reconsideration’, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), 107–24; Diana Dunn, ‘Margaret of Anjou, queen consort of Henry VI: a reassessment of her role, 1445–53’ in R.E. Archer (ed.), Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), pp. 107–43. 26 R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p. 45 on ‘true masculinity’ unaffected by ‘the ebb and flow of daily life’. 27 For surveys of the field and its development see Neal, pp. 1–11; Simon Yarrow, ‘Masculinity as a world historical category’ in John H. Arnold and Sean Brady (eds), What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 114–38 (pp. 117–27). 28 This was a not uncontroversial development for some, see Allen J. Frantzen, ‘When women aren’t enough’, Speculum 68 (1993), 445–71. 29 The earliest works took the form of edited collections: Clare A. Lees (ed.), Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (eds), Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1997); Jacqueline Murray (ed.), Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1999); Dawn M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1999). Some single-authored studies have subsequently appeared, including Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Later Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Isabel Davis, Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Fiona S. Dunlop, The Late Medieval Interlude: The Drama of Youth and Aristocratic Masculinity (York: York Medieval Press, 2007); Christopher Fletcher, Richard II; Neal; Rachel Stone, Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Others are forthcoming. 30 Neal, p. 8 and passim. 31 A useful survey is provided by S.H. Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Class, Status and Gender (Houndmills and London: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 243–83; Neal, and Fletcher, Richard II, both provide detailed discussions of the range of sources defining and discussing concepts of manliness in later medieval England.
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INTRODUCTION
32 On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum, (ed.) M.C. Seymour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 306–7. This is part of more detailed discussion of the nature of male and female starting with conception, moving through childhood and on into the properties of husbands and wives, pp. 294–320. Trevisa’s translation was completed in February 1398/9, eight manuscripts survive and it was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495, see ibid., pp. xi–xiv. 33 Alcuin Blamires (ed.), Woman Defamed and Woman Defended (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 1–15 and passim for discussion of this in relation to anti-feminist traditions. 34 See for example Anthony Musson’s discussion of the creation and experience of law, which he terms ‘a psychology of law’, Medieval Law in Context: The Growth of Legal Consciousness from Magna Carta to the Peasants’ Revolt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 1–35; Bronach Kane, ‘Reading emotion and gender in the later medieval English Church courts’, Frühneuzeit-Info 23 (2012), Special Issue, ‘The use of court records and petitions as historical sources’, 53–63; also her ‘Custom, memory and knowledge in the medieval English church courts’ in Rosemary Hayes and Bill Sheils (eds), Clergy, Church and Society in England and Wales, 1200–1800 (forthcoming). I am very grateful to the author for giving me a copy of the latter piece in advance of its publication. 35 As explored for example by Karen A. Winstead, Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1997). 36 For the literature of education aimed at both boys and girls see Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), esp. pp. 81–111. 37 See the version of the Secreta Secretorum discussed below on p. 22. 38 Judith Butler’s concept of gender as performance has had a more or less explicit influence on many studies of medieval gender, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990; republished with a new preface in 1999). 39 The same meanings also inform uses of the Latin ‘viriliter’, for detailed discussion see Fletcher, Richard II, pp. 25–59; also his ‘The Whig interpretation of masculinity? Honour and sexuality in late medieval manhood’, in Arnold and Brady, What is Masculinity? pp. 57–75. 40 Although this is not to suggest fixed or universally agreed meanings for these words, for the range of their uses in Middle English see Middle English Dictionary, (eds) Hans Kurath et al. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1954–2001). I consulted the online version which has been freely available since 2007 [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/ med/, accessed 26 January 2013]. 41 In different medieval societies and settings categories such as ethnicity, religion, sexuality and national identity could also be more or less significant to gender identity. 42 Neal, passim; John H. Arnold, Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), pp. 143–90; Bronach Kane, ‘Social representations of memory and gender in later medieval England’, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 46 (2012), 544–58. 43 As also noted by Karras, From Boys to Men, p. 11. 44 Kim M. Phillips, ‘Masculinities and the medieval English sumptuary laws’, Gender & History 19 (2007), 22–42. 45 This contention lies at the heart of Alexandra Shepard’s analysis of early modern masculinity, for example, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 1–6 and passim. 46 Deborah Youngs, The Life Cycle in Western Europe c. 1300–c. 1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006) provides a useful overview, see also Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 12–17.
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INTRODUCTION
47 J.A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); Mary Dove, The Perfect Age of Man’s Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 48 Orme; Childhood to Chivalry, pp. 5–8. 49 Dunlop, The Late Medieval Interlude, pp. 9–22; Rachel E. Moss, ‘An orchard, a love letter and three bastards: the formation of adult male identity in a fifteenth-century family’ in Arnold and Brady, What is Masculinity?, pp. 226–44 (esp. pp. 226–29). 50 Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 8, 45, 68, 215–21 and 321–27 for a range of different means by which the move from childhood to adulthood could be marked. See also Youngs, The Life Cycle, pp. 126–31. 51 The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 239; pp. 239–43 for general discussion of childhood in terms of seven-year increments. See below pp. 17–18 for details of Giles of Rome and this Middle English translation of his work. 52 Youngs, The Life Cycle, pp. 103–6; Moss, ‘An orchard, a love letter and three bastards’, pp. 230, 236 and 239. 53 Dunlop, The Late Medieval Interlude, pp. 22–54; Burrow, The Ages of Man, pp. 146–51. 54 ‘The Mirror of the Periods of Man’s Life, or Bids of the Virtues and Vices for the Soul of Man’ in Hymns to the Virgin and Christ, the Parliament of Devils, and Other Religious Poems, (ed.) F.J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society original series 24 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1867), pp. 60–66 (p. 61, ll. 89–104). 55 Ibid., p. 61, ll. 108–9. 56 Kim M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270–1540 (Manchester: Manchester Medieval Press, 2003), pp. 143–76. 57 As Henry V was seen to do, see below pp. 84–9. 58 Moss, ‘An orchard, a love letter and three bastards’, p. 228; Neal, The Masculine Self, pp. 57–89 for the importance of husbandry as a dimension of manhood. 59 Youngs, The Life Cycle, pp. 163–89. 60 Clare A. Lees, ‘Introduction’ in Lees, Medieval Masculinities, p. xv; cf Neal’s focus on ‘the most ordinary men accessible’ and eschewal of ‘knights and chivalry’, The Masculine Self, pp. 6–7. 61 Although there were some exceptions; e.g. John Carmi Parsons on the role of queenship in constructing a king’s masculine image, ‘“Loved him – hated her”: honor and shame at the medieval court’ in Murray, Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities, pp. 279–98, and W.M. Aird on William the Conqueror and Robert Curthose, ‘Frustrated masculinity: the relationship between William the Conqueror and his eldest son’, in Hadley, Masculinity in Medieval Europe, pp. 39–55. 62 W.M. Ormrod, ‘Monarchy, martyrdom and masculinity: England in the later Middle Ages’ in P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), pp. 174–91 (p. 174). This was originally delivered in 2001 at the eponymous conference held at the University of Huddersfield. 63 Laynesmith’s monograph was published in 2004, but her ideas first appeared in print under her maiden name several years before this: J.L. Chamberlayne, ‘Crowns and virgins: queenmaking during the Wars of the Roses’ in Katherine J. Lewis, Noël James Menuge and Kim M. Phillips (eds), Young Medieval Women (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999), pp. 47–68. 64 Laynesmith, pp. 72–130 and passim; see also Earenfight on ‘queens as integral to the mechanisms of monarchy’, The King’s Other Body, p. 13 and passim; Benz St John, Three Medieval Queens, on queens as part of processes of monarchy, pp. 17–20 and passim. These considerations led me to choose a cover image for this study which shows a king being crowned with his queen, rather than an image of a king alone. Although, as we shall see, Henry V was unique among later medieval English kings in not having a queen for the majority of his reign.
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INTRODUCTION
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65 Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 95–121; Benz St John, Three Medieval Queens, pp. 34–63. 66 Maurer, esp. concluding remarks pp. 208–11. 67 Ormrod, ‘Monarchy, martyrdom and masculinity’, p. 175. 68 Ibid., passim. 69 W.M. Ormrod, ‘The sexualities of Edward II’ in Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson (eds), The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives (York: York Medieval Press, 2006), pp. 22–47. 70 A.J. Pollard, Late Medieval England 1399–1509 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2000), p. 12. 71 Watts, pp. 13–80. 72 Michael Hicks, English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 9. 73 Ibid., p. 9. 74 Ibid., pp. 9–21. 75 Cynthia Herrup, ‘The king’s two genders’, Journal of British Studies 45 (2006), 493–510; Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (originally published 1957, this edition Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 76 Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, ‘The political legitimacy of Isabel of Castile’, Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000), 31–56. Isabel provides a fruitful test case because of her status as a female king, Barbara F. Weissberger, Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Baker, ‘Power and passion in sixteenth-century Florence’, passim. 77 Herrup, ‘The king’s two genders’, p. 499. 78 Fletcher, Richard II; see also his ‘Manhood and politics in the reign of Richard II’, Past and Present 189 (2005), 3–39. 79 Fletcher, Richard II, p. 73. 80 Ibid., p. 279. 81 Ibid., pp.122–23. 82 Ibid., p. 278. 83 For Fletcher’s most recent work in this area, ‘Manhood, kingship and the public in late medieval England’, Edad Media Revista de Historia 13 (2012), 123–42.
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1
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K I N G S H I P A N D MA S C U L I N I T Y IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Having explored the ideas and assumptions underpinning medieval masculinity and its meanings it is necessary to establish some equivalent working definitions of kingship, and to examine how it was understood and judged in late medieval England.1 As Ormrod notes, kingship was an issue ‘on which almost everyone living in late medieval England may be assumed to have had some opinion’.2 It was not an issue about which people would have been objective, because an individual’s performance of kingship was seen and felt to have direct ramifications for his subjects’ quality of life. Thus the personal character and competence of individual kings was vital both to the direction and well-being of his realm. Within a medieval context this almost goes without saying, but, as Watts points out, it needs to be explored in direct relation to contemporary concepts of kingship in order to understand more precisely what was expected of a king and how government was supposed to work.3 This enables a more subtle assessment of the relative success and failure of different kings in ways that avoid simply pigeonholing them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘strong’ or ‘weak’, by asking exactly how forceful a ‘good’ king needed to be, and in which areas of government, or considering precisely what qualities a king had to display in order to be identified as dangerously feeble.4 The substantive backdrop against which such questions can be posed and answered is what Watts terms ‘a clear and coherent conceptual framework for politics and a language in which to express it’ as this emerges from the copious surviving literature describing the terms and limits of ideal kingship.5 The didactic genre known as ‘mirrors for princes’ presents a particularly useful source for investigating this framework.6 These mirrors took the form of moral and practical guides outlining the properties and accomplishments of the ideal Christian ruler, revolving around the four cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude. They often claimed authority from a tradition of advice which Aristotle was believed to have given to Alexander the Great.7 One of the most influential was Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum (On the Government of Rulers) which was originally written for the future king Philip IV of France (who became king in 1285) and survives in 350 copies.8 Another, known as the Secreta Secretorum (Secret of 17
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/york-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from york-ebooks on 2023-06-12 11:50:01.
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Secrets), was particularly popular in England and survives in a number of different Middle English versions.9 These mirrors often drew on Vegetius’ fifth-century De Re Militari (On Military Matters) to provide guidance on specifically military issues, such the tactics required by different sorts of battles and sieges, and the training and management of soldiers.10 De Re Militari emphasized the centrality of successful warfare to successful government and was also popular reading matter in its own right, often found in manuscript compilations alongside mirrors, demonstrating the existence of a recognized canon of advice literature in this period.11 All later medieval kings of England had texts of this type written specifically for them; perhaps the most famous of these being Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes composed for the future Henry V (probably in 1411).12 It was deemed vital that a king understood his role properly, for example the coronation rite stipulated that throughout the ceremony the abbot of Westminster or another specially appointed monk should remain by the king’s side ‘to instruct the king in matters touching the solemnity of the coronation so that everything may be done aright’.13 But it is difficult to know whether the mirrors dedicated to individual kings were ever actually read by them, or, if they were read, whether they were properly understood. Besides, the chief means by which high status young men more generally learned their roles (especially with respect to warfare) was via observation of their elders and the practice of appropriate skills, not from reading books.14 Even if such books remained on the shelf, however, it was still crucial for kings to be represented as receptive to their advice and engaging with an ongoing process of education, which involved reflecting on their role and its demanding responsibilities.15 Given that the majority of English kings in fifteenth-century England were not actually born to be king, there may have been a heightened significance to their status as recipients of instruction and advice in this period. In addition to royalty, these texts were also written for and owned by a wider audience of nobles and gentry. The discourse of ideal kingship informed other types of literature owned by royals, nobles and gentry too, especially romances and chronicles.16 For example the 1397 inventory of the goods belonging to Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward III, lists 84 books.17 As well as a copy of Giles of Rome these included a copy of the Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose) and works recounting the exploits of Hector, Alexander, Godfrey de Bouillon, Tancred, Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin and Bevis of Hampton.18 The inventory also lists several tapestries which depicted romance subjects, including the histories of Charlemagne, Godfrey de Bouillon and one which showed Gawain fighting Lancelot.19 Although Henry V did not have a great deal of time for reading we know that he owned a splendid copy of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and this may have inspired him to commission John Lydgate to write the Troy Book.20 He also borrowed a book containing an account of the First Crusade from his aunt, Joan Beaufort, which was probably a version of William of Tyre’s 18
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
chronicle.21 Like his great-uncle Thomas he owned tapestries of romance themes including Sir Perceval, Octavian, and Bevis of Hampton.22 Henry’s brothers John, duke of Bedford and Humfrey of Gloucester both owned a great number of books, although in Bedford’s case most of these came as a job lot in 1424 when he acquired over 800 books which had been part of the French royal library.23 Gloucester showed a marked interest in contemporary humanist literature but also patronized more conventional writings and encouraged composition in Middle English, being the dedicatee of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes. At some point Bedford gave Gloucester a book including French accounts of the quest for the Grail and the death of Arthur.24 The same ideas about kingship described in these texts were dramatized publicly in the form of royal pageants and other public ceremonials surrounding the monarchy.25 The pageantry surrounding Henry VI’s coronations as king of England and of France offered him a whole host of Biblical, Classical and more recent models of kingship.26 The Nine Worthies often made an appearance at such events; these were nine rulers presented in a group as the embodiment of virtuous warrior leadership and many of them were also the subject of historical or romance narratives.27 Three are pagan (Hector, Alexander and Julius Caesar), three Jewish (Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus) and three Christian (Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey de Bouillon). In addition to the portrait of Edward III with which I opened, the Brut provides a litany of good kings and their qualities, such as Arthur, Alfred, Edgar and Edward I and juxtaposes them with bad kings such as Eadwig, Harold Harefoot, William Rufus and John.28 Representations of good and bad kingship are also to be found in pastoral, homiletic and hagiographic texts to which the majority of the population would have been exposed in some form. Heaven was regularly presented as a court, presided over by Christ the king, as described, for example, by John Mirk in his Festial, which was the most popular late-medieval English sermon cycle.29 The Festial constitutes a précis in Middle English of Jacobus de Voragine’s hugely popular late thirteenth-century hagiographic collection the Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend).30 Mirk, an Augustinian canon, originally wrote it in the 1380s and its utility is indicated by the survival of over forty manuscripts, as well as William Caxton’s printed edition of 1483 and twenty-two further editions produced before 1532.31 Mirk’s sermon for Rogation Day includes a metaphor explaining the significance of ringing bells which depicts Christ as a warrior king: For ryȜt as a kyng, when he goþe to batayle, trompes gon before, þe baner ys desplayde and comyþ aftyr, þen comyþ þe kyng and his ost aftyr sweyng hym; ryght so in Cristys batayle þe belles, þat ben Godys trompes, ryngen, baners byn vnfolden, and openly born on high yn þe ayre. Then þe cros yn Cristys lykenes comyth as a kyng of christen men, and his ost, þat ys Cristys pepull, sweyþe hym. þus 19
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
he dryuyþ out of hys lordschip and reueþ hym hys power. And, as a tyrand wold drede, and he herd þe trompes of a kyng þat wer his enmy, and seȜ hys baner dysplayde in þe feld; ryȜt soo þe fend, the curset tyrand of hell, dredyþe hym wondyr sore, when he heryþ þe Kyngys trompes of Heuen ryng, and the cros and baners broȜt about.32
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Significant here too is the fact that England had a particularly well-developed tradition of kingly sanctity.33 The best known English king saints are Edward the Confessor (canonized in 1161) and Edmund of East Anglia (martyred by the Danes in 869 or 870).34 But there is also evidence of devotion to several others, chief among them Edward the Martyr, Oswald of Northumbria, Æthelberht of East Anglia, and Alkmund, as well as to the Scandinavians Olaf and Magnus.35 St Alkmund was the son of Alchred, king of Northumbria and was killed by a rival, Eardwulf, in around 800. Although he does not seem to have actually ruled as king he was subsequently commemorated as a king saint. He was the patron saint of the church in Shrewsbury which was attached to Mirk’s priory at Lilleshall.36 Thus a unique Middle English life of Alkmund is included in the Festial, which describes him as a model king: And for he was yn hys Ȝouthe of good maners, and curteyse, and hende, and full of all uertues, þat all men louyd hym, wherfor he was made kyng, not only for þe kyndom felle to hym by erytage, but also he was full of grace and alle good þewes: herefor all þe pepull made hym kyng. And þogh he wer þus avawnsyt passing aboue all oþer, he was neuer þe prowdyr of his state, but þe her þat he was avawnset, the lower he was yn hert, and þe more meke yn all his doing, thynkyng algates, þe more a man hath, þe more he hath to Ȝeue cowntys of, and þe more greuesly he schall be apechyt befor God. Wherefor to hom þat wern meke, he was logh and sympull, and to hom þat were rebel, he was styf forto Ȝeynstond hom yn all hor males. He had algatys gret compassion to all þat wern yn any dyses; and to þe seke and to þe pore he was boþe fadyr and modyr, to helpe hom and socoure hom to all þat þay haddyn nede to. He was large of mete and drynke to all þat woldyn aske hit for Goddys sake. He was devowte yn holy chyrch and susteynyng all þat wern serving þeryn ynto þe worschip of God. He had allgatys a feruent desire forto dey for þe ryght of God and for defence of Goddys pepull, and herefor he prayed to God nyght and day.37 According to Mirk, Alkmund’s death came about because he got involved in a conflict between four kings which had led to the spilling of much Christian blood. Alkmund ‘faght monly for Goddys pepull’ but was slain on the battlefield, and thus became a martyr.38 This portrait of Alkmund rests on an 20
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/york-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from york-ebooks on 2023-06-12 11:50:01.
KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
understanding of the qualification for kingship deriving not just from lineage but from the possession of correct virtues and accomplishments, within a courageous warrior’s body. Mirk also included within the life a story deriving from Eadmer’s life of St Oda, archbishop of Canterbury (d. 958), in which Oda miraculously repaired King Æthelstan’s sword during a battle against ‘curset men’ (implicitly the Battle of Brunanburh).39 This was intended to highlight the support which God would give to those who fought for him, but given Æthelstan’s later medieval reputation as a devout warrior king his appearance here also reiterates the messages which Alkmund’s life conveys about ideal kingship.40 Thus while aimed explicitly at a ruler, the discourse underpinning mirrors for princes was also intended and used to instruct the wider polity in how to understand and assess political actors and institutions.41 This is suggested by another Middle English sermon which delineates ideal social spheres for men drawn from different levels of society and the importance of performing properly within these capacities. It states:
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And so it were ryght sitting þat euery man held hym content to common in maters of ys faculte, policy, and gouernaunce, so þat knyȜthes and oþur gentils with hem shuld sett her besines abowte þe good gouernaunce in þe temperaltee in þe tyme of pees and also abowte diuers poyntes of armes in þe tyme of were, as þe lawe and þe chronicle techeþ hem; for þer beþ many sotell questions and conclusions in mater of werre and armes, as þe Phylo[so]fre declareþ, De Re Militari, and Gylus, De Regimine.42 The naming of specific didactic texts as part of this exhortation also indicates their currency. The notions of good kingship which they outlined remained constant across the later medieval period, partly because a king was invariably measured against the achievements of his forebears, both real and legendary. The past was presented as a repository of examples and used to illustrate the virtues which a king should cultivate and the rewards of these, as well as the disasters which would befall both a king and his people if he exhibited undesirable traits and acted upon them instead.43 As John Trevisa put it in his late fourteenth-century translation of De Regimine Principum: ‘kynges and princes hauynge in mynde actus and dedes of here predecessours may be þe more prudentes in works, actus and dedes.’44 Writing in 1470–71 George Ashby urged Prince Edward (son and heir of Henry VI) to pay careful attention to the lessons of the past in choosing the best course of action in his rule. This included the reminder that Prince Edward himself would one day literally be history: Suche as ye be, so shall ye be taken, Youre dedys & werkes shal prove al thing, 21
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
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Wele or evyl their shalbe awaken, In chronicles youre Rule rehersyng, Either in preisyng either in blamyng.45 But while the core attributes may have stayed the same, this was not a static genre. Some mirrors are relatively short and concise, while others are lengthy and include reams of illustrative examples. There could be marked variation between the contents of different versions of the same text, made manifest, for example, in the three redactions of the Secreta Secretorum edited and published together in 1898. The first is succinct and pithy, and does not include the medical and dietary advice which makes up a significant portion of the second.46 The third was written for James Butler, fourth earl of Ormond, in 1420 and, unlike the other two, includes anecdotes drawn from relatively recent events, such as the deposition of Richard II and the exploits of Sir Stephen Scrope.47 This is indicative of the ways in which the basic framework could be adapted and tailored to meet the needs of a specific recipient. Thus the authors of these texts did not seek to impose an unmediated ideal upon their readership, but responded to contemporary circumstance, which allowed them to transmit their instructions in terms both comprehensible and relevant to their readers.48 The ideal could also be modified to some extent to suit the style and accomplishments of individual rulers, provided that a king’s government was shaped, at all times, by an awareness of what was best for his subjects.49 This explains the pronounced moral emphasis of the mirrors, and other writings describing kingship. Their fundamental concern was to instil personal virtue in a king, as this would guarantee that his private will would be directed towards the interests of the commonweal, which was reified as the essence of good rule.50 The specific personality of an individual king was arguably less important than his ability to fulfil this basic criterion.51 The virtue which these texts proffer for imitation is thoroughly imbued with ideals of manhood. In providing a conceptual framework for kingship they are irrevocably entwined with the conceptual framework for masculinity. Central to understandings of the ideal king was the expectation that, like Edward III, he would be a heroic and successful warrior leader. This property was presented in symbiosis with his status as chief judge and guarantor of justice and peace. For example Henry of Bracton’s thirteenth-century legal definition of ‘The Needs of a King’: To rule well a king requires two things, arms and laws, that by them both times of war and of peace may rightly be ordered. For each stands in need of the other that the achievement of arms be conserved [by the laws], the laws themselves preserved by the support of arms. If arms fail against hostile and unsubdued enemies, then will the realm be without defence; if laws fail, justice will be extirpated; nor will there be any man to render just judgment.52 22
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
In De Laudibus Legum Angliae (In Praise of the Laws of England) another didactic text written for Prince Edward, son of Henry VI, John Fortescue states: ‘For the office of a king is to fight the battles of his people and to judge them rightfully’, citing the Book of Kings as his source.53 The king’s twin responsibilities in these two related arenas were symbolized by his receipt of a sword and sceptre during the coronation ceremony.54 Chris Given-Wilson notes that for medieval chroniclers (as for their classical counterparts): ‘war was the ultimate proving-ground of a man’s character’.55 This was especially true of kings and conduct in war provided a litmus test for a king’s nature and achievements as both ruler and man. Success in war relied upon a combination of exemplary qualities and strengths, both physical and moral, and upon the ability to lead and inspire others. It also entailed the exercise of dominance over oneself, one’s men and one’s enemies. Trevisa discussed the necessity for a king to be a warrior as part of his manly identity: ‘þanne þei kynges and princes scholde not all vnknowe dedes of armes noþer þei scholde so forsake bodilich traueile þat þei be maad as þei it were wymmen’.56 Hoccleve stated that a king should be ‘[s]o manly of corage and herte’ that he would rather suffer death in battle ‘[t]han cowardly and shamefully flee’, a commonplace sentiment.57 The ideology that a king would employ his personal strength and courage in the defence of his realm and of the Church formed a central part of the explanation and justification for his supreme position. In this respect it rested upon wider principles of good lordship, as described in The Properties of Things:
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And he [the good lord] drawiþ his swerd aȜenst malice and puttiþ forþ his schilde of riȜtwisnes to defende innocentis aȜnest yueldoers, and deliuereþ smale children, fadirles and modirles, and widowis, of hem, and p[u]ttiþ of robboures and reyuers and þeues and oþir iueldoers, and vsiþ his power nouȜt onliche at hese wille, but he ordeyneþ and disposiþ as þe lawe askeþ.58 Important here is the idea of the lord’s innate strength being properly channelled towards the pursuit of a just cause, which could entail not only the defence of his dependants, but also the maintenance of his rights and honour. The king had to be prepared to be uncompromisingly forceful and even brutal, but only in response to circumstances and after careful deliberation of these. The king should not be belligerent for its own sake, to satisfy bloodlust or ambition, or the desire for vengeance, or purely to gain glory, renown and riches. Justice therefore provided an essential counterweight to the king’s martial aspect in lending him wisdom and prudence. It also ensured that he would treat all of his subjects fairly and impartially, rewarding or punishing them according to merit. While Trevisa recognized that it was essential for a king to be a warrior he believed that: 23
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
… in rewlyng and gouernance wisdom is better þanne armes of werre, for kyng and prince and eche greet lord in bataille and in dedes of armes is as it were no better þan on man and som tyme lasse worthi þan ano þer man. But by wisdome and redinesse som man may be more worthi þan al þe men þat ben vnder hym.59 He also observed that kings and princes should ‘be not hardy to vse dedes of armes for defence of þe regne noþer for oþer causes, natheless for it is more semelich þat þei be wis and redy þan grete werriours’.60 Any man could fight, but unbridled strength alone was not enough; a king could only mark himself out as deservedly superior by marrying his martial accomplishments with a redoubtable intellect. The Secreta Secretorum written for Ormond observes that ‘[s]treynth and Powere, without witte and connynge, is but outrage and wodnys’.61 Trevisa’s use of ‘hardy’ above to delineate an incorrect attitude to warfare is also reflected in William Worcester’s The Boke of Noblesse written in the late 1450s:
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Hyt ys to remembre that I hafe herd myne autor Fastolfe [Sir John Fastolf] sey, whan he had yong knyghtys and nobles at hys solasse, how that there be twey maner condicions of manly men, and one ys a manlye man called, another ys an hardye man; but he seyd the manly man ys more to be commended, more then the hardy man; for the hardy man that sodenly, bethout discrecion of gode avysement, avauncyth hym yn the felde to be halde courageouse, and wyth grete aventur he scapyth, voydith the felde allone, but he levyth hys felyshyp destrussed. And the manly man, ys policie ys that, or he avaunce hym and hys felyshyp at skirmysshe or sodeyn racountre, he wille so discretely avaunce hym that he wille entend to hafe the ovyr hand of hys adversarye, and safe hymsylf and hys felyshyp.62 Hardiness, defined as a form of unmanliness in these terms, was widely believed to pertain particularly to young men, eager for distinction in battle and blind to the potential consequences of their glory-hunting actions on the field.63 Older men could be prone to a similarly foolish attitude to war too, which would mark their conduct out as immature and irrational. Trevisa judged that it was better to lack fortitude than the temperance which would prompt a man to make more sensible and less selfish choices in such circumstances.64 The manly approach to warfare, and the thoughtful discretion which Worcester claims for it, could involve taking a pragmatic approach and knowing when to retreat, as well as when to fight.65 However, wisdom was obviously not sufficient alone; the king’s core attributes needed to be in a constructive tension as Ormond’s text states: ‘[b]ut whan with Streynth and Powere, hym compaynyth witte and connynge, and witte dressith 24
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Powere, in goodnys may the Prynce Play, and with good men Surly walke.’66 Ashby described the fine line which Prince Edward needed to walk ‘betwyx colde & fire’ in achieving the correct balance of emotions and accomplishments.67 The means by which a king could maintain this balance was the property of self-mastery. All mirrors repeat the mantra that the fundamental qualification for good rule was the ability to rule oneself, a notion which draws substance both from classical ideals of public authority and from Christian asceticism.68 Trevisa begins with dictates as to how the king should govern himself, which become the bedrock for subsequent instruction on the governance of family, household, city and kingdom, successively: ‘For he that wol be wise and kunnynge to gouerne and rule oþer schal be wise and kunnynge to gouerne and to rule himself.’69 For Ȝif a rector, gouernour, ruleth himself, [he] is worthi to be made rector, gouernour, and lord of other men. For he that hath wisdom and redynes and other moral vertues, of the whoche it is itreted in this boke, is worthi to be a prince. And 3if hym lakketh this redines, þeyȜ he be a prince by ciuyle, temporal, myȜte and strengþe, Ȝut a Ȝis more worthi to be a sogette þan a prince oþer a lord, and he is more kyndeliche seruant þan a lord.70
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The wide currency of this understanding of the ways in which a lack of selfmastery would undermine a king’s status and power is indicated by the inclusion of a very similar passage in the life of St Katherine of Alexandria, the legendary early Christian virgin martyr, which was the most popular saint’s life in latemedieval England.71 St Katherine was represented as a highly educated sovereign queen, heir of her father King Costus. When her persecutor, the pagan Emperor Maxentius, first interrogates her, he angrily dismisses her beliefs as unconvincing, especially as they are voiced by ‘a freel woman’. Katherine retorts: Emperoure, y praie the that thou suffer thi madnesse to be ouercome, that so grete encomberaunce of perturbacion be not in the corage of the that holdest thiselff so mighti. For yef thou wilt be gouerned bi gode corage thou shalt be a kinge, and ellys truste me fully that thou shalt be a thralle.72 Katherine may be a woman but it is she, not the depraved Maxentius, who embodies the correct properties of kingliness in this narrative.73 Furthermore, it was vital that temperance underpinned a king’s authority and informed his decision making, because rule without self-discipline could have a disastrous effect upon the whole nation. Commentators on kingship frequently employed the idea of the body politic as illustration here. This metaphor, which identified the king and various groups of his subjects with 25
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
limbs and organs of the human body, was a neat way of articulating the hierarchy of vital interconnections which ensured that the realm worked properly.74 The king was usually the head and, as Bracton put it: the government of the wise man is stable, and the wise king will judge his people, but if he lacks wisdom he will destroy them, for from a corrupt head corruption descends to the members, and if understanding and virtue do not flourish in the head it follows that the other members cannot perform their functions.75 Accounts of the strength of will a king needed to resist the temptation which would lead him to rule poorly drew directly on broader understandings of self-command as the fulcrum of true manhood. Explicit articulation of this comes in the frequent admonitions about the dangers of sex. Sex was an essential part of a king’s role (in order to provide an heir) but he was customarily warned not to indulge in it immoderately. A medical text written in 1424 by Gilbert Kymer for Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, informed him that: [E]xcessive and improper coitus … impedes digestion, suppresses the appetite, causes dryness, corrupts the humours, impoverishes the spirit, chills natural heat, impairs the virtues, suppresses bodily functions, consumes radical moisture, enervates the members, gives rise to evil diseases, effeminises the sperm, produces lovesickness and jealousy, gives rise to forgetfulness, fatness, neglectfulness and foolishness, and it shortens the life.76
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The potential for sex to debilitate a man both physically and mentally, rendering him unfit for leadership, recurs in many mirrors. Warning is often given that too much sex would compromise a king’s masculinity: sett nought thyn hert in lecherie of women, for þat is the lyf of swine. Ioy and worshipe shalt thou noon haue, while thou governyst the aftir that lijf and aftir the lijf of vnresonable bestis. Dere sone, lecherie is destruccioun of body abreggyng of lijf and corrupcioun of virtues; Enemy to conscience, and makith a man oft femynyne. In whiche is oft tyme found cowardnes, and þat is the grettist point of repreef that may be vnto Chyvalrie.77 Sexual over-indulgence made strong men ‘lyke women, [too] neshe and feynte, dedis of army to done’, or it could even ‘engendrys women maners’.78 Self-mastery actually had a broad remit which encompassed many other types of passion and lust too, especially with respect to money, possessions, and 26
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
social status. But sex was a particular concern because it was regarded as the gateway to more comprehensive sinfulness: … leve bestly desires and flesshely, for they ben corruptible. fflesshely desires bowith the hert of mane to delitis, which are corrupcioun to the sowle, and it is bestialle without discreeccioun. And he that ioyneth him to bodily corrupcioun, he corruptith the vndirstondyng of man. And wite welle þat suche desires engendrith flesshely loue: And flesshely loue engendrith avarice: Auarice engendrith desiris of ricchesses: Desiris of ricchesse makith a man without shame: Man without shame is prowd and without feith: Man without feith drawith to thefte: Thefte bryngith a man to endles shame, and so cometh a man to kaytifnes and to fynalle distruccioun of his body.79 Trevisa noted that it is detestable and horrible for any man to enjoy ‘voluptuous delectaciouns’, but that this is the most detestable and horrible in a king, partly for the physiological reasons already mentioned, but also ‘fore thei maken hym to be despised and lyte itolde of ’ and, most seriously of all, ‘for a maketh hym vnworthy to be a prince’.80 Ormond’s version of the Secreta Secretorum claimed that lechery was actually the root cause of Richard II’s descent into tyranny.81 A related reason why sex was seen as potentially detrimental to a king’s authority was that it would place him under the pernicious sway of women, who were believed to be inherently more lustful than men. In the Secreta Secretorum Aristotle warns Alexander never to trust a woman:
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… a man that puttith him in the hondis and power of a woman, he puttith his lyf and deth in gret aventure: þou hast herd told that kyngis, dukis, and many other worthi men haue ben dede thorough venyme. Now the most violent venyme that any man kan deuyse or thynke is the yville wille of a woman.82 There was evidently a concern that queens might influence their kings to make the ‘wrong’ decisions in policy making. Trevisa cautions that women simply do not have the intelligence to give good counsel and are too softhearted to be able to think rationally about important matters.83 The oftdramatized exchanges between Adam and Eve following their expulsion from the Garden of Eden stood as well-known examples of the folly of heeding a wife’s advice.84 Interestingly Trevisa does allow that if a king needs an immediate decision on something he is better off asking a woman because although her advice would not be as good as a man’s, she would give it much more quickly.85 But perhaps the implication here is that no decision should be made hastily! Resisting sexual temptation was thus an intrinsic 27
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
dimension both of being manly and of being kingly; the one informed the other. The gender-specific nature of the achievement of self-mastery was further underlined by contrasting the ideal king not just with women but also with children: intemporancia is a vice most childliche, for children þat vsen not reson lyuen not by resound but by passioun … þanne for it is vnsemelich to a kyng to be a child in maners and not folwe resound but passions, it is vnsemelich to hym to be i[nte]mporate.86 Trevisa noted that in many respects women and children were very similar:
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For as þe philosopher [Aristotle] seith [in] Poletic[is], maules kunneþ more resound þan femelles, for femel is as it were a maul ilikned and as a man not complete and parfit. Also children cunneþ not so moche resoun as men of ful age, for a childe is as it were a man not complete and parfit. þanne in comparisoun to not complete perfeccioun and to þe vse of resoun in some wise wymmen and children hauen þe same resoun.87 The difference between women and male children, though, was that the latter had the possibility of growing out of their inferiority and into mature rationality. The implication of all this invective is that a king would inevitably be inclined towards having sex, but would not be dominated by these desires because of his superior reason. It was important that the king experience passions though, in order for his chastity to be an achievement and thus have a bearing on the quality of the rule that he would offer. This relates to perceptions of the relationship between manly maturity and the eschewing of immoral behaviour discussed above. A king should not be overwhelmed by his lust, but if he apparently did not possess any at all this could be indicative of problems pertaining to his rule, as we shall see. While a king needed to quash those attributes which could obliterate his manliness, in order to be a good ruler he had also to include qualities such as mercy, pity, meekness and humility which were frequently identified as feminine.88 The mirrors described the employment of these virtues as a means of avoiding tyrannous rule. As Hoccleve puts it: For to hem [kings and princes] longith it for Goddes sake To weyve crueltee and tirannye, And to pitee hir hertes bowe and wrye, And reule hir peple esyly and faire. It is kyngly be meek and debonaire.89 28
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This passage is part of a wider section on the status of mercy as vital property of kingship.90 This is followed by a section on patience, another quality which was often characterized as feminine, but is presented here as an antidote to cruelty in a king.91 Ormond’s Secreta Secretorum emphasizes that meekness is a particularly important quality in rulers: ‘[f]or mekenesse is the Seuerance and the difference between a kynge and a tyraunt. And his is to witte that the vertue of mekenesse kepyth the mene between Sparynge and vengeaunce.’92 The required feminine qualities often devolved upon the queen in practice; despite the anti-feminist rhetoric often underpinning mirrors for princes, not all appraisals of a wife/queen’s influence were cautionary and negative.93 Thus maintaining ‘the mene’ often became a matter of the queen’s influence which could usefully be represented as softening her king’s harsher, more exacting traits. However, there was not always a queen present and the mirrors instruct that these properties should be inherent to, or at least displayed by, the king himself, rather than being the product purely of external influence. We have already seen, for example, that St Alkmund was described as both father and mother to his people in his compassion for the sick and poor. In the ballad which John Lydgate wrote to celebrate Henry VI’s coronation as King of England the concluding prayer expresses the hope that the young king would take example from both his parents. He should be an excellent knight following his father, Henry V, the ‘myrrour of manhede’, and he should resemble his mother, Catherine de Valois, ‘in virtuous goodnesse’.94 Moreover, Ormond’s Secreta Secretorum describes meekness as an intrinsic aspect of temperance which worked to ensure that the king would rule his people considerately and justly: The vertue of Temporaunce, namely in a Prynce appartenyth to mekenesse, in vengeaunce-takynge of the wrongis that byth y-do to hym-Selfe. For lyke as hit be-fallyth not to a manful man to be liberall of anothyr manes goode, but forto be lyberall of his owyn, So Is the Prynce y-callid meke, noght in his Pepill lost-is for-yewynge, but in his owyn noght goynge owte of the vertue of Temporaunce. And therfor grete honours, glorie, and Perpetuel virchippe, is to the Prynce, namely in redressynge by force of Pouer and lawe, the wronges that ben done to the comyn Pepill and his subiectes, by enemys, thewis, And othyr extorcioners.95 Trevisa distinguishes a king’s mercy, described in similar terms to the Secreta Secretorum as the product of temperate justice, from the mercy shown by women, children and old men: For … children ben merciable for þei ben innocent and demiþ and trowiþ þat oþir ben innocent and hauin harme with wronge and haunin þerfore sone merci of hem. And olde men ben merciable for 29
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
þei fallen in body and lif, and hauen mercy and rewþe of oþere men for oþere men scholde haue mercye and rewþe of hem. For man is sone inclined for to do to oþere men as he wolde þat oþere men ded to hym, þerfore olde men hauen sone mercye and rewþe of oþere men. And wymmen ben merciable for þei ben nesche of herte; for þei þat ben nesche of herte mowe not suffry hard doing. þerfore wymmen hauen mercye and rewþe anon whanne he seeþ oþere suffre harde peyns.96
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This renders mercy an explicit property of manhood. Thus specific ideal characteristics were not necessarily ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ when displayed by the king; it depended on the dynamic equilibrium of these with other qualities.97 In some respects a king’s gender identity, as conceptualized in the mirrors, was on a circular continuum whereby either being too soft or too savage would lead him round into effeminate tyranny.98 The didactic theory presented by the mirrors rests on the assumption that a king’s will would inevitably be very strong, indeed excessively so.99 At his coronation the king took oaths which defined the terms of his rule as being for the welfare of the kingdom, placing him in a contract with his subjects and promising to rule for their benefit at all times.100 The mirrors instruct him to ‘oft enquire of þe necessite of thi sugestis, and by þi power … helpe hem at her nede’.101 His subjects’ assent was therefore represented as a potential limit upon what he could actually do.102 This was not just a matter of form and a king could not simply do what he liked and force his will upon the people.103 In the formulation and implementation of policy the king was expected to take counsel. As the Secreta Secretorum put it: Dere sone, whan þou hast oughte to do be governyd bi counselle, for þou art but on sool man, ne telle nought alle bi thought of thyn owen cast to thi counselle, but here what eche man wolle say, and than maist þou deme in thyn owen witt þe best of hir witt, and of þyn owen witt, and þus shalt thou be holden wijs and worshipfulle for thi governance. Shewe not thi thought vnto tyme thou performe thi wille of the which thou hast take thi counselle. But considir welle which persone counselid the beste, and haue him in cherte.104 The nobility were held to be a king’s natural counsellors and continued to play a central role in government throughout the Middle Ages.105 By the fifteenth century the institution of a formal royal council, whose members were appointed by the king, had been established, with personnel drawn from the nobility but also, on occasion, from other non-noble members of the king’s household.106 As well as advising the king, the council dealt with a range of administrative matters pertaining to the government of the realm.107 Parliament was chiefly conceived as the arena in which the king 30
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
publicly consulted his subjects more widely. It was both an embodiment and a reflection of the political nation.108 In this respect it retained its thirteenthcentury function as a meeting of the Great Council, at which the king would consult his leading subjects. Parliament’s role in politics developed and increased during the late medieval period.109 Government policy was subject to approval by the Commons, and this gave them the opportunity to vent any grievances which they wished the king to redress, in return for their consent.110 England’s activities in France in the fourteenth century and up to the 1450s meant that the crown needed to call parliament more frequently in order to obtain the money necessary to support these, and the sittings tended to last longer as the period progressed.111 A link was established between the king’s promise to redress the Commons’ grievances, and their willingness to grant taxation to him. Once taxation was granted they sometimes tried to make sure that the money would be spent for the stated purpose.112 They could withhold their support, but even if they did the king had other means of raising money, as illustrated by the substantial loans obtained by Henry V from individuals and corporations in the Spring of 1421 in the face of parliamentary unwillingness to grant him a subsidy.113 However, while the Hundred Years War greatly increased the status and influence of parliament, the essential nature of political authority remained remarkably unchanged. While parliament may have criticized kings on occasion and even agreed to their deposition, as an institution it never thought to challenge the undeniable sovereign power of the king per se.114 Similarly, although the royal council ruled on behalf of Henry VI both when he was a child and, later, when he was incapacitated, it was conceived and represented as his proxy, enacting his orders.115 Indeed, the emphasis on selfmastery in the mirrors and elsewhere reflects the fact that the political system actually had no built-in restraints which could be employed to rein in the king.116 Moreover, while parliament may have met more often in this period it still did not meet with any great regularity. This lack of formal curbs on the king’s power and the fact that his prerogative determined the direction of government explains the uniform emphasis in mirrors for princes on the requirement for a righteous king to confer with appropriate counsellors.117 This also implies recognition that, in practice, a king could seek advice from whomever he wished. It was the more informal occasions on which the king would regularly consult nobles within the context of his household and court that were most decisive.118 The act of taking counsel mattered more than the institution of the council in this respect.119 Taking counsel was a dimension of self-mastery and thus of masculinity, as it sought to prevent the king acting impetuously or his decisions being governed by anything other than rational considerations.120 Ideally the king should be the means by which his subjects could govern themselves, through his wise and virtuous responses to their needs and interests.121 This lies behind the Brut’s account of Edward III as ‘fulfilled with all honeste of good 31
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
maners, & virtuous; vnder whom to lyve, hit was as for to regne’.122 His ‘honeste of good maners’ was therefore not just a matter of generic morality, but politically vital as a security of good rule, because he alone took the final decisions and provided direction. Hence if a king was seen or believed not to have taken good counsel into account this became a matter of great concern and he would be widely criticized. Or, to turn it around, if his subjects felt that some action or policy of the king’s was detrimental to their interests, they tended to interpret this in terms of a lack of good counsel. This was generally expressed not as the king having taken no counsel at all, but of him having given heed to the advice of ‘evil counsellors’, as the proclamations issued during Jack Cade’s rebellion in 1450 illustrate.123 Mirrors warned kings that they should be careful to avoid giving too much distinction to any individuals in their immediate circle and creating ‘favourites’ of them:
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And euyrmore loke that thou holde alle thi lordis in gret worshipe as they ben of estate, and diuerse tymys make them ete with the on aftir an oþir, and yeue hem rewardis of Iewellis or of riche clothyng after that they ben of estate and worthi; and loke þat ther be no man of thi counselle ne famulier with the, but if he be rewardid with yeftis of thi largesse, for ellis makist thou not ther hertis toward the in trusty loue, nor savist not thyn estat.124 Infamous favourites such as Piers Gaveston and Alice Perrers were censured as self-interested and corrupt, perverting the common good by encouraging the king to be heedless about the welfare of his subjects. Such figures were also a problem because they were seen to dominate the king’s person and manipulate his prerogative, thus emasculating him both personally and politically.125 As the passage above indicates, of particular concern was how the king handled his finances and dispensed patronage, for this was seen as an area particularly prone to the malign influence of a venal favourite. Thus, alongside an increasing emphasis on taking counsel, the mirrors included exhortations on the desirability of careful and conscientious management not just of the self, but of one’s resources.126 This was a matter of striking the right balance, again, as Ormond’s Secreta Secretorum notes: Also nede hit is to witte whate harmes dothe folargesse and scarcite. Wherfor hit Is to wytte, that hard is to knowe in al poyntis to holde the meene, and lyght is hit to faille; As to hit the marke hit is harde and to faylle hit is lyght. And there for the more Maystri hit is, to know and conquere fraunchis, that holdyth the meen wey, than folargyse or auarice, that bene of two boundys. And therfor yf thow wolte largely lyue, and aftyr the vertu of Fraunches, thre thyngis thow moste beholde. The fryste how moche thou mayste despende 32
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of thyn owyn propyr; The seconde take kepe in whate tyme hath yeftis most nede or defaute; the thyrde that ye can be viside, and see the Services and meritis of thy Subiectes.127 The king had to be both splendid, without being profligate, and frugal without being parsimonious, in order to achieve ‘the meen’. By definition the king should have no equal and should also be inherently resistant to such harmful outside influences both on account of the strength of his will and by virtue of his office. The anointing of his head at the coronation, which elevated him to quasi sacerdotal status, was also believed to lend thaumaturgical properties to his body.128 Hoccleve noted that a king’s office made him like God, as did his adherence to justice.129 Indeed a king’s divine nature was not simply supposed to be self-evident but also to be observable from his conduct. Trevisa stated: ‘And suche goddische virtue þat is som del aboue virtuous schal nameliche bien in kynges and in princes þat schulde be as it were half goddysch.’130 Although the king was a unique figure, standing at the apex of the feudal pyramid as the source of all authority, he was also the highest ranking noble in the land and thus shared many, if not most, of his properties with other men of this rank.131 Kings and nobles were part of a common culture which promoted military ability as its defining characteristic, framed within a gamut of chivalric virtue.132 Trevisa identifies ‘foure good maners of ientel men and noble’: ‘For first, þei ben magnanimi; þe seconde, magnifici, noble; þe thridde, þey lernen and [ben] sley3; þe ferþe, þei ben politik (wise) and gode to speke with.’133 After exploring these ‘foure good maners’ at greater length, Trevisa concludes that kings should also adopt these ‘and forsake euel maners, and be not proute noþer despice oþer men’.134 We have already seen that mirrors for princes were not restricted to kings but also viewed as generally relevant didactic material for those of knightly status. Nobility, like gender, was understood both as an innate essence present at birth (having been inherited from predecessors) and as a set of properties which required training both to understand and to master.135 Kingship belonged to the broader concept of lordship and individual nobles were expected to display exactly the same brand of rational, compassionate, yet forceful rule in governing their estates and retinues. The same standards were also applied to non-titled landowners of gentry status.136 Lords were thus a crucial component of the mechanisms of kingship because it was they who maintained the king’s laws and ensured good government in the localities; they also provided him with resources and troops to facilitate the pursuit of warfare.137 A king needed the nobility in order to rule, but this did not compromise his paramount position, precisely because it benefited their own authoritative place within the social hierarchy to sustain the king’s power.138 Serving the king placed them in a subordinate position to him, but this was a mark of status for the nobility due to the access to government and 33
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KINGSHIP AND MASCULINITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
political influence which it conferred upon them.139 Another reason why excellent virtue was so important to ideologies of kingship was that a king’s exemplary display of this served to explain and justify the dominance which he exercised over his nobles. Trevisa stated that: ‘þe more grete prince a man is, þe more he schal passe oþer in worthines and in dignite of lyf and in quantite of godenese.’140 So while the king was expected to be like his nobles (and his nobles like the king), he should be better than them at the same time. Nor was the king’s virtuous example deemed relevant exclusively to the nobility and other landowners. The fifteenth-century Middle English translation of Alain Chartier’s Le traité de l’esperance (The Treatise of Hope) claimed that: ‘ … the kynge is the booke of the people wherein their shulde lerne to lyve and amende their maners. But and the originall be corrupt thane by the copyes untrewely wretyn.’141 Trevisa says:
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For theigh this book be ityltled of the lore of princes, Ȝut al the puple schal be itauȜt þerby; and theigh nouȜt eveuriche man may be kyng oþer prince, Ȝit eueriche man schulde desire besiliche to make himself worthi to be a kyng oþer a prince … For kyngs and princes schulde by good so þat eueriche of here sugettes miȜte take ensample of lyuynge and knowe his owne defaute seyenge þe parfitnesse and þe lyuynge of þe prince.142 Some of the king’s example is generic moral stuff which bears a resemblance to the ideal Christian deportment represented in contemporary pastoral literature, which also drew on the four cardinal virtues.143 But there are aspects of kingly conduct that would not be appropriate to every man, and much of what the mirrors contain is clearly status specific. It assumes an audience of men who would have (at the least) households, families and servants to govern.144 In fact the social identity outlined for a king overlaps substantially with the notion of ‘manhood’ discussed earlier, understood as a status specific phase in the lifecycle. The king becomes the model of a type of masculine identity that Neal identifies as ‘husbandry’, which entailed being both an actual husband, and also an effective manager, and was thoroughly imbued by ideals of moderation and self-mastery.145 A king’s virtue was thus presented as virtus in a gender-specific sense. The relational stratification of the king from those below him, which assumes that they will share core elements of a common discourse of conduct, bears a marked similarity to the concept of hegemonic masculinity, influentially articulated by R.W. Connell. This denotes the ‘culturally exalted’ and socially endorsed status of a form of masculinity usually embodied and practised by the most powerful men in any given context. It rests on the subordination both of women, and of other men whose masculinity is instead defined as subordinate, complicit or marginalized.146 Hegemonic masculinity derives its authority from resting on attributes which were not solely 34
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applicable to the social or political elite, but which were commonly admired by men drawn from a range of backgrounds, some of which attributes could potentially be within any man’s reach.147 Simon Yarrow has recently applied this framework to medieval kingship and adapted it as ‘iconic masculinity’: ‘[t]he term is meant to encapsulate the affective efforts of elite males to reproduce the likeness of a hegemonic position, and the role of the viewer in recognising, reading and responding to that likeness.’148 There is often a sense of competition among men surrounding the idea of hegemonic masculinity, but Kim M. Phillips emphasizes instead the importance of homosociability in maintaining distinctions between hegemonic and complicit forms of masculinity, with specific reference to the medieval English sumptuary laws.149 She focuses on the knights of the Commons to argue that ‘[i]t was not being “a Man” which mattered so much as expressing legitimate claims to a place in the hierarchy of men.’150 Thus we can observe nobles and others adopting positions of complicit masculinity in relation both to the king’s hegemonic performance, and to each other. But in order for this system to work it required the king to be observably and palpably dominant, so as to maintain those beneath him in a productive pecking order.151 Most of the evidence that we have about late medieval English kingship and ‘the role of the viewer’ as described by Yarrow inevitably gives a clearer picture of the readings and responses of literate, educated people, and those who played some direct role in political society. But the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are often discussed as a period which saw the broadening out of political society and the growing significance of a king being seen to consider and respond to public opinion.152 As already discussed, the basic tenets of kingship were well known, especially the assumption that the king was a capable warrior who both embodied and represented the nation, governing for the good of his subjects. Attitudes towards individual kings were largely shaped by the experience of his government in their own lives and localities. They drew a particular connection between good, strong kingship and the maintenance of justice, to judge by their willingness to complain when they saw that it was not being administered fairly.153 They also drew conclusions from what they saw of a king’s government about his manliness, using contemporary standards of manhood to criticize particular aspects of his rule.154 A king had to be ‘verrey kyng in ded and nouȜt onlich in name’, as Trevisa put it, and this necessitated that he also be a man not just in name, but in his actions.155 This reveals an understanding of both kingship and manhood as a performance to be witnessed and assessed.156 Achieving the correct performance was not just a matter of individual accomplishments, but also of circumstances and choices. The king’s handling of these affected the ways in which his actions and essential character would be understood and represented, both at the time and in retrospect. This leads us on to a central interpretive issue raised above in relation to gender, but which concerns historians both of gender and of politics: how 35
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best to retrieve and assess the individual subjectivity of a historical subject.157 We know a great deal about powerful medieval men and what they did, far more than we do about any other class of person in this period. But drawing conclusions about why they took certain decisions or acted in certain ways, let alone issues of self-perception and its role in determining their conduct, remains a difficult undertaking.158 We can gain an impression of a king’s character by extrapolating from his apparent interests and priorities, as well as from his actions. But accounts of kings in this period were rarely written by those who knew them personally and are therefore usually better evidence for how kings appeared and were judged, than for what kings themselves actually thought or felt on any given occasion. Their representation was affected not just by the views of the writer and his social and intellectual milieu, but also by the nature of the genre/discourse in which he wrote.159 The attitudes informing these accounts (including attitudes towards gender) were real, but to what extent these narratives convey an ‘accurate’ depiction of individual kings is debatable in individual instances. Addressing this issue necessitates a certain degree of informed and indeed imaginative speculation. In the next chapter I shall pursue these issues in more detail with respect to my two chief subjects: Henry V and his son Henry VI.
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Notes 1 It is well beyond my scope to provide a detailed account of the nature of English government and political society in this period, but comprehensive surveys can be found in the various studies I reference in this chapter. Particularly useful as starting point for those unfamiliar with the ideas, institutions and individuals involved is Gerald Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). 2 W.M. Ormrod, Political Life in Medieval England, 1300–1450 (Houndmills: St Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 61. 3 Watts, pp. 9, 23. 4 Ibid., pp. 14–15. 5 Ibid., pp. 13–80 (p. 53). 6 My discussion focuses on literature, but for the role of visual imagery and material culture, see for example Paul Binski, ‘Hierarchies and orders in English royal images of power’ in Jeffrey Denton (ed.), Orders and Hierarchies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Buffalo, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), pp. 74–93; Richard Marks and Paul Williamson (eds), Gothic: Art For England 1400–1547 (London: Victoria & Albert Publications, 2003), pp. 26–45, 142–233. 7 For detailed discussion of the genre and its dissemination in later medieval England: Jean-Philippe Genet (ed.), Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977); Richard Firth Green, Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages (Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1980), pp. 135–67; Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), pp. 86–106; Nicholas Orme, Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London and Ronceverte: The Hambledon Press, 1989), pp. 153–75; Scott McKendrick,
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John Lowden and Kathleen Doyle (eds), Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), pp. 226–79. Giles is also known by the Latin and Italian versions of his name Ægidius Romanus, Egidio Colonna. See Charles Briggs, Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275–c. 1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) for the work’s composition and subsequent impact; see also Stephen H. Rigby, ‘Aristotle for aristocrats and poets: Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum as theodicy of privilege’, The Chaucer Review 46 (2012), 259–313. Secreta Secretorum; Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions, (ed.) M. A. Manzalaoui, Early English Text Society original series, 276 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). John Gower drew on this for book 7 of his Confessio Amantis; John Gower, Confessio Amantis, vol. 3, (ed.) Russell Peck with Latin translations by Andrew Galloway (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004) available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/cav3b7fr.htm, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. Christopher Allmand, The De Re Militari of Vegetius: The Reception, Transmission and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) for detailed discussion of the use and influence of this text; pp. 185–93 for translations made in England. Catherine Nall, Reading and War in Fifteenth-Century England: From Lydgate to Malory (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012), pp. 11–47. Hoccleve, Regiment; see the works cited in note 7 above for details of other works written for individual royals, also Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 6–13. Works written for Henry VI will be discussed later. Leopold G. Wickham Legg (ed.), English Coronation Records (London: Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd, 1901), p. 116. This quotation comes from the Liber Regalis, written for Edward II in 1308 and then expanded later in the century, possibly for the coronation of Anne of Bohemia. This is essentially the version used in the fifteenth century, see Laynesmith, pp. 97–98; Paul Binski, ‘The Liber Regalis: its date and European context’ in D. Gordon et al. (eds), The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1997), pp. 233–46. Helen Nicholson, Medieval Warfare (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillian, 2004), pp. 13–21. Orme, Education and Society, p. 156. In addition to works already cited see V.J. Scattergood and J.W. Sherborne (eds), English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983); Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 35–40; Raluca Radulescu, ‘Literature’ and Deborah Youngs, ‘Cultural networks’ both in Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove (eds), Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 100–118, 119–33; Merridee L. Bailey, Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, c. 1400–1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012). Viscount Dillon and W.H. St John Hope, ‘An inventory of the goods and chattels belonging to Thomas, duke of Gloucester and seized in his castle at Pleshy, co. Essex, 21 Rich. II (1397); with their values, as shown in the escheator’s accounts’, Archaeological Journal 54 (1897), 275–308. The inventory notes that he also owned a number of other works which were not listed individually. It was made following Thomas’ arrest on a charge of treason against Richard II. His wife Eleanor was a member of the de Bohun family who were noted patrons of manuscript production over several generations. Her sister Mary was the mother of Henry IV’s children. Ibid., pp. 300–3 for the full list of books, which also includes a number of devotional works and saints’ lives. The Roman de la Rose is now British Library, Royal 19 B. xiii, the romance of Alexander is now British Library, Royal 10 D. i and British Library, Royal 20 D. iv may be the Lancelot du Lac which he owned, see McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 368–69, 288–89, 373. Dillon and St John Hope, ‘An inventory’, p. 288.
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20 J.E. Krochalis, ‘The books and reading of Henry V and his circle’, Chaucer Review 23 (1988), 50–77 (63). 21 Ibid., p. 65, Krochalis notes the significance of Henry having borrowed this book, rather than simply owning it, as indicative of active interest on his part, p. 69. 22 Ibid., p. 63. 23 Alessandra Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (Leiden: Brill, 2004), especially pp. 153–258. 24 Ibid., p. 165. 25 Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). While focusing on the rituals for making queens, many of Laynesmith’s observations on the creation, performance and reception of such ceremonials are conceptually relevant to an understanding of kingship too, Laynesmith, pp. 72–130 (esp. pp. 72–73, p. 82, p. 129). 26 See below, pp. 144, 173. 27 Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press), pp. 121–24. For an example of their appearance see the pageant which welcomed Margaret of Anjou to Coventry in 1456, discussed, pp. 238–39. 28 Brut, good kings, pp. 69, 111, 113, 178; bad kings, pp. 113, 124, 138, 166–67. 29 Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies by Johannes Mirkus (John Mirk), (ed.) Theodor Erbe, Early English Text Society extra series 96 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1905), p. 150. 30 For the Legenda Aurea original of the passage cited in the previous note Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints 2, (trans.) William Granger Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 279–80. 31 Martyn F. Wakelin, ‘The manuscripts of John Mirk’s Festial’, Leeds Studies in English new series 1 (1967), 93–118. 32 Festial, pp. 150–51. 33 André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, (trans.) Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 158–67 on the wider phenomenon of royal male sanctity, which generally (although not always) involved devotion to a murdered ruler. Vauchez notes that north-west Europe showed a distinctive interest in high status saints who had held positions of worldly power and contrasts this with the Mediterranean preference for a less aristocratic type of saint (pp. 158–207, esp. pp. 166–67, p. 183). Henry VI was to join these ranks himself. 34 Edina Bozoky, ‘The sanctity and canonization of Edward the Confessor’ in Richard Mortimer (ed.), Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 173–86; Anthony Bale (ed.), St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint (York: York Medieval Press, 2009). 35 For the origins of the Anglo-Saxon cults Susan J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); for later medieval devotion to them Frances Arnold-Foster, Studies in Church Dedications. Volume 2 (London: Skeffington & Son, 1899), pp. 300–48. For the Scandinavian king saints, Edvard Bull, ‘The cultus of Norwegian saints in England and Scotland’, Saga-book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, 8 (1913–14), 135–48; Bruce Dickens, ‘The cult of S. Olave in the British Isles’, Saga-book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, 12 (1945), 53–80. The rood screen at Catfield in Norfolk is decorated with paintings of sixteen kings and/or king saints, among them Edmund, Edward and Olaf, possibly also Oswin and Æthelstan. Julian M. Luxford, ‘Kingship and kinship: the roodscreen at Catfield (Norfolk) and its rich relations’, is forthcoming and I am grateful to him for sharing with me his thoughts on the identities of the kings. 36 Alkmund’s relics were housed at Derby from the twelfth century, but had originally been buried at Lilleshall, as Mirk recounts (Festial, p. 244). A sarcophagus identified as having once been Alkmund’s is still on display in the town’s museum.
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37 Festial, p. 242. 38 Ibid., pp. 242–43. 39 This episode also appears in the late thirteenth-century South English Legendary life of St Oswald of Worcester (who was Oda’s nephew). It derives from the life of Oswald also written by Eadmer. For a fifteenth-century rendition of the South English Legendary account in Middle English prose, see Richard Hamer and Vida Russell (eds), Supplementary Lives in Some Manuscripts of the ‘Gilte Legende’, Early English Text Society original series, 315 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 175. 40 Sarah Foot, Æthelstan, The First King of England (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2012, Kindle Edition) ‘Epilogue: memory, oblivion, commemoration’, for his later medieval reputation. 41 Lynn Staley, ‘Gower, Richard II, Henry of Derby, and the business of making culture’, Speculum 75 (2000), 68–96. 42 Middle English Sermons edited from British Museum MS. Royal 18 B. xxiii, (ed.) Woodburn O. Ross, Early English Text Society original series, 209 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 224. 43 E.g. George Ashby, ‘Active Policy of a Prince’, in George Ashby’s Poems, (ed.) Mary Bateson, Early English Text Society Extra Series, 76 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1899), p. 18, ll. 155–61; p. 19, ll. 204–10. 44 The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 53. I will refer to this throughout as Trevisa’s, though it is a translation. Trevisa’s version was probably written between 1399 and 1402 and only survives in a single manuscript (see pp. x–xi), but I use it in lieu of a modern critical edition of the Latin original. 45 ‘Active Policy of a Prince’, p. 225, ll. 232–36. 46 Secreta Secretorum, pp. 1–39 for the first, pp. 41–118 for the second. 47 Ibid., pp. 119–248 for Ormond’s version, for the reference to Richard II, pp. 136–37; for Scrope, pp. 133–34. Ormond commissioned this text after he was appointed lieutenant of Ireland by Henry V; for more on him see below, p. 49. 48 Watts, pp. 51–52. Hoccleve and Ashby both had experience of the mechanisms of royal government. Hoccleve worked in the office of the privy seal, Ashby worked in the office of the royal signet; J.A. Burrow, ‘Hoccleve, Thomas (c. 1367–1426)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13415, accessed 27 Jan 2013]; John Scattergood, ‘Ashby, George (b. Before 1385?, d. 1475)’, ODNB, online edn, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/741, accessed 27 Jan. 2013]. 49 Watts, p. 30. 50 Ibid., pp. 23–30. 51 Michael Hicks, English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 24. 52 Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, (trans.) Samuel E. Thorne, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 19. 53 Sir John Fortescue On the Laws and Governance of England, (ed.) Shelley Lockwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 4. 54 Legg, English Coronation Records, pp. 119–21. 55 Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London and New York: Hambledon & London, 2004), p. 111; see also Karras’ discussion of the centrality of combat and violence to knightly masculinity, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Later Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); pp. 20–66. 56 The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 244. 57 Hoccleve, Regiment, ll. 3940–41. 58 On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum, (ed.) M.C. Seymour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 317.
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The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 244. Ibid., p. 245. Secreta Secretorum, p. 121. William Worcester, The Boke of Noblesse, ed. John Gough Nichols (originally published 1860; this edition New York: Burt Franklin, 1972), p. 65. This text was later revised and addressed to Edward IV in the 1470s to encourage him to pursue war with France. C.T. Allmand and M.H. Keen, ‘History and the literature of war: the Boke of Noblesse of William Worcester’ in C.T. Allmand (ed.), War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), pp. 92–105. This passage is also discussed by Karras, From Boys to Men, p. 40, with reference to some comparative literary examples. E.g. Michael Bennett, ‘Military masculinity in England and Northern France c.1050c.1225’ in Dawn M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1999), pp. 71–88 (pp. 86–87). Note that ‘hardy’ did not inevitably have negative connotations; compare the use made of the term in On the Properties of Things quoted above, p. 6. The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 72. See also Secreta Secretorum, pp. 110–12; Christopher Allmand, The De Re Militari of Vegetius, pp. 254–61 for the importance of reason to warfare. Secreta Secretorum, p. 121. See also Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, pp. 304–5. ‘Active Policy of a Prince’, p. 39, l. 847. Katherine J. Lewis, ‘Male saints and devotional masculinity in late medieval England’, Gender & History 24 (2012), 112–33. The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 8. Ibid., p. 11. There are more individual versions of the life of St Katherine than of any other saint in late medieval England (at least fourteen) and one prose version survives in over twenty manuscripts, see Katherine J. Lewis, The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), pp. 9–25 for details. Gilte Legende 2, (ed.) Richard Hamer with the assistance of Vida Russell, Early English Text Society original series 328 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 897. For further discussion of Katherine’s masculine potential see Karen A. Winstead, ‘St Katherine’s hair’ in Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 171–200. The Governance of Kings and Princes, pp. 58–60; Secreta Secretorum, p. 208. Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, p. 306. For a depiction of the body politic in a manuscript of the life of St Edmund of East Anglia written by Lydgate and presented to Henry VI see Harley 2278, f. 34 [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx? ref=Harley_MS_2278 available online, accessed 27 Jan. 2013]. Translated and quoted by Faye Getz, Medicine in the English Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 63. For sex in moderation as having health benefits, Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 273–74. Secreta Secretorum, p. 14. See also pp. 189–90 where it is noted that Vegetius warned knights against bodily pleasures. For similar comment The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 202 The Governance of Kings and Princes, pp. 139, 58. Hoccleve, Regiment, ll. 3627–3899 for chastity as a vital quality in a king. Secreta Secretorum, pp. 10–11. The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 17. Secreta Secretorum, p. 136. See also Nicholas Scott Baker, ‘Power and passion in sixteenthcentury Florence: the sexual and political reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de’Medici’,
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Journal of the History of Sexuality 19 (2010)’, 432–47 for the same lines of cause and effect having been drawn about Alessandro de’Medici. Secreta Secretorum, p. 20; this belongs to a much wider anti-feminist tradition, see Alcuin Blamires, Woman Defamed and Woman Defended (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). The Governance of Kings and Princes, pp. 206–8. Discussed further below, p. 234. The Governance of Kings and Princes, pp. 207–8. Ibid., p. 73. Ibid., p. 197. Ibid., p. 198; these were signal qualities of the Virgin Mary, see for example Mirk’s sermon on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin which presents her as the exemplar of all maidenly qualities, Festial, pp. 221–35; see Kim M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270–1540 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 43–51 for maidenhood conceptualized as the perfect age of a woman’s life. Hoccleve, Regiment, ll. 3384–88. Ibid., ll. 3312–58. Ibid., ll. 3259–3627. Secreta Secretorum, pp. 180–81. Laynesmith, pp. 220–61 for the significance of a queen’s actions and appearance within court and household to her husband’s exercise of kingship; Sharon Farmer, ‘Persuasive voices: clerical images of medieval wives’, Speculum 61 (1986), 517–43 for understandings of a wife’s influence as beneficial. The Minor Poems of John Lydgate: Part 2. Secular Poems, (ed.) Henry Noble MacCracken, Early English Text Society original series, 192 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 629, ll. 113–14. Secreta Secretorum, p. 181. The Governance of Kings and Princes, pp. 198–99. See Neal, p. 47 for ‘dynamic’ as better model than ‘opposition’. For this reason I approach male gender identity in terms of versions of masculinity, rather than multiple masculinities, as does Neal, p. 244. Christine Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 88; Watts, pp. 30–31. Legg, English Coronation Records, pp. 81–130 for the full Liber Regalis coronation ritual; see also Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, p. 304 for summary of the oath. Secreta Secretorum, p. 17. For further discussion see e.g. A.J. Pollard, Late Medieval England, 1399–1509 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2000), pp. 232–33; Hicks, English Political Culture, pp. 25–27, pp. 36–40. Ormrod, Political Life, p. 77. Secreta Secretorum, pp. 33–34. Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 93–135 for the position and significance of the nobility. Ibid., pp. 74–80; note that its status and functions were not fixed, nor was its personnel. These changed and adapted in response to circumstance and also depended on the character and capability of individual kings. PPC records the range of council business and the king’s involvement in it across the period. Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 66–74 for an introduction to the nature and function of Parliament in this period. I am very grateful to Mark Ormrod for helping me to sharpen my understanding of these issues. The parliament rolls preserve details both of the fashion in which the king’s policies were publicly presented to the Lords and Commons, and their formal responses to these;
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see the introduction to PROME, which also discusses other sources for the history of parliament in this period, chiefly petitions. Ormrod, Political Life, pp. 30–37 for more detailed discussion. Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 66–67. Ibid., pp. 65–66. Discussed below, pp. 133–34. Ormrod, Political Society, pp. 78–82. Harriss discusses specific royal councils as ‘surrogates for kingship, not challenges to it’, Shaping the Nation, p. 80. Watts, p. 16; Carpenter states that the essential power of the crown led to the depositions because there was no constitutional way of removing a king, even if he was terrible, Wars of the Roses, pp. 64–65; although see Pollard, Late Medieval England, p. 235 on the ‘severe restrictions placed upon the actual exercise of royal power by the social and political structure of England’. Watts, pp. 26–29, see also p. 364; Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 75–76. For discussion of this context as ‘at once [the king’s] domestic environment, the arena for the display of his majesty, and the channel for his political will’ see Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 14–40 (p. 14). Ibid., pp. 74–75. Hence the council’s concern about the counsel which the young Henry VI was receiving, see below, pp. 144–46. E.g. Secreta Secretorum, p. 108. The chapter on the importance of consulting subjects is entitled ‘To gouerne þi self ’. Watts, pp. 29–30. Quoted above, p. 1. See below, pp. 214–15. Secreta Secretorum, p. 15. With Piers Gaveston and Alice Perrers there was an additional layer of sex/sexual dominance in their representation which is not observable in the representation of Henry VI’s evil councillors, although Margaret of Anjou’s morality was attacked, see below, pp. 232–37. Ormrod, Political Life, p. 65, p. 72. Secreta Secretorum, p. 130. The classic account is Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, (trans.) J.E. Anderson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973). Hoccleve, Regiment, ll. 2409, 2521. The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 45. Harriss, Shaping the Nation, for discussion of the nobility, pp. 93–135. Craig Taylor’s important new study, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France During the Hundred Years War (forthcoming), explores this culture in depth. He emphasizes that the constituent elements of chivalry were not a simple set of agreed rules (as they have often been treated), but the subject of considerable contemporary debate, which has ramifications for the construction and representation of medieval masculinity. I am grateful to him for giving me a copy of this work prior to its publication. The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 150. Ibid., p. 152. Also discussed by Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 34–36. The idea of nobility as something which could be learned and performed gave rise to anxieties and sumptuary legislation attempting to ‘fix’ social stratification and make it immediately observable, see Kim M. Phillips, ‘Masculinities and the medieval English sumptuary laws’, Gender & History 19 (2007), 22–42. Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 135–86. For an introduction to the gentry, Radulescu and Truelove, Gentry Culture.
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137 Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 187–206 for the local polity and lords’ involvement. 138 Carpenter, Wars of the Roses, pp. 34–39 for more detailed discussion of this point. 139 As noted by Hicks as part of a wider discussion of the concept of service in relation to politics, English Political Culture, pp. 19–21. See also Neal, p. 23 for the usefulness of service as a means of understanding relationships between different types of men. 140 The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 17. 141 Fifteenth-Century Translations of Alain Chartier’s Le traité de l’esperance and Le quatrilogue invectif, (ed.) Margaret S. Blayney, Early English Text Society original series, 270 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 38. 142 The Governance of Kings and Princes, pp. 7, 110. 143 E.g. The Lay Folks Catechism, (eds) Thomas Frederick Simmons and Henry Edward Nolloth, Early English Text Society original series, 118 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1901), pp. 84–86. 144 E.g. Trevisa’s discussion of the ideal household forms part I of Book II, The Governance of Kings and Princes, pp. 159–208, and part II is about raising children and the responsibilities of a father, pp. 209–49. 145 Neal, p. 58. See also Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 3 for kingship being expressed in terms of paternal rule by analogy with the household. 146 R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). pp. 76–81. 147 John Tosh, ‘Gentlemanly politeness and manly simplicity in Victorian England’ in his Manliness and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman; 2005), pp. 83–102 (esp. p. 95), although this did not entail the ‘democratic implications’ which he traces within a later period. Kingship as a brand of hegemonic masculinity is something Fletcher discusses too, Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics 1377–99 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 280. 148 Simon Yarrow, ‘Masculinity as a world historical category’ in John H. Arnold and Sean Brady (eds), What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 114–38 (p. 122). 149 Phillips, ‘Masculinities and the medieval English sumptuary laws’, especially p. 24 where she argues against Karras’ emphasis on medieval masculinity as inevitably entailing ‘proving oneself superior to other men’ (Karras, From Boys to Men, p. 10). 150 Ibid., p. 33, where she also concludes: ‘[p]erhaps we can look forward to the day when all the institutions of medieval government are viewed not in terms of status, but of struggle and alliance between men.’ 151 W.M. Aird, ‘Frustrated masculinity: the relationship between William the Conqueror and his eldest son’ in Dawn M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1999), pp. 39–55, interprets the father and son conflict in terms of William’s hegemonic masculinity and Robert’s challenges to its dominance. 152 E.g. Ormrod’s survey of late medieval politics takes as its primary purpose an assessment of the ways in which politics impinged on people’s lives and their responses to this, Political Society, p. 2 and passim. See also I.M.W. Harvey, ‘Was there Popular Politics in Fifteenth-Century England?’ in R.H. Britnell and A.J. Pollard (eds), The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), pp. 155–74; Christopher Dyer, ‘The political life of the fifteenth-century English village’, and John Watts, ‘The pressure of the public on later medieval politics’, both in Linda Clark and Christine Carpenter (eds), The Fifteenth Century, IV: Political Culture in Late Medieval Britain (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), pp. 135–58, 159–80; Alexander L. Kaufman, The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), esp. pp. 19–60 for discussion of the differing ways in which the motives and events of Cade’s rebellion were represented by contemporary chroniclers. For consideration of these
43
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153 154 155 156
157
158
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159
issues within a wider chronological and geographical context see John Watts, The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). For example the cases of subversive speech against Henry VI, discussed below, pp. 161–62, 164–65. Christopher Fletcher, ‘Manhood, kingship and the public in late medieval England’, Edad Media Revista de Historia 13 (2012), 123–42. The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 49. W.M. Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2011), ‘If medieval monarchy was a bureaucratic and political institution it was also very obviously a social performance’, p. 120; see also the discussion of Edward III’s use of political theatre, pp. 601–02. This is a central concern for Neal, see his concluding remarks on pp. 245–47, and his subsequent reflections on the issue with respect to clerical masculinity more specifically, ‘What can historians do with clerical masculinity? Lessons from medieval Europe’, in Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (ed.), Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 16–36 (esp. pp. 29–33); from the political perspective e.g. Watts, p. 53; Carpenter, Wars of the Roses, pp. 118, 267; Hicks, English Political Culture, pp. 4–7. I have found the methodological ruminations offered by the following works particularly helpful in considering these issues: William M. Aird, Robert Curthose: Duke of Normandy (c. 1050–1134) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), pp. 1–12; Ormrod, Edward III, pp. 1–2, 598–603; Foot, Æthelstan, ‘Prologue: Writing a Medieval Life’. As discussed e.g. by Given-Wilson, Chronicles, esp. pp. 1–20; Mary-Rose McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in Writing (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2002), pp. 49–97.
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APPROACHING H ENRY V AND H ENRY VI
This study does not set out to present a comprehensive biography of either Henry V or Henry VI, or a detailed account of their reigns.1 Nor does it lay claim to the discovery of new evidence relating to either king; the sources upon which it draws have already been edited and many will be familiar to scholars of late medieval political history. They have been employed in previous studies to account for the nature of the kings’ rule and character. But they have not been systematically interpreted in terms of contemporary perceptions of masculinity and the bearing which these had both on the kings’ conduct and on contemporary assessments of their kingship.2 The ensuing chapters focus on events and issues which appeared to me to be most fruitful in such an undertaking, but their coverage is not intended to be exhaustive and there remain many other aspects of their lives and reigns which would benefit from more detailed analysis in gendered terms. Henry V and Henry VI have been treated as a pair because they provide such an instructive contrast. To conclude that Henry V performed both his kingship and manhood effectively and that this was at the heart of his success, while the exact opposite was true of Henry VI, hence his deposition, is hardly a revelation in itself. But we need to consider how and why father and son came to embody such contrary versions of masculinity. It is vital to acknowledge that their reputations as manly and unmanly were not simply the inevitable outcome of ‘natural’ qualities or proclivities, as they have so often been treated. These reputations and the actions which informed them also grew out of particular circumstances and were neither predestined nor inescapable. Were there more or less deliberate decisions being made about the particular complexion of their kingship in response to these circumstances, and if so did these stem from the kings themselves or from elsewhere? Or, given the nature of the sources, is it more accurate to say that certain interpretations were placed upon their manhood and its quality by contemporaries (and near contemporaries) in the knowledge of how decisions and events had played out? Certainly, we need to understand (as far as possible) the gender identities of father and son not just in retrospect as an end product, but on their own terms as a cumulative process, which could have led to different outcomes. 45
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APPROACHING HENRY V AND HENRY VI
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Henry V: mirror of manhood Henry V was not born to be king and the precise date of his birth is not known as a result, although a likely date is 16 September 1386.3 Henry became heir to the throne in 1399, following the deposition of Richard II and his father’s accession as Henry IV on 30 September.4 Now a prince, Henry spent much of the first decade of the 1400s on campaign in Wales and from 1409 to 1411 ruled England on behalf of Henry IV, due to the king’s ill health. Henry V became king on 20 March 1413 and his accession was received enthusiastically. Warfare was the defining element of Henry’s reign and personality. In August 1415 Henry led a campaign to France, having first crushed a Lollard rebellion led by Sir John Oldcastle, and a conspiracy known as the Southampton Plot which aimed to replace him with Edmund Mortimer, earl of March.5 Henry sought to regain land in France which had previously belonged to the English crown. He landed in Normandy and his first act was to capture Harfleur in September. Then while marching his army to the English-held port of Calais he scored an unexpected victory against French forces at the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October. This enabled him to secure domestic support for further action in France. He campaigned in Normandy from August 1417 and a succession of towns and their hinterlands fell to his control. The surrender of Rouen in January 1419 marked his effective conquest of Normandy. Over the next few months Henry pressed for a treaty with the French which would recognize his sovereign claims to lands in France. He also demanded the hand of Catherine de Valois, daughter of the French king Charles VI (who had been suffering periodic bouts of mental illness for decades). But the French would not agree to this, the Dauphin Charles (the future Charles VII) making overtures of friendship with John, duke of Burgundy in order to counter the threat of Henry and his armies, which were marching towards Paris in the summer. The murder of John of Burgundy on 10 September 1419, during a meeting with the Dauphin, ensured that John’s son, Philip, would throw in his lot with Henry. On 27 September Henry’s intention to take the throne of France was made public. After more negotiations an agreement between Henry and Charles VI was reached and ratified by the Treaty of Troyes on 20 May 1420. By the terms of this treaty Henry agreed to drop the title ‘King of France’ in return for recognition as both regent and heir to Charles VI. The son that he fathered on Catherine (whom he married on 2 June) would inherit the crowns both of England and France. But the disinherited Dauphin had supporters who did not accept this arrangement and fighting continued in France for the rest of Henry’s reign. Henry returned to England for the last time with his queen in February 1421, staying until June when he returned to France and a life on campaign, leaving the pregnant Catherine behind. Their son, the future Henry VI, was born on 6 December. The king spent seven months from October 1421 besieging Meaux, to the east of Paris, 46
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APPROACHING HENRY V AND HENRY VI
and loyal to the Dauphin. Shortly after its surrender in May 1422 Henry first displayed signs of illness, probably a form of dysentery. He died on 31 August in the castle of Vincennes near Paris, having made arrangements for the care and upbringing of his son, and for the rule of England until Henry VI was old enough to rule in person. Henry V is well established as one of the most successful and admirable of English medieval kings.6 The first full length scholarly biography of Henry was written by C.L. Kingsford and published in 1901.7 Kingsford claimed Henry as the greatest medieval English king, ‘who, through the splendour of his achievements, illumined with the rays of his glory the decline of the mediaeval world’.8 This sentiment had already been expressed influentially by William Stubbs in the final volume of his Constitutional History of England, published in 1878.9 In terms which owe their origins to Henry’s own policy of inculcating national identity and proud patriotism, he has frequently been discussed as the personification of a triumphal brand of Englishness and of quintessentially English manliness.10 Reaction to Henry has not always been entirely favourable however. J.H. Wylie and W.T. Waugh who between them wrote the three-volume The Reign of Henry the Fifth (published between 1914 and 1929) acknowledged his achievements but questioned their motivation, castigating him as ambitious, hypocritical and intolerant.11 Studies of Henry produced in the mid and later twentieth century were both positive and negative in tone.12 Some have gone so far as to claim that Henry should be condemned as a war criminal.13 As with any other aspects of his rule Henry’s actions must be assessed in relation to the values of his own time, not modern ones, as Stubbs pointed out.14 But, nonetheless, changing attitudes have made some historians less comfortable than their forebears about eulogizing a leader whose reputation rests so squarely upon waging war.15 The collection of essays edited by G.L. Harriss in 1985 considered Henry’s military activities as only one aspect of his rule.16 Between them, the contributors provided ample evidence that Henry’s achievements in France were predicated as much on his rule of England as on his actions on the battlefield. The volume’s shift in emphasis away from Henry’s military exploits onto his exercise of kingship more widely serves to confirm perceptions of him as a gifted and dedicated ruler who embodied contemporary ideals of kingship, thus supporting Harriss’ conclusion that Henry was indeed a great king.17 C.T. Allmand’s 1992 biography takes a similar approach, exploring the intricacies of Henry’s character and emphasizing that in addition to personal accomplishments and dedication, one of the chief reasons for his success as a king was the sharp awareness he displayed of what his subjects expected from him and the extent to which he was able to make his interests their interests.18 While noting that Henry had his limitations and blemishes John Matusiak nonetheless judges that his kingship was outstanding and emphasizes the significance of the heroic example which he set.19 Henry is often described as a somewhat charmless, even cold character 47
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who inspired admiration rather than affection.20 But Allmand notes that Henry made a powerful impression on those who worked and fought at his side: they clearly believed that he was exceptional.21 Shakespeare’s heroic version of Henry is not simply a posthumous fiction but was the fruit of almost two centuries of tradition which has its roots in Henry’s reign and conduct, and in the reminiscences of those who knew him. There is an unparalleled amount of surviving contemporary and near-contemporary biographical material describing the character and exploits of Henry V. No other English king enjoyed such popularity as literary subject matter in the Middle Ages. Antonia Gransden has suggested three reasons for this singularity: first that Henry was recognized as a hero in his own lifetime because of his successes in France; secondly that his austere piety and protection of the Church against heretical threats was well known; and thirdly that his life continued to serve propagandist purposes in encouraging further English support for military endeavours in France, even in the early sixteenth century.22 In these texts Henry’s manliness was frequently described and reiterated in terms derived from mirrors for princes, but it is important to consider why he was presented, in addition to how. The earliest biography, the Gesta Henrici Quinti (Deeds of Henry V), was written in 1417 by a royal chaplain who was present at the Battle of Agincourt.23 It places marked emphasis upon Henry’s piety and the righteousness of his cause in France, as proven by the spectacular success of the Agincourt campaign, which occupies the majority of the text. Although not explicitly commissioned by Henry, it is generally argued that this text constitutes a direct response to his needs as he renewed war with France in the summer of 1417.24 In reminding readers of the nature of Henry’s victory at Agincourt and the duplicitous disposition of the French it was apparently designed to encourage both moral and material support for the continued pursuit of Henry’s rights in France.25 The text’s depiction of Henry certainly suggests an individual who was well aware of the power and political utility of his self-image, and who had been constructing it carefully from the very beginning of his reign. In 1418 the Cluniac Thomas Elmham, who also seems to have served as chaplain to Henry V at some stage in his career, compiled the Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto (Metrical Book of Henry V) in verse.26 The Liber draws much of its contents from the Gesta Henrici Quinti but places far more emphasis on Henry’s actions against the Lollards. Elmham deliberately sought to make his text difficult to understand, employing a variety of cryptic devices such as acrostics, anagrams and chronograms, which suggests it was intended for an academic ecclesiastical audience.27 Elmham claimed that part of the reason he had rendered Henry’s life in such obscure terms, comprehensible only to the educated, was that the king’s humility made it difficult to praise him openly.28 This contention about Henry’s reluctance to be a biographical subject does not entirely square with the fact that Elmham claimed he had 48
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already written a now lost life of Henry in prose.29 But it does suggest a king who was acutely aware of the impact of his public persona. This is further attested to by a group of lives which were written after Henry’s death but which are associated with men who knew him. Perhaps best known is Titus Livius Frulovisi’s Vita Henrici Quinti (Life of Henry V), written in around 1437 for Henry’s youngest and by now only surviving brother, Humfrey, duke of Gloucester.30 The text has traditionally been viewed as based, to some extent, on Gloucester’s own reminiscences and intended as support for his plans to renew the war with France.31 In addition it is addressed to Henry’s son, Henry VI, whose minority officially ended at this time. About 75 years later, sometime between June 1513 and autumn 1514, the same life was translated into English and Henry V was offered as a role model to Henry VIII.32 This version is not simply a translation of Frulovisi’s text though, as the anonymous translator states that he also drew upon Enguerrand de Monstrelet’s chronicle (which was presented to Philip, duke of Burgundy in 1447) and the Brut chronicle.33 Of most interest is his citation of ‘the report’ of ‘the honnorable Erle of Ormond’.34 James Butler, fourth earl of Ormond was a ward of Henry V’s next oldest brother Thomas, duke of Clarence, from 1405, serving under him in France in 1412–13 and 1418–19.35 If Ormond had his own account written it does not survive, but there is evidence of his scholarly interest in history and heraldry, and, as we have seen, he was patron of James Yong’s translation of the Secreta Secretorum, commissioned in celebration of his appointment as lieutenant of Ireland in 1420.36 This lends weight to the possibility that he had arranged for the recording of his memories of Henry V and his experiences in France, sometime before his death in 1452 (although the final compilation itself was made after 1455, as it refers to the canonization of Vincent Ferrer, which happened in this year).37 The author of the final text in this group, the Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti (Life and Deeds of Henry V), is anonymous but known as Pseudo-Elmham (having been wrongly assigned to Thomas Elmham), and there are two extant versions of the text.38 The date of composition of the earlier recension is not known, but it is addressed to Walter, Lord Hungerford and states that he was its commissioner.39 Hungerford was close to Henry V from the beginning of his reign, fighting at Agincourt and being appointed a royal councillor and steward of the king’s household in 1417. He was at Henry’s side on campaign for the rest of the reign, and one of those who witnessed the king’s death. As a mark of Henry’s regard and trust, Hungerford was appointed joint guardian of Henry VI and played an important part in the regency government up to the early 1440s, when he semi-retired, dying in 1449. It seems likely that at least some of the substance of this text derived from Hungerford’s own account of events. He was one of those responsible for building Henry V’s chantry chapel in the late 1430s, which may have inspired the life’s commission as part of this project to commemorate the 49
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king.40 David Rundle convincingly argues that Hungerford’s life of Henry was used by Frulovisi in composing his own version, thus reversing the relationship posited by Kingsford between the two, which assumed that Frulovisi’s longer account must have been the original.41 This problematizes the idea of Frulovisi’s life as being essentially Gloucester’s own account. Rundle also questions the notion that it was intended as war propaganda and contends that instead, Frulovisi gave Gloucester the opportunity to show that he approved the version of Henry described by Pseudo-Elmham at Hungerford’s behest.42 Frulovisi’s life presents Henry V as a model to Henry VI, thus forming part of the extensive body of didactic literature aimed at the young king. Hungerford, as one of Henry VI’s guardians, almost certainly advised Henry VI to imitate his father as well. The second recension of Pseudo-Elmham was dedicated between 1445 and 1446 to John Somerset, who was part of Henry VI’s household from 1427 to the early 1450s.43 He served as Henry VI’s physician but with responsibility for more than the young king’s health, being sometimes referred to as ‘the king’s master’ and, again, it seems likely that Henry V was among the lessons.44 Rundle sees in these lives an attempt to prolong the glories of Henry V’s achievements even as these were beginning to erode.45 I shall suggest that they also testify to serious concerns about Henry VI’s development and that their depiction of Henry V was informed by these. The biographies of Henry are often approached (albeit cautiously) as sources which do preserve something of the real Henry, and I will treat them in this fashion too. They are certainly good evidence for how Henry was commemorated and of the sense which was made of his actions and conduct in retrospect. They testify to the ‘real’ version of Henry which many wanted to preserve and disseminate in the decades after his death. Cumulatively they present a portrait of which Henry would have approved because it intertwined him so inextricably with ideals of both kingship and masculinity. He doubtless would also have approved the fact that the narrative which the lives establish disguises the extent to which his manly reputation was also dependent upon factors beyond his control, and thus had the potential to backfire had he lived longer. The lives’ uniformity of approach in identifying Henry as the epitome of ideal kingship is significant and shared by many other texts too.46 This status is apparent in depictions of him which achieved a much wider circulation than the Latin lives so far discussed; namely those contained in the various versions of the Brut and related chronicles. There is, therefore, an abundance of evidence which can help us to understand Henry as both man and king. But to date Henry’s gender identity has not been seriously interrogated, beyond the implicit sense of him as a ‘man’s man’, who was most comfortable in a military setting, surrounded by other warrior types. Indeed, women play little part in his reign, and Henry had no queen until 1420. This also helps to account for the fact that his kingship has remained outside the compass of gender-aware scholarship. 50
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Ironically, it seems that Henry’s masculinity is invisible precisely because it is so self-evident. There was a seamless continuity between his performance of both kingship and manhood and contemporary formulations of these in exemplary terms. For example, in the prologue to his Troy Book, commissioned by Henry while Prince of Wales in October 1412, John Lydgate explains that Henry requested the translation: By cause he hath joye and gret deynté To rede in bokys of antiquité, To fyn only vertu for to swe Be example of hem and also for to eschewe The cursyd vice of slouthe and ydelnesse. So he enjoyeth in vertuous besynesse In al that longeth to manhood, dar I seyn; He besyeth evere, and therto is so fayn To hawnte his body in pleies marcyal Thorugh excersice t’exclude slouthe at al, After the doctrine of Vygecius: Thus is he bothe manful and vertuous, More passyngly than I can of hym write. I wante connyng his highe renoun t’endite, So moche of manhood men may in hym sen.47
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Many of Lydgate’s compositions present Henry as a model of manhood, imbued with the full panoply of manly accomplishments. The idea of Henry occupying the pinnacle of masculine excellence has also permeated more recent assessments. Stubbs stated that ‘he stands forth as the typical medieval hero’ and Kingsford took this as the subtitle of his biography of Henry, writing: [h]e stands in history as the true type of the mediaeval hero-king: stately in bearing and prudent in speech, valiant in arms and provident in counsel, a lover of religion and a great justice. No ruler had ever a higher conception of his rights or was more stern in their enforcement.48 K.B. McFarlane pronounced: ‘Take him all round and he was, I think, the greatest man that ever ruled England.’49 Henry has often been seen to possess ‘true’ manliness which, implicitly, was inherent to him; a product of his ‘natural’ qualities. The fact that no other succeeding English king could match him serves to compound this impression.50 Henry’s manliness therefore does not need to be explained or investigated – it just was (and, indeed, is). However, in Lydgate’s account Henry’s manhood, even in its bodily aspect, is presented as the product of study and exercise. It is something, therefore, 51
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APPROACHING HENRY V AND HENRY VI
which he has achieved and continues to maintain, not something which he simply ‘has’. As Rundle puts it, Henry was an ‘intoxicating blend of testosterone and piety’, which nicely conveys an understanding of Henry’s persona as a combination of biology and conduct.51 Clearly aspects of Henry’s achievements were rooted in certain innate physical characteristics and abilities, some of which were inherited. He was of above average height, slender, yet strong and could allegedly run fast enough to catch a deer.52 He was also the son of Henry IV, who had himself been a renowned warrior in his youth, and who fathered four sons noted for their martial accomplishments and personal courage. Although one was not simply born a gifted military leader, regardless of genealogy, and Henry’s early experiences in Wales were a crucial apprenticeship. Any approach to Henry’s character necessitates consideration of the dynamic between his actions and the idealized framework in which they were presented. Was it simply a case of this framework being applied retrospectively by authors in order to make sense of his achievements and to offer him as a model? Certainly, having derived much of its power from notions of ideal kingship Henry’s image then fed back into this rhetoric, as he became the benchmark against which the character and accomplishments of later medieval English kings were measured. This process begs questions about the relationship between ‘myth’ and ‘reality’ which has concerned many studies of Henry. Is it possible, or even desirable, to strip away the didactic hyperbole surrounding his representation?53 Would that actually reveal the ‘real’ Henry V, when it seems that he also presented himself in these terms? It is impossible to gauge the extent to which this self-presentation was knowing and deliberate, or more like second nature (as a result of having internalized these norms of conduct as a youth perhaps). Trying to work out what Henry’s manhood meant to him is akin to interpretive issues posed by proper interpretation of his piety. For some Henry was a genuinely, even strikingly pious individual, as witness his constant emphasis on God’s intervention as the source of English victories, his attitude to heresy and the distinctive devotional interests he developed, made manifest in the foundations he sponsored. Others have criticized his piety as hypocritical and counterfeit, and see it as just one aspect of his duplicitous attempts to pass off naked ambition in France as God’s work.54 But we cannot accurately assess the authenticity of Henry’s beliefs and personal value judgements as to the rectitude, or otherwise, of his actions in France are beside the point. What really matters is how these were understood and represented at the time. Moreover, identifying his piety as either ‘real’ (something that was a ‘natural’ part of him) or as deliberate fabrication to buttress his policies is a redundant division. Henry evidently understood the benefits of being seen to be devout, but that does not automatically render his piety counterfeit. Henry also seems to have been well aware that peerless manhood was a powerful weapon in his polemical arsenal. He was widely depicted as 52
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APPROACHING HENRY V AND HENRY VI
undertaking a purposeful manipulation of his gender identity on becoming king, which gives the impression that he understood the importance both of embodying ideal kingly masculinity and of displaying this to his people. Thus I believe that the image of his manliness can be regarded, to some extent, as the product of his own reflection and calculation. Henry’s masculinity drew much of its substance from certain physical attributes and other capabilities which could be learned and improved, but could not be produced out of thin air. However, other of its constituent parts (in particular his sexual conduct) were more malleable, and I will suggest that the construction of Henry’s ‘perfect’ manhood can be seen as a response to the political circumstances in which he found himself, both as prince and king. Discourses of masculinity played a crucial role in establishing the tenor of his kingship from the outset of his reign, and were then employed to ensure support for his policies and campaigns, continuing to function in this way after his death.
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Henry VI: a son greatly degenerated from the father Henry VI became king of England on 31 August 1422 at the age of nine months and less than two months later also inherited the crown of France following the death of his grandfather Charles VI on 21 October. Henry V’s brothers John, duke of Bedford and Humfrey, duke of Gloucester ruled in his name, with Bedford based in France and Gloucester in England. Henry formally assumed government in late 1437 but displayed no personal dynamism in the role and the extent of his active engagement in politics is debatable. Henry’s lack of dominance in combination with his profligate attitude to patronage encouraged factional splits at court, the ramifications of which led his subjects to begin publicly airing dissatisfaction with his rule in the 1440s. There was a widespread perception that the king and the kingdom were being ruled by William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. Henry married Margaret of Anjou in 1445 but they did not produce an heir, Prince Edward, until 13 October 1453. Meanwhile England’s position in France was increasingly under attack as Charles VII capitalized on the success of Joan of Arc in raising the siege of Orléans in May 1429 and was crowned in July of that year. In 1435 Charles was reconciled with Philip of Burgundy, marked by the Treaty of Arras which left the English isolated in their attempts to maintain the dual monarchy. England had neither the resources nor the charismatic leader necessary to defend French territories and over the next fifteen years virtually all were lost, culminating in the reconquest of Normandy in 1450. In the same year grievances against corruption emanating from the court, seen to be infiltrating government and justice on a local level (and also held responsible for the disasters in France), were voiced in parliament. Suffolk was impeached and then killed while on his way to serve a sentence of banishment. In the summer popular rebellion against the 53
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government erupted under Jack Cade. While the rebels adopted the conventional position of rebelling on behalf of their king, not against him, perceptions of the poor quality of Henry’s rule played an important part in setting off the unrest. The revolt also made apparent that many believed Richard, duke of York to be the solution to England’s problems, a worrying development for the still childless Henry, as York was also seen by many as heir presumptive.55 In May 1453 Henry VI had a mental breakdown and York was appointed to rule on his behalf as protector, although not before Margaret of Anjou had made a bid for the position in order to safeguard the position of her baby son. Henry recovered his senses in early 1455 but was unable to neutralize the rivalry between York and the chief councillor Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, which resulted in the First Battle of St Albans on 22 May, traditionally held to be the start of the Wars of the Roses. Henry may have had a second breakdown later in the year; certainly York acted as protector again for a few months, up until February 1456. Henry became an increasingly passive figure over the following years and Margaret emerged as effective leader of the Lancastrian nobles, some of whose fathers had been killed at St Albans, and all of whom objected to what they saw as York’s presumption. There was an attempt at reconciliation between the various feuding parties with the ‘loveday’ of March 1458 which involved a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s cathedral from which York emerged hand in hand with Margaret, as did other erstwhile opponents. But this event did not ameliorate the fundamental tensions fracturing political society and there was open warfare from late 1459. Henry was taken captive following the Battle of Northampton on 10 July 1460 and in October of that year agreed to recognize York as his heir. However, York was killed in battle at Wakefield only two months later, leaving his son Edward, earl of March, supported by Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, at the head of the Yorkist cause. Although Margaret regained possession of Henry after the Second Battle of St Albans in February 1461 she could not take London and retreated to the north rather than encounter the Yorkist army. Edward was crowned king in London on 4 March, having declared Henry unfit to rule. Edward IV then crushed Lancastrian forces at the bloody Battle of Towton later that month. Henry, Margaret and their son fled to Scotland. While Margaret and Edward left for the continent in 1463 to try and gather support for their cause (eventually gaining it from Louis XI of France), Henry was on the run in northern England and captured in July 1465. Edward imprisoned Henry in the Tower of London until an invasion led by Warwick (who had by now allied with Margaret) freed him in October 1470. Edward sought refuge in Burgundy and Henry was nominally king again until April 1471 when Edward returned at the head of an army. He placed Henry back in the Tower before marching against his son Prince Edward, whose forces he defeated at the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May. Prince Edward was killed at or soon after the battle and Margaret taken prisoner. Henry VI was 54
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murdered on 21 May shortly after Edward IV returned to London in triumph and almost certainly on Edward’s orders. The violent circumstances of his death caused him to be venerated as a martyr within a couple of years and by the late 1400s he was acknowledged as a miracle-working saint, despite the fact that Henry VII’s attempts to have him canonized were not successful. To turn from Henry V to Henry VI is to turn from a king who had such an informed sense of what his subjects wanted from him, to one who seemed either not to know or not to care. Accounting for Henry VI’s lack of manliness presents far more of a conundrum than accounting for his father’s overflowing measure of the same quality. In the wake of Henry V’s early and fairly sudden death there was an understandably enormous weight of expectation placed on his only son. This burden was all the heavier because of the fragility of the Lancastrian dynasty at this point. For the moment, the future of the dynasty rested with a baby who, while formally king from the moment of his father’s death, could not be expected to rule for well over a decade. Once Henry did formally assume government it became apparent that the only thing he had in common with his revered father was his name. Even at the time it was regarded as worryingly ironic that the most manly of English kings had fathered the least manly. Henry VI’s defective masculinity was seen to account in large part for his defective kingship, both during his own lifetime and in later assessments of his reign. This rendered him either unable or unwilling to personify the model of authoritarian kingship which his subjects expected, and which was a practical necessity to make the English political system work. Understandings of Henry’s kingship have been dominated by the fact of civil war breaking out during his reign, and by his deposition. In seeking to explain the causes of the Wars of the Roses, historians used to emphasize long-term, systemic problems, with bastard feudalism, and the culture of self-interest and bought loyalty to which it allegedly gave rise, as a favoured culprit.56 But more recently historians have tended to argue that there were no endemic, deep-seated weaknesses in government and that the political crises originated in events and issues much closer to the time at which hostilities began. Therefore Henry VI’s failings as both man and king, what McFarlane termed his ‘inanity’, have become, for some, an intrinsic part of the equation.57 However, R.A. Griffiths, author of the most substantial biography of Henry VI, concludes that those who regard Henry as directly and primarily responsible for the outbreak of the Wars fail to take sufficient account of their complex circumstances.58 Indeed, while there is unanimous agreement, historiographically speaking, that Henry was a ‘bad’ king, the precise nature and extent of his shortcomings, and his responsibility for civil war, are all a matter of some debate.59 McFarlane also characterized him as the king who never grew up: ‘second childhood succeeded first without the usual interval’.60 The two important biographies of Henry published in 55
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1981 took issue with this appraisal, instead, both Griffiths and Bertram Wolffe portrayed Henry as much more politically involved than McFarlane allowed, although in differing terms.61 Wolffe claimed that Henry was capable of leadership, but that his political activities were essentially ill-advised (partly in the literal sense that he did not take guidance from the right people). Henry’s attempts to direct policy thus constituted wrong-headed meddling, motivated by personal whim and even spite, rather than by more appropriate political considerations for the well-being of his kingdom. Wolffe’s approach, while useful in challenging some of the received stereotypes about Henry, has not gained general acceptance, largely due to his assumption that every piece of business enacted in the king’s name can be taken as a direct expression of the king’s personal wishes, and thus allows insight into his character.62 Griffiths’ depiction of Henry has been more influential than Wolffe’s in its contention that the king embodied a number of admirable and appropriate qualities and was essentially ‘well-meaning but lacking in judgement’.63 Griffiths also notes that Henry lacked the assertiveness to impose his stamp on politics even before his breakdown, but argues that he had ideas and priorities which did influence policy on occasion.64 Watts’ study assesses Henry’s performance against contemporary understandings of ideal kingship to present a revised version of McFarlane’s inane child, stating that Henry, while maturing physically and ‘perhaps mentally’, ‘never came to perform the role expected of an adult king’.65 Watts argues that Henry’s signal failure was that he did not possess adequate discrimination, mental independence or strength of will to govern at all and that this became apparent to those around Henry during his minority. Thus Watts identifies a vacuum at the centre of power for which the nobility attempted to compensate with a facade of councils that were essentially autonomous, while representing themselves as transforming Henry’s personal will into policy. This account of Henry’s reign has been questioned by both Griffiths and Pollard as too extreme a reading, which fails to recognize the evidence that Henry did have opinions and personality and they contend that he did, on occasion, attempt to influence policy (particularly with respect to the peace with France).66 Hicks notes that Henry’s reign provides ‘a series of case studies of the king’s two bodies’.67 According to Kantorowicz’s binary formula the personal failings of a king should not undermine his authority because power (and the obedience which it demanded) was vested in his office, not his physical person.68 But the criticisms of Henry’s incapacity did matter, because those who voiced them were punished.69 Pollard outlines the difficulties inherent in accurately assessing whether Henry’s personal incompetence should be identified as the cause of all his problems, or whether more attention should be paid to the circumstances in which he found himself, at a time when ever greater emphasis was being placed on the individual capabilities of the king.70 But considering those circumstances (both domestic and foreign) 56
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brings us back to the question of whether a more gifted ruler (or a better man) could have dealt with these more effectively. Ultimately, the proper interpretation of Henry and the precise relationship between his kingship and character has to be a combination of informed conjecture and personal opinion, partly due to the limitations of the sources. There are only two texts about Henry which constitute anything like sustained biographies that shed light on his character. One is the portrait of Henry included in John Capgrave’s Liber Illustribus Henrici (Book of Illustrious Henries) presented to the king himself in 1447.71 The other was written by John Blacman to present Henry as a saint.72 Other than this the narrative accounts of Henry are interspersed among chronicle accounts, the majority of which were written some time after the events they described and in the knowledge of his breakdown in 1453.73 Moreover, several were written after his deposition by Edward IV and informed by the more or less express purpose of denigrating Henry’s kingship to support Yorkist claims. But the extent of this prejudice has not always been fully acknowledged when using them to discuss his personality. We must therefore treat carefully the resonance which such accounts trace between the pre- and post-1453 Henry, and avoid automatically accepting their claim that mental illness served only to throw his flawed character and kingship into sharper relief. This compounds their propagandist contention that he had always been a king of insufficient maturity and ability to rule (in addition to his dubious descent from usurpers), and thus his removal in 1461 was justified. This is not to say that there were no concerns about Henry before his illness; there were. But these need to be considered within their immediate context, rather than viewed as leading ineluctably to later disasters. A similar interpretive problem is posed by Henry VI’s elevation to sainthood. Henry was venerated as a miracle-working martyr almost immediately following his death and his tomb, first at Chertsey Abbey then at Windsor, became a popular destination for pilgrims.74 In attempting to have Henry VI canonized to bolster his own fledgling dynasty, Henry VII appropriated the popular cult, he did not invent it. Henry’s status as a saint has been taken as evidence that he must have been conspicuously pious, indeed holy, during his life and that this, in turn, helps to explain many of his failings as a king.75 Henry was a devout, well-intentioned ‘saintly muff’ more suited to the monastery than to ruling a kingdom.76 However, such an approach fails to take into account wider patterns of saint-making in late-medieval England, whereby high status men, such as Edward II, Thomas of Lancaster and Archbishop Richard Scrope, who suffered violent death, were frequently claimed as martyrs and miracle workers, regardless of the quality of their piety when alive.77 Henry also slotted neatly into the well-established ranks of the English king saint.78 As Wolffe pointed out, the evidence from Henry’s life does not suggest that his religiosity was deemed particularly striking or out of the ordinary at the time.79 Arguably, Henry V made rather more substantial demonstrations of distinctive pious and spiritual interests 57
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than his son. This problematizes treatment of Blacman’s narrative of Henry’s saintly virtues (probably written in the early 1480s) as an accurate account of the king’s conduct and demeanour in life.80 Blacman did know Henry personally, having been a fellow at Eton from 1443 to 1454, and may have acted as an unofficial spiritual advisor or confessor to the king.81 Later in life Blacman joined the Carthusian order and lived at Witham Charterhouse in Somerset from the mid 1460s until his death about twenty years later.82 It may be that, in writing his account, Blacman sought to explain Henry’s disastrous reign by revealing that his public failings as a king stemmed from his spiritual and moral integrity as a man; again, the idea that he was ‘too good’ to be a king.83 Blacman’s text presents Henry as a model of lay piety and, in so doing, he drew on established hagiographic tropes of high status lay male sanctity as established, for example, by the lives of Louis IX of France (canonized 1297) and Elzéar of Sabran, count of Ariano (canonized 1371).84 This does not mean that the text bears no relation at all to the ‘real’ Henry and should be dismissed as evidence for anything other than Henry’s posthumous cult, any more than we should entirely disregard the opinions of his Yorkist opponents. But it is unwise to perceive an innate quality to the idea of Henry as either hopeless boy-puppet, or unworldly saint. Henry’s reign presents a clear illustration of the extent to which the proper exercise of kingship demanded the proper exercise of hegemonic masculinity, precisely because concerns about his rule expressed his shortcomings in explicitly gendered terms. Representative here is Jean de Wavrin’s conclusion that ‘because the king, Henry VI of that name, has not in his time been such a man as is needed to govern such a realm, each person who has had power over it has wished to strengthen himself in order to administer it.’85 Writing after 1461 De Wavrin expressed a widely and long-held opinion which regarded Henry’s flawed manhood and the resultant ease with which he could be manipulated by others as key to the problems of his reign. This perception and its dissemination was not only a matter of rhetoric and an expression of political antagonism, as Fletcher has argued persuasively it was in the similar case of Richard II.86 There is abundant evidence of palpable concern about Henry’s virility in a number of respects. His faulty gender identity was an ‘objective reality’ to people at the time, not just at court or within political circles but much more widely than this.87 Henry may not have been a complete cipher, even before 1453, but this is apparently how many viewed him nonetheless. Later propaganda constitutes an exaggerated form of this, but in order to hold political and polemical weight it must have been based on a recognizable version of Henry. It was also based on an awareness of the need for a king to embody the masculine qualities his people expected of him, and reassure them with a display of these. Both at the time and in subsequent scholarship Henry’s masculinity has been seen either as stunted (he remained effectively a boy), or as having developed unevenly, with a disproportionate amount of inappropriate feminine qualities; 58
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thus he grew to be an effeminate man. Whichever explanation was/is offered, the end result is the same: Henry did not manifest the requisite dynamic virility or martial demeanour of a ruler. Instead, he was weak, pliant, and dominated by others, especially his wife, which was particularly damaging to perceptions of his gender. Henry was essentially passive and impotent (perhaps in more ways than one). It is significant that even Wolffe, in making Henry a more active character, was not able to rescue his manhood; presenting him as capricious, fickle and vengeful only serves to underline his effeminacy in fact. Thus, it could be said that analysis of Henry VI’s kingship has always been about his masculinity (or lack thereof). And yet, as with Henry V, the precise disposition of Henry VI’s gender, or the significance of gender as a means of attacking his rule, has rarely been subjected to serious investigation, but discussed only in fairly generalized terms.88 There often seems to be a more or less explicit understanding that, just as Henry V was ‘naturally’ manly, so Henry VI was ‘naturally’ unmanly. The fact that Henry VI presented such a disappointing contrast to his father was central to concerns about him. Writing in the early 1460s Abbot John Wheathampstead described Henry as ‘his mother’s stupid offspring, not his father’s, a son greatly degenerated from the father, who did not cultivate the art of war’.89 We have here both the sense that Henry was ‘naturally’ effeminate, having not inherited any of the qualities of his father, and, yet, at the same time, the suggestion of those qualities as something which could yet have been achieved, had Henry cultivated the attributes of a warrior. It is vital for an understanding of Henry VI’s kingship and gender that just as being a warrior became the shorthand for all Henry V’s talents and success, so not being a warrior became emblematic of all Henry VI’s weaknesses and failures. Significant too, in terms of the overriding impression we have of Henry’s masculinity, is the perception that he and Margaret of Anjou embodied a perversion of the expected hierarchical gender dynamic between a king and queen; indeed, more basically between a husband and wife. Traditionally Margaret has taken the lion’s share of the blame due to her ‘She Wolf ’ reputation.90 However, from the perspective of more recent culturally sensitive readings of queenship it is more accurate to identify Henry’s gender as the fundamental problem. If Henry had been, in De Wavrin’s words, ‘such a man as is necessary’ in a number of respects, then Margaret would probably never have been anything other than a conventional queen. Putting an emphasis, as many historians have done, on Margaret’s ‘wrong’ gender performance contributes to the sense that Henry could not help being so pathetically inept and that he was ‘naturally’ unmanly. But it is crucial to explore the influence of circumstances upon Margaret’s actions, of both the possibilities and the obstacles which gender offered to her.91 Thus we ought to attempt the same approach for Henry, not least because perceptions of them were so irrevocably intertwined and mutually reinforcing in many contemporary accounts. 59
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APPROACHING HENRY V AND HENRY VI
As for my own approach to Henry, I find Watts’ contention that the nobility had to find a solution for Henry’s shortcomings persuasive, but concur with Griffiths and Pollard that this does not mean that the king was a complete nullity. Although I will sometimes speak in terms of what I think Henry himself may have felt or perceived, I proceed with an awareness that it is impossible to say for sure how much of Henry’s character really was expressed in any of the policies stated to be his, or even in the actions which he took. Some of Henry’s shortcomings may well have stemmed from ‘personality problems’, by which I specifically mean a lack of understanding (whether wilful or otherwise) about how to be a king, or of what his subjects expected of him. In considering Henry’s gender identity perhaps what is more important is how the implementation of ‘his’ policies appeared to others, and what they believed that his response to the difficult circumstances facing him revealed about his manhood. As we shall see, there is at least some evidence which can be used to question whether Henry was always doomed to fail at being a man. The deficiencies of his gender could have been ‘repaired’ at certain key stages if he had proven himself in one or other of the recognized arenas which were usually seen to confer manhood.
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Notes 1 My analysis is greatly indebted to the existing wealth of biographical scholarship devoted to both kings, as will become apparent. 2 My approach here is similar to that adopted by Tracy Adams in her study of Isabeau of Bavaria’s queenship and reputation, see her introduction to The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp. xiii–xxvi, esp. pp. xxiv–xxv. 3 Allmand, pp. 7–8. I sketch in some key events here to provide a narrative framework for subsequent analysis. 4 Richard II and Henry IV were first cousins; their fathers, Edward the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, were the first and third surviving sons of Edward III. 5 Mortimer’s paternal grandmother was Philippa, only child of Lionel, duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III. Mortimer had been heir presumptive to the childless Richard II at the time of his deposition. 6 For the most recent survey of the historiography see John Matusiak, Henry V (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 1–20. This work appeared too late for me to take detailed account of its assessment of Henry. A new collection of essays on Henry edited by Gwilym Dodd is forthcoming from York Medieval Press. 7 C.L. Kingsford, Henry V: The Typical Medieval Hero (London and New York: C. Putnam’s Sons, 1901). 8 Ibid., 402. 9 William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1878), pp. 73–76. 10 See K.B. McFarlane’s adulatory assessment from 1954 quoted below, p. 51. 11 J.H. Wylie and W.T. Waugh, The Reign of Henry the Fifth, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914–29). 12 T.B. Pugh, Henry V and the Southampton Plot of 1415 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1988) is more negative about Henry than most assessments of the last few decades have been.
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13 E.g. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto claims that ‘Henry’s kingship was tainted … His victories were triumphs of hype, stained by the blood of war-crimes’, ‘The Myth of Henry V’, BBC History Website [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/ henry_v_01.shtml, accessed 27 Jan. 2013]. See also in John Sutherland, Cedric Watts and Stephen Orgel, Henry V, War Criminal? And Other Shakespeare Puzzles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 108–25. 14 Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, p. 73. 15 Discussed in C. T. Allmand, ‘Henry V (1386–1422)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12952, accessed 27 Jan. 2013]. 16 G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 17 G.L. Harriss, ‘Introduction: the exemplar of kingship’, and ‘Conclusion’ in ibid., pp. 1–30, 201–10; reiterated in Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), p. 201. 18 Allmand, pp. 426–42. 19 Matusiak, Henry V, pp. 237–46. 20 E.g. C.T. Allmand, ‘Henry V the soldier, and the war in France’ in Harriss, Henry V, pp. 117–36 (esp. p. 132). 21 Allmand, ‘Henry V’. 22 Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 1982), pp. 197–98; see also C.L. Kingsford, ‘The early biographies of Henry V’, English Historical Review 25 (1910), 58–92. 23 GHQ, pp. xv–xlix for the background. 24 Ibid., pp. xxiii–xxviii. 25 Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 198–205, suggests it may have been intended for an audience abroad too, but notes it only survives in one manuscript. 26 [Thomae] Elmhami Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto, in Charles Augustus Cole (ed.), Memorials of Henry the Fifth, King of England (London: Rolls Series, 1858), pp. 79–166. 27 Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 206–10; Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London and New York: Hambledon & London, 2004), pp. 146–48. 28 Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto, p. 80 29 Ibid., p. 79. 30 TLF; David Rundle, ‘The unoriginality of Tito Livio Frulovisi’s Vita Henrici Quinti’, English Historical Review 123 (2008), 1109–31, 1129 for details of the five preReformation manuscripts either surviving, or attested. Humfrey (rather than Humphrey) was the contemporary spelling. 31 Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 211–13; but see below for David Rundle’s alternative reading. 32 Henry VIII was in the process of fulfilling his own ambition to go to war with France at this time; Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 217–19. 33 Frulovisi had himself used the Brut, one of the London chronicles, a poem on the siege of Rouen written by John Page (see below, pp. 112–13) and some official documents, Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 212. 34 English Life, p. 4. John Stow also drew on this account for his Annales, or a Generale Chronicle of England from Brute until the present yeare of Christ 1580 describing Ormond as ‘an eye witnesse’ to events, p. 11, n. 4. 35 Elizabeth Matthew, ‘Butler, James, fourth earl of Ormond (1390–1452)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4187, accessed 28 Jan. 2013]. 36 English Life, pp. xvi–xx. 37 Alternatively this material may have been conveyed via his youngest son, Thomas, who served at Henry VIII’s court; Matthew, ‘Butler, James’.
61
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38 [Pseudo-Elmham] Thomae de Elmham: Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti, ed. Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1727); Rundle, ‘The unoriginality of Tito Livio Frulovisi’s Vita Henrici Quinti’, 1129–31 for pre-Reformation manuscripts; Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 213–17. 39 Charles Kightly, ‘Hungerford, Walter, first Baron Hungerford (1378–1449)’, ODNB, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/14181, accessed 28 Jan. 2013]. 40 Kightly, ‘Hungerford, Walter’; Rundle, ‘The unoriginality of Tito Livio Frulovisi’s Vita Henrici Quinti’, 1127–28. 41 Rundle, ‘The unoriginality of Tito Livio Frulovisi’s Vita Henrici Quinti’, 1112–16 and passim. 42 Ibid., p. 1128. 43 Carole Rawcliffe, ‘Somerset, John (d. 1454)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26012, accessed 28 Jan. 2013]. 44 Griffiths, p. 55. 45 Rundle, ‘The unoriginality of Tito Livio Frulovisi’s Vita Henrici Quinti’, 1128. 46 Jonathan Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002), pp. 23–46 for a useful discussion of the legacy of Henry’s representation in the later fifteenth century. 47 John Lydgate, Troy Book: Selections, (ed.) Robert R. Edwards (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998), available online, ‘Prologue’ [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/ camelot/troyprfr.htm, accessed 28 Jan. 2013], ll. 79–93. It was not completed until 1420. 48 Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, p. 75; Kingsford, Henry V, p. 390. 49 K.B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 133. 50 Arguably only Edward III provides serious competition overall. 51 Rundle, ‘The unoriginality of Tito Livio Frulovisi’s Vita Henrici Quinti’, 1110. 52 Ibid., pp. 1118–19. For a comparison of Pseudo-Elmham and TLF’s accounts of Henry’s physique, see also English Life, pp. 16–17. 53 Allmand, ‘Henry V, the soldier, and the war in France’, p. 118. 54 E.g. Eduoard Perroy, The Hundred Years War, (trans.) W.B. Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), pp. 235–36. 55 Edmund Mortimer (see above note 5) died childless in 1425 and his claim to the throne passed to Richard, son of his sister Anne. Richard was also descended from Edward III’s fourth son Edmund of Langley, via his father (also called Richard, Earl of Cambridge). The latter was executed by Henry V for his part in the Southampton plot, but not attainted so his son could still inherit from him. Richard inherited the title duke of York from his paternal uncle Edward, one of the few English nobles killed at Agincourt. 56 Christine Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437– 1509 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 4–26; A.J. Pollard, The Wars of the Roses (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 5–18 for surveys of the historiography. 57 K.B. McFarlane, ‘The Wars of the Roses’ in K.B. McFarlane, England in the Fifteenth Century (London: The Hambledon Press, 1981), pp. 231–68 (p. 240). 58 Griffiths, ‘Introduction to Second Edition’, pp. xxiii–xlvii for discussion of how scholarship on Henry had developed since original completion in 1980; see also R.A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI (1421–71)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/12953, accessed 28 Jan. 2013]. 59 Watts, p. 10. 60 K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 284. 61 Wolffe, pp. 12–21. 62 See Watts’ foreword to the 2001 edition of Wolffe, pp. xiii–xxvii.
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APPROACHING HENRY V AND HENRY VI
63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71
72 73
74 75
76 77
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78 79 80
81 82
83 84
85
Griffiths, p. xxiv. Ibid., pp. 250–54. Watts, p. 364. R.A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI’; A.J. Pollard, Late Medieval England 1399–1509 (Harlow: Pearson Longman 2000), pp. 117 and 138, n. 3. Michael Hicks, English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 49. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [1957] 1997), esp. pp. 314–50. Hicks, English Political Culture, p. 50. Pollard, Late Medieval England, pp. 256–57. John Capgrave’s Book of the Illustrious Henries, (trans.) F.C. Hingeston (London: Longman, Brown, Green Longmans & Roberts, 1858), pp. 125–39; for the original text Johannes Capgrave: De Illustribus Henricis (ed.) F.C. Hingeston (London: Longman, Brown, Green Longmans & Roberts, 1858), pp. 125–39. See below, p. 58. Griffiths, pp. 1–8 on the difficulty of obtaining ‘an authentic contemporary assessment of Henry VI and his rule’ (p. 2); Gransden, Historical Writing in England, for the same point, p. 249, see pp. 249–307 for discussion of English and Continental accounts of the Wars of the Roses; C.L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913). Danna Piroyansky, Martyrs in the Making: Political Martyrdom in Late Medieval England (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 74–98. As argued at length by Roger Lovatt, ‘John Blacman: biographer of Henry VI’ in R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (eds), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 415–44; Roger Lovatt, ‘A collector of apocryphal anecdotes: John Blacman revisited’ in A.J. Pollard (ed.), Property and Politics: Essays in later Medieval English History (Gloucester: A. Sutton, 1984), pp. 172–97. J.R. Lander’s epithet, quoted by Griffiths, p. 6. Piroyansky, Martyrs in the Making, passim; Diana Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London and New York: Hambledon & London, 2000), pp. 141–80. Discussed below, pp. 245–46. Wolffe, pp. 8–9. John Blacman, Henry the Sixth: a reprint of John Blacman’s memoir, ed. and trans. M.R. James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919). Wolffe, pp. 5–13 for critique of its accuracy, although see Lovatt’s rejoinder, ‘A collector of apocryphal anecdotes: John Blacman revisited’, passim. For biographical details Lovatt, ‘John Blacman’, pp. 417–29. Lovatt notes that Blacman never took the final vow and thus occupied a recognized half-way house as a clericus redditus, meaning that he was professed and tonsured and followed an identical way of life to his fellow monks, but unlike them could own property and leave the order if he wished, ibid., p. 428. It is not known why Blacman did not take the final vow. Lovatt, ‘John Blacman’, p. 435; and ‘A collector of apocryphal anecdotes’, pp. 182–83. For further discussion see Katherine J. Lewis, ‘“Imitate, too, this king in virtue, who could have done ill, and did it not”: lay sanctity and the rewriting of Henry VI’s manliness’ in P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013) pp. 126–42. Recueil des croniques … par Jehan de Waurin vol. 5, ed. W. Hardy and E. L. C. P. Hardy, 5 vols., Rolls Series, 39 (1891), p. 342 (my translation). With thanks to Craig Taylor for advising me on the ambiguities of this passage.
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APPROACHING HENRY V AND HENRY VI
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86 Christopher Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics 1377–99 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 17 and passim. 87 Term adopted from ibid., p. 7. 88 For works which have considered Henry’s gender: Karen A. Winstead, ‘Capgrave’s Saint Katherine and the perils of gynecocracy’, Viator 26 (1995), 361–76; Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy, pp. 47–76, considers Henry in humoural terms which involves issues of gender and sexuality; Christopher Fletcher, ‘Manhood, kingship and the public in late medieval England’, Edad Media Revista de Historia 13 (2012), 123–42 (134–35). 89 Wolffe, p. 19 for the translation, n. 30 for the Latin original. Another implication of this comment could be that Henry VI was not Henry V’s offspring at all, and that this explained why they were so disastrously different. But this charge of bastardy was not raised by even the most enthusiastic Yorkist, although it had been levelled at both Richard II and Henry IV by their political enemies. Perhaps it was simply impossible to imagine that the ultra manly Henry V could have been cuckolded. 90 Patricia Ann Lee, ‘Reflections of power: Margaret of Anjou and the dark side of queenship’, Renaissance Quarterly 39 (1986), 183–217. 91 Maurer, pp. 4–5 and passim.
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Part I
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HENRY V
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3
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SON AND BROTHER
The future Henry V was made Prince of Wales on 15 October, two days after his father’s coronation.1 Shortly after he became duke of Aquitaine and also of Lancaster. The fact that Henry IV had four sons was a conspicuous contrast to the childless Richard II and probably played at least some part in rendering him a viable alternative as king. Investing Prince Henry with these titles was a way of advertising that the succession was no longer a matter for debate or a potential focus for rebellion – although that would only be true provided Henry IV himself could maintain the throne.2 In the early years of his reign he faced serious rebellion in Wales, led by Owain Glyndwˆ r. Henry IV’s rule was placed under further threat following the alienation of the Percies and their rebellion in 1403. As Prince of Wales Henry was naturally involved in the defence of his domain.3 Thomas Walsingham noted that this provided him with his ‘first taste of fighting’ at the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July, where he was ‘wounded in the face when hit by an arrow’.4 The surgeon John Bradmore (d. 1412) later recounted that although the shaft was easily withdrawn, the arrowhead had been so deeply embedded in Henry’s face that it could not be removed until Bradmore devised a special tool to retrieve it.5 This would have left Henry with an impressive scar as testament to his valour both on the field, and in withstanding the treatment itself, which involved enlarging the wound and then working the arrowhead backwards and forwards to free it. Although the rebels were defeated, the Welsh continued to pose a considerable threat for the next few years, up until 1406, the year Prince Henry, now 19, was placed in full charge.6 The situation improved throughout the year, and while this is not solely attributable to Henry’s leadership, it must surely have had an impact on his reputation as a capable young commander, as evinced, for example, by accounts of his capture of Aberystwyth castle in the summer of 1407 and the ensuing treaty.7 Although it is unlikely to have been viewed in positive terms by them at the time, for both Henry IV and Prince Henry the fact of the Welsh rebellions was actually something of an advantage. It provided an opportunity for the prince to secure his status as heir to the throne, by demonstrating that he 67
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HENRY V
possessed all the necessary qualities required of a future king. Prince Henry was both brave and resourceful and this provided support for his father’s rule. Allmand notes the significance of war in Wales breaking out at almost exactly the same time as Prince Henry’s fourteenth birthday, conceptually the point at which his transition to adulthood began.8 In terms of Prince Henry’s maturation it was significant that, although he had been given the title of Prince of Wales, he had to fight to attain genuine control of his patrimony.9 He had to exercise dominance and prove himself as a royal leader, not simply become one by dint of an investiture ceremony. Moreover, the titles he was awarded were not only a matter of prestige and recognition of his status as heir, they had a practical function too. Management of the estates and resources which they comprised necessitated skills of leadership and administration, especially as the income which they produced was needed to support his military efforts.10 The success of this learning process was all the more important for Henry because he had not been born to the role. While much of that role and its responsibilities was generic to any nobleman there was far more at stake in Henry’s abilities as Prince of Wales than if he had simply been heir to the duke of Lancaster. Given the circumstances in which Henry IV had come to the throne, and the unprecedented rupture of the direct line of succession, it was all the more important for both him and his son to prove that, by their conduct, as much as their claim, they were rightful ruler and successor. The exploits of Prince Henry were part of the means by which Henry IV’s dynasty would ensure the good government which Richard II had not provided, and would do so in dashing martial style to boot. Military lessons learned in Wales, such as the undertaking of siege warfare, ensuring regular payment for the troops, and forming emotional bonds between himself and his closest followers, laid the ground for his later actions in France.11 Titus Livius Frulovisi’s account begins with Prince Henry’s exploits in Wales, in recognition of the crucial impact which they had in forming his character.12 It also suggests a young leader learning the importance of advertising that character as a means of inspiring one’s followers. At the Battle of Shrewsbury Prince Henry fought alongside his father and his ‘courage and strenght … appeared marueloslie excellent’, for even after he was wounded, so badly that some feared he might die of the injury, he refused to leave the field: ‘With what stomacke’, saide he, ‘shall our people fight, when they see me theire Prince and the Kings sonn withdrawe my selfe, and recoile for fear. Bringe me therefore wounded as I ame amongest the first and the formost of our partie, that not only by words but also by deeds I may enforce the courage of our men, as it becommeth a Prince for to do.’ That when he was thus brought into the fronte of the battaile, he made vppon his enemies a greater assaulte than before.13 68
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SON AND BROTHER
If it had not been necessary for Prince Henry to go to war during his youth it is possible that his gender might have been differently forged. But circumstances dictated that his evolution to manhood required the acquisition and honing of a certain brand of masterful and indomitable masculinity. Once the situation in Wales had calmed, Henry was freed for a more active role in government. However, it became apparent that his success in achieving manhood, rather than supporting his father’s rule, actually began to undermine it. The effects of this development had dangerous consequences for Prince Henry. By late 1406 the prince had started attending council meetings regularly and over the next two years he and the chancellor, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, took the lead in dealing with the problematic areas of Henry IV’s rule, in particular his finances.14 The increasing involvement of the prince in government was dictated by the state of his father’s health. Henry IV first suffered serious illness in 1406, and was afflicted by further episodes for the rest of his life, most seriously over the winter of 1408–9 when he made his will, believing his death was imminent.15 By this time Prince Henry was no longer on active service in Wales and as a result of his father’s grave condition, he took more formal control of government. Arundel resigned the chancellorship in December 1409 and thereafter the council was dominated by Henry’s allies, in particular his half-uncles Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Lincoln and Thomas Beaufort.16 Prince Henry was de facto ruler of England for the next two years and while this was a product of circumstance, it may be that it also owed something to ambition on his part. He certainly took advantage of the opportunity to show that he was fitted not just to rule a principality, but the whole kingdom. His commission from Thomas Hoccleve of the Regiment of Princes dates to this period (sometime between November 1410 and November 1411) and was likely part of this project. The Regiment derived from three well-known mirrors for princes: the Secreta Secretorum, Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum and Jacob de Cessolis’ Liber de Moribus Hominum et Officiis Nobelium ac Popularium Super Ludo Scachorum (The Book of the Morals of Men and the Duties of Nobles and Commoners, on the Game of Chess).17 The text is addressed to Prince Henry rather than explicitly stating that he had requested it, but the political context makes it very likely that the composition was made at his behest. Derek Pearsall has discussed the text’s presentation of a traditional version of rulership, which is of a part with the policies of moderation and efficiency which the royal council followed under Prince Henry.18 It was in Henry’s interests to have himself associated with a didactic text of this nature. It was a public means by which he could advertise that he knew the standards of kingly conduct and that he would rule soberly for the common good.19 Hoccleve, as a clerk of the Privy Seal, had direct experience of Henry’s governmental style, and claimed that Henry was so familiar with these standards that he did not actually need such a book at all. Having introduced his sources Hoccleve continues: 69
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HENRY V
I am seur that tho books alle three Red hath and seen your innat sapience; And, as I hope, hir vertu folwen yee. But unto yow compile I this sentence That, at the good lust of your excellence, In short yee mowen beholde heer and rede That in hem thre is scattered fer in brede,
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And although it be no maneere of neede Yow to consaille what to doon or leeve, Yit if yow list of stories taken heede, Sumwhat it may profyte, by your leeve; At hardest, what yee been in chamber at eeve, They been good for to dryve foorth the nyght; They shal nat harme if they be herd aright.20 In practice it was true that Henry did not need to read a book to learn how to rule; his experiences in Wales had been his tutorial for governing England. But in order to support his current position Henry was aware that it was crucial he be represented as receptive to advice. The image of him using a handbook of ideal kingly behaviour as bedtime reading serves this purpose very well.21 Indeed, the period of Henry’s rule was so successful that it raised hopeful expectations about the fortunes of the kingdom under his direction.22 However, it seems that this period was ultimately too successful. On 30 November 1411 Henry IV publicly thanked the prince and his council for their efforts, and relieved them of their duties.23 Virtually none of them, including Prince Henry himself, were to play a role in government for the rest of the reign. These events provide just one of several medieval instances of the difficulties and hostility that could arise between an established ruler and his adult son, when that son wished to exercise increasing power, but could only do so at the expense of his father. The exigencies of high status marriage alliances, which saw kings often married in their teens, dictated that the age gap between fathers and sons was often not very wide. Henry IV was 19 when his heir was born, and in his mid 30s when Prince Henry began to distinguish himself in Wales. Björn Weiler has noted that moments of crisis between rulers and sons can help us to understand both the conception and practice of royal power, as they ‘offer snapshots of norms, tools and processes that otherwise all too frequently remain hidden from view’.24 W.M. Aird’s analysis of the vexed relationship between William the Conqueror and his eldest son Robert Curthose demonstrates that crucial among these in determining the actors’ perceptions of and responses to events were the norms of hegemonic masculinity.25 It is similarly fruitful to consider the actions of Henry IV and Prince Henry in these years in terms of their 70
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SON AND BROTHER
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competing masculinities, in order to understand why Prince Henry was pushed out into the political cold so completely. In theory Henry IV’s powers as king had remained intact throughout the period in which his illness prevented his direct command of government. But in practice all the decisions of recent years had been made by his son. Provided both agreed on objectives and the best way to achieve them this was no problem. Both father and son were keen to realize their historic claims to Aquitaine, but in 1411 it became apparent that they differed as to the best way of accomplishing this, which revealed the shortcomings of the current governmental setup. Having previously offered active support for the Burgundians against the Armagnacs in France, Henry IV changed tack and favoured a noninterventionist policy, cancelling a campaign which he had planned to lead in the summer of 1411 to support John, duke of Burgundy.26 However, Prince Henry and his camp remained committed to pro-Burgundian action. In September an unofficial English force, led by his fellow royal councillor and friend Thomas, earl of Arundel, set out to France and helped the Burgundians to defeat the Armagnacs, who were threatening Paris.27 From Henry IV’s perspective, it was one thing for his son to act as ruler while channelling the king’s will, but quite another for him to take the initiative and effectively countermand his father’s wishes. This was made all the more ominous for the king because it seems likely that the expedition of 1411 was cancelled because he was not well enough to lead it. When the duke of Burgundy’s envoys met Henry IV and asked him for military support, Walsingham reports the king’s answer as follows: We advise you not to take the initiative in this matter and join battle with your enemy [Charles, duke of Orléans], seeing that he seems to be justly harassing you because of the death of his father [Louis, duke of Orléans], which, so it is said, was cunningly engineered by you.28 But, as far as you can, consider how to calm down the angry young man and promise him a reasonable satisfaction that takes account of the wishes of both sides. If, after this, he still does not decide to stop attacking you, withdraw to a safer part of your dominions, and there assemble forces sufficient to repel his violent attack.29 In some respects recommending a diplomatic attitude to a fellow seasoned ruler as the best means of dealing with the situation, and suggesting the reservation of armed conflict for defensive necessity, seems eminently sensible. Charles of Orléans was perhaps not the only ‘angry young man’ whom Henry IV sought to assuage at this point, knowing that his son was keen to aid the Burgundians. But, taken in concert with his poor health, and the cancelled campaign, this approach ran the risk of giving the impression that he had suggested a diplomatic approach because his martial powers were fading. 71
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HENRY V
This was a challenging issue for any ageing king, but arguably especially so for Henry IV given that his forceful adult manhood had played such a key role in the claims for his right to rule in place of Richard II. After Henry was acclaimed as king by the lords and estates Archbishop Arundel took as the text for his sermon 1 Samuel 9:17: ‘Vir fortis dominabitur populo, that ys to sey, “A stronge mon shall be lorde ouer the peple”’ as a chronicler later expressed it.30 According to Adam of Usk in this sermon Arundel ‘praised unreservedly the vigour, good sense, and other qualities of the duke of Lancaster, commending him, and deservedly, as a ruler’.31 Henry IV had been a figure of virile, chivalrous renown in his youth, and it is not hard to imagine the frustration which his failing body would have aroused, perhaps made even worse by intimations that this illness was divine retribution for his sins (even if he did not believe this himself).32 It is likely that he felt both disillusioned and insecure as a result, and this would inevitably have soured his relationship with a son who so abundantly enjoyed all the qualities which he had now lost, especially when that son was arrogating his prerogative. Aird’s conclusions about William the Conqueror and Robert Curthose apply to Henry IV and Prince Henry: ‘the son both embodied the ambitions of the father and yet, through his physical presence, reminded the patriarch of his mortality and appeared as a rival for his position as paterfamilias’.33 There are even suggestions that either Prince Henry and/or his coterie went so far as to try to persuade the king to abdicate.34 But even if they did not actually articulate this Henry IV may have feared it as a possibility, especially given the circumstances in which he himself had come to the throne. Prince Henry certainly fits the stereotype of an ambitious young man, refusing to wait his turn for power within the patriarchal hierarchy patiently and submissively.35 This image is also conveyed by Monstrelet’s story of the Prince precipitately carrying off the crown from beside Henry IV’s deathbed, while his father yet lived.36 Circumstances suggest that this does reflect something of the prince’s actual feelings. Having acquitted himself so well in Wales, and then as stand-in king, Prince Henry must have questioned why he should remain subordinate when he was so obviously better fitted to be king than his ailing father. In addition, some have suggested that Prince Henry’s relationship with his father had always been rather equivocal. Not much is known of Prince Henry’s childhood but it seems that he did not see a great deal of his father, although this was not in itself an uncommon occurrence for aristocratic children at the time. More specifically, McFarlane traced the roots of the later opposition between father and son in the prince’s esteem for Richard II.37 Richard took Prince Henry with him to Ireland in May of 1399 and, while there, knighted him.38 According to a later tradition Richard prophesied the young Henry’s future greatness.39 A further manifestation of Henry’s regard for Richard II has been seen in his reburial of the king as one of his first acts upon accession in 1413. While this was a 72
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SON AND BROTHER
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political act designed to emphasize Henry V’s legitimacy by symbolically presenting himself as heir to Richard II, it is possible that the presentation of Richard as his ‘chosen’ father was also an expression of affection.40 If Prince Henry did indeed maintain some sympathy or feeling for Richard II of which his father was aware, this may also help to make sense of the fact that Henry IV’s favourite son seems to have been his second: Thomas.41 Regardless of whether or not he actively encouraged Henry IV to step down, Prince Henry’s assumption of government had compromised his father’s authority. The Burgundian envoys mentioned above had authorization from the duke to deal with ‘the king and the prince’.42 This may have been what brought it home to Henry IV that he was no longer considered by a fellow ruler (and therefore also by others) to be in absolute control. This would have inspired fears that he was in danger of being bypassed altogether. It was crucial that the king readopt a hegemonic position to prove that he was far from a politically impotent figurehead. Through his measures in depriving Prince Henry and his allies of their positions, Henry IV re-established himself as the dominant figure in government, telling parliament firmly on 5 November 1411 that he would brook no novelties in their proceedings and restoring Archbishop Arundel to the chancellorship the following January.43 Henry IV remained dominant for the rest of his reign, but his relationship with his son was badly damaged. Prince Henry had proven himself in both warfare and government but was now reduced to a subordinate position. Having been, in essence, ruler of England, it must have been both galling and humiliating to be publicly emasculated in political terms. Prince Henry still had his own household and following, but, as Aird notes in relation to Robert Curthose: ‘the son’s exclusion from power by his father undermined his self-image and weakened the force of the persona which he presented to his peers and to social inferiors within this hierarchical society.’44 To make matters worse, Henry IV chose at this point to give prominence to Prince Thomas, Prince Henry’s junior by a year. John Hardyng later claimed that Thomas essentially replaced Henry: The Prynce was than discharged of counsayll: His brother Thomas than, for the Kynges avayll, Was in his stede than sette by ordynaunce, For whiche the Prynce and he fell at distaunce.45 Up to this point Thomas had not distinguished himself in royal service.46 He had been made lieutenant of Ireland in 1401 as a result of Henry IV’s concern that the Irish would weigh in on the side of the Welsh. But Thomas did not apply himself to the role, which may in part have been because he did not receive the salary which had been arranged to support him. Unlike Prince Henry, he had no estates from which to draw an alternative income. Thomas returned permanently to court in 1409 probably because 73
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HENRY V
Henry IV wanted him to hand, following his serious bout of illness at the beginning of that year. Prince Henry and the council attempted to remove Thomas from the lieutenancy. However, Thomas refused to give up the position, partly because of its prestige, and because it was (in theory) a source of income. But when in June 1410 he applied to the council to pay the debts owed to him as lieutenant he was told that these would only be paid if he went back to Ireland and did his job.47 One can detect in these negotiations the exasperation of Prince Henry with his rather feckless younger brother. Thomas did not return to Ireland, however, and it seems more than a coincidence that in August 1410 he had obtained a papal dispensation to marry Margaret Holland, the widow of his half uncle John Beaufort, earl of Somerset. By this means Thomas gained access to considerable estates, worth £1,400 a year, and also the wardship of Somerset’s heirs and inheritance. Was this Henry IV’s way of answering the council’s treatment of his favourite son, by ensuring Thomas’ financial independence? In fact the wedding did not take place until 1412, after Henry IV had resumed control. But the fact that his younger brother’s marriage had been arranged before his may well have been a cause of some annoyance for Prince Henry. Marriage was one of the events marking the onset of manhood and while being unmarried did not make Henry unmanly per se, he probably felt it to be anomalous and perhaps insulting to his position that provision was made for his younger brother first. Thomas had arguably done very little to deserve it. Henry had earned his manhood in Wales, Thomas was simply given the economic wherewithal to acquire it by his father. This had political ramifications which were surely also not lost on Henry. Indeed, it may be that one of the reasons he was keen to pursue the Burgundian alliance was because part of the package offered by the envoys in 1411 was a marriage with Anne, daughter of the duke.48 But once Henry IV had re-established himself and, with the encouragement of Thomas, pursued an alliance with the Armagnacs (sealed by the Treaty of Bourges in May 1412) such a marriage was no longer a possibility.49 The ascendancy of Thomas was further underlined when in early June he was formally appointed to take charge of the military force which was sent to aid the duke of Orléans against Burgundy, in the hope that this would lead to the recovery of Aquitaine.50 It seems that, once again, Henry IV had intended to lead it, but was not well enough to do so, and the significance of the leadership being given to the as yet unproven Thomas, rather than the experienced Henry, cannot have been lost on anyone. Given Prince Henry’s known pro-Burgundian stance it would have been problematic to place him in charge of a force intended to aid the Armagnacs, but evidently the bypassing of Henry was not understood in purely practical or diplomatic terms at the time. Henry did not react well to his brother’s appointment and retreated angrily to his estates, with an unwise display of armed support and bravado. This gave rise to dangerous rumours which reached the ears of the king. 74
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SON AND BROTHER
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Evidence for Prince Henry’s perception that these events posed a serious threat to his own position is preserved by Walsingham. Directly after stating that Thomas had been given the French command Walsingham reproduces an open letter which Henry issued under his seal on 17 June ‘to almost all part of the kingdom, seeking to rebut the lies of his critics’.51 This letter was explicitly designed to counter dangerous rumours which had evidently arisen about his recent conduct. Henry began by pledging his support to his father’s foreign policy and the planned campaign to France, and actually claimed that ‘his serene highness named me as the one who could expect to accompany him’ and that he had been assigned ‘a fixed number of troops’ to accompany him.52 However, Henry, ‘quickly noticing’ that the number of troops was not sufficient to allow him to render ‘honourable service’ to his father, ‘humbly begged his royal majesty’ for permission to consult various of his relations, friends and retainers in order to assemble a larger force. ‘For then I would be able to please and satisfy my royal father, take measures for my own security and honour, and, helped by an adequate force, be able to further the general good of this kingdom, which is my fervent wish and desire above all else.’ Henry IV granted this request and Prince Henry made for ‘my city of Coventry’ in order to gather more men, carefully noting that he had not travelled with an armed force or ‘supported by any uprising from the people’. But then some sons of iniquity, nurselings of dissent, schismatic fomenters, sowers of anger and agents of discord, with their usual behaviour of envying the stable foundation of the king’s security and desiring with a serpentine cunning to upset the ordered succession of the throne, who, so I believe, will aim to be dyed-in-the-wool villains until the end of their days, these villains, God be my witness, struck at my innocence with their evil lips and tongues of trickery. For they, in a sudden flight of the imagination, wickedly suggested to my most reverend father and lord, whose happiness is desired beyond every other thing by me and most of the other nobles and princes of this land, that I was affected with a bloody desire for the crown of England, that I was planning an unbelievably horrific crime and would rise up against my own father at the head of a popular outbreak of violence, and that in this way I would seize his sceptre and other royal insignia on the grounds that my father and liege lord was living a life to which he had no proper title and which relied on tyrannical persuasion.53 Henry also stated that the same people had ‘tried to separate and snatch away from me the faithful hearts of the people, whose support I hoped was a sure source of strength’ by spreading the rumour that he was trying to prevent the French expedition, when in fact he was in full support of it ‘heart and body’.54 75
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HENRY V
The implications of this letter are that Henry realized his conduct was a matter of public speculation and that this had left him in a vulnerable position, which had to be redressed. Henry’s first concern was to deal with perceptions that he had been snubbed by his father when Thomas was awarded leadership of the expedition, by claiming that he was supposed to have been at his father’s side but that the issue of troop numbers prevented his immediate involvement. Perhaps this was intended to suggest that Thomas was therefore merely the reserve pressed into service by necessity. However, the contention that his father intended him to have a role and that his actions in Coventry were a result of this seems to be a fabrication on Henry’s part, and therefore an attempt to save face.55 Having attempted to recast his actions in less suspicious terms, the main substance of the letter after this constitutes an attempt to save his position as heir. Perhaps he and his followers had discussed the desirability of Henry IV’s abdication, out of frustration over the direction of foreign policy, and in the light of further evidence that he was no longer capable of personal command. If so, Prince Henry’s followers were playing on Prince Henry’s aspirations as much for their own benefit as for his.56 Whatever Henry and his followers were actually doing or planning, what is most important is how they appeared to others, and especially to the king. The English Life, in a passage based on the reminiscences of Ormond, who was part of Thomas’ household at this time, states that ‘the Kinge suspected that he [Prince Henry] woulde usurp the Crowne’.57 Although Henry’s detractors were not explicitly named by him in the letter it is easy to imagine the capital which Thomas and Arundel would have made of these rumours. Many of Henry IV’s household and officials may also have been angered by Prince Henry’s apparent disloyalty to his father, as well as worried about the ramifications of his ambitions for their own positions.58 Regardless of whether Thomas actively lobbied to be recognized as heir, or whether Henry IV would really have countenanced such a measure, it was evidently deemed a realistic possibility by Prince Henry and one that needed to be immediately counteracted. Otherwise why publicize it in these terms? He had already been removed from government and supplanted by Thomas, now rumour was essentially painting him as a traitor and Prince Henry may even have feared that there would be an attempt to convict him as such. At the very least these rumours were undermining Prince Henry’s qualification to rule, and doing so in gendered terms, by presenting him as an unruly, rebellious youth, not willing to submit to the authority of his father, nor able to exercise the necessary self-control over his pride and ambition. Significantly the English Life, quoting Ormond, states that part of the reason the king was suspicious of his son’s behaviour was because of ‘th’actes of youth’.59 In his letter Prince Henry clearly recognized the importance not simply of explaining away apparently incriminating circumstances, but of presenting himself as the epitome of the dutiful and subservient son: ‘my 76
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SON AND BROTHER
affection, love, loyalty and obedience towards that serene highness, my most feared father and lord, the illustrious king of England and of France, is so strong that no humble son could conceive or show greater.’60 Prince Henry here acknowledged and submitted to the force of patriarchal hierarchy, as a means of trying to safeguard his position. In the letter he emphasized that he was not selfish and ambitious, nor dissembling, stating his words to be ‘the naked truth of the matter’.61 He presented himself as having acted solely for the good of the king and the kingdom; it was those pouring poison into his father’s ears who sought that the realm ‘should in future be lashed by harmful discord, that civil strife should take the place of peace, that insecurity should follow security, and that war should follow peace’. Henry was represented as the ideal prince, by implication it was Thomas who had the potential to harm the common good. Having issued this letter Prince Henry also returned to court, as Walsingham put it, ‘To show still more clearly the truth of the foregoing … he came to the king with a large crowd of friends and a retinue of servants bigger than any that had been seen before during those days.’ It seems unlikely that this was an armed force intent on making his father abdicate. Instead it appears that the prince came to London with such a substantial following rather to remind his father that not everyone gave credence to the rumours and that he still enjoyed considerable support.62 This was as much as to say that should the king really seek to alter the succession, Prince Henry could not lightly be set aside, especially as support for the newly pro-Armagnac foreign policy was far from universal. Having met his father Prince Henry ‘made one petition of the king, namely that if his accusers were found guilty, they should be punished not indeed according to their deserts, but, after their lies had been discovered, on the merciful side of justice.’63 This further countered the rumours by emphasizing that Henry did not seek revenge, but understood the importance of dispassionate justice and mercy, even for those who had so unfairly accused him. According to Walsingham ‘The king indeed seemed to assent to this request’ but then essentially fobbed Henry off, saying that ‘they ought to wait for the occasion of the next parliament, so that such people as these might be punished by the judgement of their equals’.64 While the immediate tension and danger had been diffused, Prince Henry was not entirely reassured of his standing, especially as in July Thomas was created earl of Aumale and duke of Clarence. Additionally, in what Peter McNiven judges to have been ‘a deliberate slight’ to Prince Henry, Thomas was appointed royal lieutenant in Aquitaine, despite the fact that Henry had been duke of the territory since his father’s accession.65 Henry may have hoped that his brother would not acquit himself well in France, which would have seemed a safe bet given Thomas’ career to date. But in fact Thomas’ campaign, while it did not secure Aquitaine or achieve much in the way of tangible political benefits for England, was judged a personal success, both financially and because it finally earned him a warrior leader’s renown. 77
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HENRY V
As Hardyng later described it: ‘And so thurgh ffraunce withouten resistence/ Into Guyen he rode with greate honoure/ To kepe that londe and be thayr gouernoure.’66 Harriss claims that ‘[m]any regarded Thomas as the more kingly and warlike figure’ which would have been a disturbing development for Prince Henry, whose position apparently remained vulnerable.67 This was intensified by the circulation of further rumours designed to call his probity as a military leader into question by alleging that he had embezzled the wages of the garrison at Calais.68 Some of the stories of Prince Henry’s riotous misbehaviour as a youth (discussed below) may also have been part of this campaign to discredit him, in circulating the impression that he simply did not possess necessary qualities of adult manhood to rule. Ormond’s account suggests that Prince Henry remained concerned that such rumours could have a detrimental impact on his succession, having been ‘aduertised of his father’s iealosie and mistrust by some his secret friends of the Kings council’.69 Henry therefore sought another meeting with his father at the end of September. Dressed in blue with a gold armband displaying the Lancastrian double Ss he waited on his father at Westminster ‘with greate Companie of Lords’, commanding them to wait by the fire in the hall ‘to giue the lesse occasion of mistrust to the Kinge his father’ while he went into Henry IV’s presence alone.70 In front of the king and a handful of the king’s closest associates the prince knelt and addressed the king: ‘Most redoubted Lorde and father I ame this time come to your presence as your Liegeman, and as your sonn naturall, in all things to obey your Grace as my Soueraigne Lorde and father.’71 The prince acknowledged his father’s suspicion that ‘I would vsurpe your Crowne’ but stated this to be absolutely groundless, saying that it would be his duty to punish anyone who threatened the crown. He went on to say that he had made confession and taken communion earlier in the day, feeling that he deserved to die because of ‘that feare that ye haue of me, that am your naturall sonn and liegeman’. He then handed his dagger to the king desiring that it should be used to kill him: ‘my Lord and father, my life is not so desirous to me that I woulde liue one day that I shoulde be to your displeasure, nor I couet not so much my life, as I doe your pleasure and welfare.’72 The prince ended by forgiving the king for his death, upon which the king cast aside the dagger and embraced and kissed his son in floods of tears, admitting that he had been suspicious, but now realized that this was baseless and ‘seeinge this your humilitie and faithfulness, I shall neither slay you, nor frome henceforth anie more haue you in mistrust, for no reporte that shalbe made vnto me’.73 By this meeting Prince Henry submitted absolutely to his father’s will, subjugating himself in a dramatic public gesture. The fact that the surviving written account dates from a century later inevitably calls some of the detail into question, but in substance it fits well with the direction of events, and with what we know of Prince Henry’s understanding of the importance of self-image.74 The detailed account of his 78
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SON AND BROTHER
curious blue outfit, ‘made full of iletts or holes, and at euerie ilet the needle wherewith it was made hanging there by the thridde of silk’, reads as if it were based on an eyewitness account, and it is plausible that Ormond was actually present.75 It appears that Prince Henry, having made another display of the volume of his support, decided that his safest course of action was to appease his father and toe the line while waiting patiently for death to resolve the issue. Certainly there is no further evidence of significant friction between them. Thus Henry IV’s illness and decline played a decisive role in creating and maintaining the rivalry between Princes Henry and Thomas. It is conceivable that, only too aware of his failing body and the implications of this for his exercise of power, Henry IV deliberately played his sons off against each other. In these terms the events of 1412 tell us something about a vulnerable patriarch’s management of his family in ways that ensured his sons remained subordinate to him.76 The promotion of Thomas acted as a counterbalance to Henry’s sense of importance and dangerously frustrated ambition. The wording of Prince Henry’s alleged charges against his father as ‘living a life to which he had no proper title and which relied on tyrannical persuasion’ had resonances with those used to depose Richard II, but with the implication here that Richard had been the rightful king, whose power Henry IV had usurped.77 If it is true that Prince Henry had some marked affection for Richard II and was seen to be staking a claim, in part, on the grounds of being Richard’s heir (by right if not birth) then this would have made matters both political and personal. Henry IV was not the only king to feel threatened by an energetic eldest son, but the means by which he had come to power probably made him feel this more acutely than most. Perhaps he was also following a policy of ‘divide and conquer’: setting his two eldest sons in opposition to each other served to defend his own position. Thomas owed his prominence in 1412 entirely to his father’s patronage and, as such, was doubtless expected to provide acquiescent support to Henry IV. If Thomas began to prove difficult to manage, there was always John (in his early 20s by 1412 and serving as warden of the east march) to bring to prominence in his place, with Humfrey just a year younger.78 It is certainly striking that Thomas was the only one of Henry’s sons to marry in his lifetime when it was the norm for high status men to marry, or at least have marriages arranged for them, in their teens. Henry IV himself had been 14 (possibly only 13) when he married. Moreover, Henry IV used his two daughters to forge international alliances; Blanche was married to Ludwig, eldest son of Rupert, count palatine of the Rhine and king of the Romans, while Philippa married Erik VII, king of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The fact that Prince Henry remained unmarried was to some extent a product of the vagaries of international diplomacy and England’s changing stance in relation to France and Burgundy. But given the state of Prince Henry’s relationship with his father in 79
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HENRY V
the latter years of the reign, it may also be that Henry IV sought to prolong (in some senses at least) the youth and dependence of his eldest son by leaving him unmarried.79 On his deathbed Henry IV reportedly expressed to Prince Henry the fear that ‘some discord shall sourd and arise betwixt thee and Thomas, thie Brother, the Duke of Clarence, whereby the realme may be brought to distrucion and misserie, for I knowe you both to be of so greate stomake and courage’.80 Henry reassured his father that ‘I shall honour and loue my Brothers aboue all men, as longe as they be to me true, faithfull and obedient to their Soueraigne Lorde’, but went on to warn that ‘if anie of them fortune to conspire or rebel against me, I assure you I shall as soone execute Justice vppon anie one of them as I shall vppon the worst and most simplest person within this your Realme.’ Once Henry became king there was no trace of further strife between him and Thomas, who became a vital mainstay of Henry’s efforts in France. It may well be that Thomas viewed his elder brother somewhat resentfully, but there is no direct evidence of this.81 Thus the final years of Henry IV’s reign had seen Prince Henry provide proof of his governmental abilities, but had also witnessed serious attempts to represent him as unfit to rule. This mixed legacy was tackled immediately once Henry V ascended the throne by the construction of a style of kingship which presented him as the embodiment of virtuous manhood.
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Notes 1 To avoid confusion I will refer to Henry V as Prince Henry in this chapter. 2 Gwilym Dodd and Douglas Biggs (eds), The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion and Survival, 1403–1413 (York: York Medieval Press, 2008); A. L. Brown and Henry Summerson, ‘Henry IV (1367–1413)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/12951, accessed 28 Jan. 2013]. Chris Given-Wilson’s biography of Henry IV is currently in progress. 3 At around the time that Henry began fighting in France Richard Ullerston dedicated to him a brief treatise on the duties of knighthood, De Officio Militari; J.E. Krochalis, ‘The books and reading of Henry V and his circle’, Chaucer Review 23 (1988), 50–77 (61–62). 4 Chronica Maiora, p. 328; Walsingham (who died in about 1422) is often identified as the last great English monastic chronicler, see James G. Clark, A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans: Thomas Walsingham and his Circle, c. 1350–1440 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). For the fifteenth-century portion of his chronicle in the original with parallel translation, The St Albans Chronicle volume 2, 1394–1422: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, ed. John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs and Leslie Watkiss (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011). For Henry’s injury see also TLF, p. 3; English Life, p. 10. I will mostly quote the English translation of TLF, while noting points at which it diverges from the original. 5 S.J. Lang, ‘Bradmore, John (d. 1412)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/45759, accessed 29 Jan. 2013] and S.J. Lang, ‘John Bradmore and his book Philomena’, Social History of Medicine, 5 (1992), 121–30. 6 Allmand, pp. 16–38 for a full account of Henry’s experiences in Wales. 7 Chronica Maiora, pp. 356–58. 8 Allmand, p. 34.
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19
20 21 22 23 24 25
26
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27 28 29 30 31 32
33 34
Ibid. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., pp. 35–38. TLF, pp. 3–4; English Life, pp. 9–10. English Life, p. 9; TLF, p. 3. Allmand, pp. 39–58 for Henry’s political activities from 1406 to 1413. Peter McNiven, ‘The problem of Henry IV’s health, 1405–13’, English Historical Review 100 (1985), 747–72. Although popularly identified as leprosy by contemporaries, Henry probably suffered from some sort of circulatory illness. Allmand, pp. 42–43. For William Caxton’s 1474 translation of de Cessolis see The Game and Playe of the Chesse, ed. Jenny Adams (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2009), available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/ajgpint.htm, accessed 5 Feb. 2013]. Derek Pearsall, ‘Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes: the poetics of royal self-representation’, Speculum 69 (1994), 386–410 (389); see also Paul Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation 1399–1422 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 173–95. The Regiment survives in over forty manuscripts; one of these, British Library Arundel MS 38, includes a depiction of Henry giving the book to a kneeling noble, possibly John Mowbray, second duke of Norfolk, see http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=2635 [accessed 4 Feb. 2013]. Hoccleve, Regiment, ll. 2129–42. Lydgate noted in his prologue to the Troy Book that Henry enjoyed reading, see above, p. 51; J.E. Krochalis, ‘The books and reading of Henry V and his circle’, 50–77 for Henry’s literary tastes. Harriss, ‘Introduction: the Exemplar of Kingship’ in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 1–30 (p. 9). PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116517, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. Björn Weiler, ‘Kings and sons: princely rebellions and the structures of revolt in western Europe, c. 1170–c. 1280’, Historical Research 215 (2009), 17–40 (18, 40). W.M. Aird, ‘Frustrated masculinity: the relationship between William the Conqueror and his eldest son’ in Dawn M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1999), pp. 39–55; see also his Robert Curthose: Duke of Normandy (c. 1050–1134) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), pp. 60–98. Allmand, pp. 50–56. ‘Armagnac’ is the title given to the supporters of Charles, duke of Orléans (see Walsingham’s quotation which follows). His father-in-law was the count of Armagnac. Ibid., p. 52. EHD, pp. 200–201 for a translation of Jean Juvenal des Ursins’ account of the murder, which took place in 1407. Chronica Maiora, p. 382. English Chronicle, p. 25. See also Chronia Maiora, p. 311. The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, (ed.) Chris Given-Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 69. McNiven, ‘Henry IV’s health’, pp. 747–59 for the widespread currency of Henry IV’s illness as leprosy and the interpretation of it as a punishment upon him, pp. 766–68 for possible psychological factors, especially guilt and disillusionment. A. Tuck, ‘Henry IV and chivalry’ in Gwilym Dodd and Douglas Biggs (eds), Henry IV: the Establishment of the Regime (York: York Medieval Press, 2003), pp. 55–71. Aird, ‘Frustrated masculinity’, p. 55 McNiven, ‘Henry IV’s health’, p. 764.
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HENRY V
35 Alexandra Shephard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 25–29. 36 Allmand, p. 58 suggests there may be an element of truth in the story. 37 K.B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 104–5, 121–22. 38 Allmand, p. 12. 39 TLF, p. 3; English Life, p. 8. 40 Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, p. 117. 41 I shall refer to Thomas by his first name in this chapter. 42 Allmand, p. 51. 43 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116517, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. 44 Aird, ‘Frustrated masculinity’, pp. 48–49. 45 English Life, p. xxiii. This comes from the first recension of the chronicle dedicated to Henry VI in the later 1450s. The version edited and published by Henry Ellis is Hardyng’s revised version which addresses Edward IV, The Chronicle of John Hardyng, ed. Henry Ellis (London: F.C. and J. Rivington et al., 1812). 46 G.L. Harriss, ‘Thomas, duke of Clarence (1387–1421)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27198, accessed 29 Jan. 2013] for the details of Thomas’ exploits which follow, see also Allmand, p. 53. 47 PPC 1, pp. 339–41 for Thomas’ petition and the council’s answer. 48 Chronica Maiora, p. 328; EHD, p. 204. There had been talk of a possible Burgundian match for Henry back in 1395, Allmand, p. 10. Henry’s marriage was also discussed in 1409, when it was first mooted that he should marry his eventual bride Catherine de Valois, see below pp. 96–97. 49 Chronica Maiora, p. 387 notes that the king’s change of tack here was unexpected. EHD, pp. 204–5 for the terms of the treaty. 50 Allmand, p. 55. 51 Chronica Maiora, pp. 386–87 (p. 386). 52 Ibid., p. 386 for this and what follows; Peter McNiven, ‘Prince Henry and the political crisis of 1412’, History 65 (1980), 1–16 for full discussion of the context. 53 Ibid., p. 386. 54 Ibid., p. 387. 55 McNiven, ‘Prince Henry’, 9–10 for detailed discussion of the evidence supporting this reading. 56 Cf. Aird, ‘Frustrated masculinity’, p. 51 on the actions of Robert Curthose’s followers. 57 English Life, p. 11; pp. 11–16 entirely derives from the account said to have been made by Ormond. 58 McNiven, ‘Prince Henry’, p. 14. 59 English Life, p. 11. 60 Chronica Maiora, p. 387. 61 Ibid. for this and what follows. 62 Allmand, p. 57. 63 Chronia Maiora, p. 387. 64 Ibid. 65 McNiven, ‘Prince Henry’, p. 15. 66 English Life, p. xxiii. 67 Harriss, ‘Thomas, duke of Clarence’. 68 Allmand, p. 57. 69 English Life, p. 11. 70 Ibid., pp. 11–12. 71 Ibid., p. 12, for this and what follows.
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72 Ibid., p. 13. 73 Ibid. 74 As argued by Pearsall, ‘Hoccleve’s Regement’, p. 392: ‘It is difficult to imagine a more spectacular act of theatrical self-representation.’ 75 English Life, p. 12 for the outfit. Pearsall interprets Henry’s appearance as being ‘of high estate deliberately undone and made vulnerable, or innate nobility deliberately humbled without loss of dignity’, ‘Hoccleve’s Regement’, p. 392. 76 Cf. Aird’s assessment of William the Conqueror, ‘Frustrated masculinity’, passim. This contrasts with Edward III’s careful management of his five adult sons and their consequent loyalty to his regime, W.M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his family’, Journal of British Studies 26 (1987), 398–422. 77 Chronica Maiora, p. 386. 78 Aird, ‘Frustrated masculinity’, p. 52 for William’s promotion of William Rufus and Henry against their elder brother Robert as a means of controlling Robert’s dangerous ambition. 79 Ibid., pp. 46–47 for the suggestion that this is how William treated Robert. 80 English Life, p. 14 for this and what follows; again this is from Ormond’s account, see below p. 91 for the later tradition of Henry IV’s deathbed advice. 81 See below, pp. 123–25.
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4 THE N EW MAN
Henry IV died on 20 March 1413 and Henry V was crowned soon after, on 9 April. There was a great sense of expectation attendant on Henry’s accession, the sense of a new start and the upturn in England’s fortunes.1 This sense of renaissance may lie behind what was to become a key element of Henry V’s posthumous reputation: the idea that his elevation to the throne transformed him not simply into a king, but into a new man. Walsingham provides the earliest account:
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And indeed as soon as he was invested with the emblems of royalty, he suddenly became a different man. His care now was for selfrestraint and goodness and gravity, and there was no kind of virtue which he put on one side and did not desire to practice himself. His conduct and behaviour were an example to all men, clergy and laity alike, and those to whom it was granted to follow in his footsteps accounted themselves happy.2 This transformation was aided by the ritual of the coronation itself, which saw the king bathed and then ‘clothed with spotless apparel and shod only with socks’.3 The rite explains that this should be done so that ‘as the prince’s body glistens by the actual washing and the beauty of the vestments, so his soul may shine by true and previous confession and penitence’.4 Although Walsingham does not say so explicitly, the implication of his account is that Henry had not been concerned with self-restraint, goodness and gravity before. It is true that the earliest life, the Gesta Henrici Quinti, does not make reference to Henry as having undergone a conversion. But explicit stories of his wild youth certainly appear within the accounts of his life written for those who knew him, set down within twenty years of his death. According to Pseudo-Elmham: The Prince was in his youth an assiduous cultor of lasciviousness, and addicted exceedingly to instruments of music. Passing the bounds of modesty, he was the fervent soldier of Venus as well as of 84
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THE NEW MAN
Mars; youthlike, he was fired with her torches, and in the midst of the worthy works of war found leisure for the excesses common to ungoverned age.5 Frulovisi also noted Henry’s love of music and participation in the feats of Venus and Mars.6 But both recount that Henry IV’s death had a profound effect: After whose death the Prince, as he that shoulde succeed his father in his raigne, called to him a virtuous Monke of holie conuersacion, to whome he confessed himself of all his offences, trespasses and insolencies of times past. And in all things at that time he reformed and amended his life and his manners. So after the decease of his father was neuer no youth nor wildness, that might haue anie place in him, but all his acts were sodenlie changed into grauitie and discretion.7 The image of Henry pulling on the figurative clothes of a new, virtuous life draws on the language St Paul used in his letters, describing how the adoption of Christian faith involved taking off the old self, and putting on the new.8 It may have drawn some of its inspiration from the example of one of England’s most popular saints. After describing Henry’s conversion the sixteenth-century translator of the English life states:
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And in that he had grace of our Lord to accomplish in him that thinge that is written of Th’arch Bisshopp of Canterbury of whom it is saide Subito mutatus est in virum alium, which is to saye he was sodenlie changed into a newe man.9 The archbishop in question here is Thomas Becket. The use of the ‘new man’ topos to describe his profound alteration on becoming archbishop dates back to the earliest twelfth-century accounts of his life and was a standard part of later medieval versions too.10 The translator is the only one of Henry’s biographers to make this point explicitly, but in so doing he alerts us to a gloss on Henry’s change which is likely to have been recognized in the fifteenth century too.11 The stories of Henry’s conversion subsequently reached a much wider audience via the Brut chronicle; this version dates to the late 1460s: Here is to be noted þat þis King Henry þe Fyft, was A noble prince after he was King & crowned. how-be-it, tofore in his youth he had bene wilde & recheles, & spared nothing of his lustes & desires, but Accomplisshed þam after his lykyngs; but as sone as he was crowned, enoynted & sacred, Anon sodenly he was chaunged into a 85
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HENRY V
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new man, & sett al his entent to lyve vertuously, in mayntenyng of holy church, destroyng of heretikes, keping Iustice, & defending of his Reame and subgectes.12 The Brut also recounted that on becoming king Henry purged his household of the men and women who had shared his wild youth, keeping only the three sober men who had steadfastly criticized his conduct. According to the Brut Henry also consulted his step-grandmother Katherine Swynford, because she kept a household famed for its good governance, and asked her to provide him with twelve gentlemen to replace those whom he had dismissed.13 Some Victorian scholars were sceptical of the validity of these stories, presumably because they were unwilling to besmirch Henry’s exemplary character.14 But more recently there has been a tendency to treat them as owing something to the reality of Henry’s behaviour while prince and/or the perception of it.15 They can be seen as evidence not simply of the usefulness of Henry as a model after his death, but also as testament to what Derek Pearsall describes as his ‘care and skill in documentary self-representation’.16 Approached in this way they further illuminate Henry’s understanding of the importance of embodying his subjects’ expectations of the ideal king, and also his understanding of the crucial role which ideal masculinity played within this. The pre-accession Henry appears as the embodiment of adolescence, understood as an indispensable transitional precursor to manhood.17 Rachel E. Moss explores the practical circumstances (a gap of several years between puberty and marriage) which gave rise to a culture in which it was apparently fairly typical for young men to be sexually active before marriage, and the extent to which this was ‘accepted and perhaps expected’, although with a certain measure of care and discretion.18 There is also evidence that greater sexual licence was allowed to higher status men; Phillips observes that sumptuary legislation restricted sexually suggestive clothing, which enhanced a man’s legs, buttocks and crotch, to the nobility, ‘implying that their rank exempted them from the morality applied to lesser mortals. Sartorial excess and blatant sexuality were permitted as a marker of elite masculinity.’19 Moss notes that fathering bastards was not entirely socially acceptable, precisely because they presented unequivocal proof of sexual immorality.20 But many high status men in this period were known to have fathered illegitimate children, including all three of Henry’s brothers.21 Thomas, duke of Clarence was probably only in his mid teens when he fathered his son John, and the two fought side by side in France. John was with his father when Clarence was killed at Baugé and Walsingham describes him as having ‘bravely snatched the body from the hands of the French, and sent it to the duchess [of Clarence]’.22 John, duke of Bedford’s two illegitimate children, John and Mary, were apparently born before his 86
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THE NEW MAN
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marriage to Anne of Burgundy in 1423. Humfrey, duke of Gloucester also had two illegitimate children, Arthur and Antigone, also probably born before he married Jacqueline of Hainault probably in 1422.23 It is significant that we do not know the identities of the mothers of these children, and that they accrued no position from their relationships with the princes (or at least none which has left a trace in the sources).24 The princes were therefore seen to indulge sexual urges but not to the extent of allowing their mistresses any kind of influence over them.25 They fulfil the stereotype of youthful immorality, forsworn at marriage. His brothers’ antics make it likely that Henry himself enjoyed similar liberties as a youth, especially as he spent so much of it within the setting of an army on campaign. Soldiers were not noted for their sexual continence and Frulovisi referred to Henry as having enjoyed ‘the licence of a soldier’s life’.26 Henry is not known to have fathered any illegitimate children before his accession, although if he did live like his brothers it may simply have been a matter of luck that he produced no lasting evidence. Being sexually active and potent was evidently one way of demonstrating virility and valorized as such in certain settings. However, the ideal ruler, as an exemplar of manhood, was not youthfully randy, but maturely chaste, so any inclination Henry may have had to yield to youthful vices had to be extirpated once he became king. According to rumour, there were other aspects of Henry’s conduct reported to fall short of the standards of adult manhood, which become particularly significant when considered within the context of the prince’s estrangement from his father. An anecdote deriving from Ormond is instructive here in illustrating Henry’s other shortcomings. During his father’s life time, Henry accompanied with some of his younge Lords and gentlemen would awaite in disguised aray for his own receauers, and distress them of theire money. And some time at such enterprises both he and his Companie weare surelie beaten; and when his receauers made to him theire complaints, howe they were distressed and robbed in theire comminge vnto him, he woulde giue them discharges of so much money as they had lost, and besides this that they shoulde not depart from him without greate rewards for theire trouble and vexacions. And he that best and most manly had resisted him and his companie in their enterprise, and of whome he had receaued the greatest and most stroakes, shoulde be sure to receaue of him the greatest and most bounteous rewards.27 This episode gives the impression of Prince Henry’s household as a place where physical fortitude and courage were the most highly prized qualities in a man, but that these were not held in balance, as they should have been, by other qualities such as reason and honesty. The implication that this was 87
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HENRY V
a form of sport for Henry and his companions further emphasizes their unruly immaturity. In this respect the prince becomes emblematic of what Tosh identifies as ‘the problem of young men’ who ‘precociously affect fully adult modes of masculine behaviour in exaggerated or distorted forms’.28 This is clearly not how a good lord should treat his officers, hence this works nicely as an example of what Henry had to leave behind him on becoming king. But the episode could also tell us something about Henry’s response to having been shut out of government. He may well have worried that this would undermine his standing and authority within his own household. Perhaps the receivers were treated like this, in part, because he suspected them of stealing a portion of his income? Their treatment may not simply have been a game, therefore, but a way of reminding them that, despite his public humiliation, he was still dominant over his own household at least.29 Given that Ormond was a member of Prince Thomas’ household, a further possibility is that these stories about Henry’s sexual incontinence and poor lordship were part of the smear campaign discussed above, which Henry feared was intended to depose him as heir.30 The English Life further notes that Henry’s riotous youth and dissolute character were a matter of ‘common fame’.31 So while they may have been a fabrication, these stories were apparently disseminated widely, and in terms which drew their rhetorical power from mirrors for princes. This would be an effective strategy for arguing that Henry was not temperamentally suited to rule, because he was unable to grow up and exercise self-mastery. He personified what Neal terms ‘self-gratifying masculinity’; which was not what anyone wanted in a king.32 Whatever the exact truth of the matter Henry was not prevented from ascending the throne. If there were any lingering concerns about his suitability, deriving from the events of 1412, or from perceptions of his behaviour, the representation of him as a ‘new man’ allowed him to turn these to his advantage, and to make political capital out of them. While the Gesta Henrici Quinti does not describe a conversion, its observation that Henry began his reign ‘young in years but old in experience’ may be an oblique reference to some having had concerns about his fitness to rule.33 Henry was twenty-six at the time but, as discussed earlier, demeanour was felt to be more important than simple age in marking the point at which adolescence had ended. Thus it was vital to emphasize that Henry had none of the problematic qualities of youth, and the Gesta Henrici Quinti underlined his maturity with the statement that ‘he applied his mind with all devotion to encompass what could promote the honour of God, the extension of the Church, the deliverance of his country, and the peace and tranquillity of kingdoms’.34 The fact that it would have served Henry’s purposes to present himself as a new man lends weight to the contention that the story of his ‘conversion’ has its origins in his reign, especially when considered in relation to his reputation in the latter years of his father’s life. Henry V needed 88
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THE NEW MAN
to be seen to reform, even if the reports of his behaviour were more or less manufactured. Indeed, the image of Henry as newly and suddenly embodying the ideal man and king, of him moving from rebellious to regulated masculinity, has all the more power and impact precisely because he had previously been so badly behaved (or was thought to have been).35 Given the apparent acceptance that aristocratic men (especially when young) would not always exemplify the qualities outlined in mirrors for princes, it was all the more significant that Henry was seen to have experienced and given in to lust, but could now exercise restraint.36 The stories of his conversion highlight the extent to which this self-control was an achievement and recognized as such. The English translator claimed that from the death of his father until his marriage Henry ‘neuer had knowledge carnally of weomen’ and he does seem to have lived chaste after his accession.37 Modern responses to this aspect of Henry which characterize him as a ‘prig’ or a ‘prude’ do not allow for the crucial importance that chastity held, not simply as a generic moral quality, but as a guarantee of good rule. His continence was the admirable result of moral and physical struggle in exemplary terms, and therefore evidence of strength, which precluded the intimation that it might proceed from any physical or humoral defect.38 Or, as McFarlane put it, he was not a ‘molly-coddle’.39 Henry had indulged himself formerly but would now control the passions and energies of his youth and channel them more appropriately as king. The night before his coronation the king’s prayers included the request that God should bestow kingly qualities upon him (justice, piety and wisdom) and also that he should be ‘seduced by no lust, and hampered by no other passion’ in his rule.40 When the French cleric Jean Fusoris met Henry at Winchester just before the 1415 campaign he judged that Henry, while lordly in appearance, also had something priestly about him (unlike Thomas, whom Fusoris believed to look more like a soldier than his brother).41 This suggests the blend of desirable qualities which Henry successfully cultivated: the correct balance of contained vigour and devout potency which would ensure both wise and effective rule.42 This image of Henry was further sustained by the religious foundations he sponsored and the personal interest he took in monastic reform. Jeremy Catto identifies Henry as the first king for two hundred years to display something more than conventional piety. He argues that a critical dimension of this was Henry’s understanding of the propagandist potential of religiosity and ritual, thus he made religion a central matter for his government.43 Henry’s status as champion of God and the Church, which formed part of the oath he swore at coronation, served both as the justification for his actions in France, and then the explanation for his triumphs there.44 In 1414 Henry began putting measures in place for the foundation of three new religious houses. Sheen Priory was a house for male religious which followed the Carthusian rule, and Syon Abbey was a house for nuns and priests, following the Brigittine rule.45 These foundations were partly intended to create power-houses of 89
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prayer and sacred legitimacy for the Lancastrian dynasty.46 In an era when many monastic orders were seen to have moved away from the high standards of early monasticism, the Carthusians and Brigittines were noted and admired by contemporaries for their austerity and strict adherence to the demands and discipline of regular life.47 Henry also intended to found a Celestine monastery, an order named after Pope Celestine V (d. 1296) which, like the Carthusian order, followed a rigorous version of the Benedictine rule, requiring its monks to live in eremitical seclusion within the community.48 Henry’s choice of the Brigittine Order may have been a matter of family connection; his sister Philippa was queen of Denmark and Sweden and one of her chief servants was Katarina Knutsdotter, a granddaughter of St Bridget herself.49 His choice of the Brigittines also indicates an interest in recent devotional trends, and Bridget had a special status in England because her revelations made specific comment on the Hundred Years War.50 But Henry’s preference for orders renowned for exacting self-abnegation was also a fitting expression of his own sober self-discipline, as was his involvement in May 1421 with the attempted reform of the Benedictine order in England. As Walsingham described it: various disloyal monks had informed the king’s majesty that their abbots with their friends had wandered far from the pathway, that monastic religious life had fallen away from the standards of its original rule and observances, and that it necessarily followed that it could only be reformed by the king himself and no other.51 This information was the more believable, as most of the senior, leading monks of this order had died, and their places then taken by the unbridled young.52
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If Henry was indeed acknowledged at this time as someone who had reformed his own youthful behaviour this would have given additional weight to his address to a meeting of Benedictine abbots and priors at Westminster on 7 May: the king himself spoke to them about the religious life lived by monks in olden days which had led to his predecessors and others showing their devotion by founding and endowing monasteries, and about the failure of men of his own day to show a similar devotion. He put before them certain matters which they were to put right and he earnestly pleaded with them to return to their former way of life and to pray without ceasing for himself and the well-being of his kingdom and of the church.53 Henry’s attempt to reform the Benedictines was not successful, although it might have had more of an impact if he had not died the following year. But 90
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THE NEW MAN
it remains significant in giving further substance to the representation of Henry as peculiarly concerned with the maintenance of morality, not just for its own sake, but as a means of shoring up his kingship via his ideal manhood. So, what were the more practical consequences of Henry’s virtuous manhood for his kingship? Henry was well aware that the central problem of Henry IV’s reign was that he disappointed the expectations of those who acclaimed him king in not satisfactorily answering his subjects’ frequently reiterated demands for good government. This awareness is indicated by Henry V’s early pre-coronation pledge to the nobility that he would rule well, and to the honour of God, and that if he failed to do so it would be better for him to die and be buried.54 Frulovisi noted that such a promise from a new king was unprecedented in England.55 The first parliament reminded Henry that his father never made good his oft-repeated promises to rule well. On 22 May 1413 the speaker addressed Henry on this subject:
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. . . he recounted how in the time of our lord the king his father, whom God absolve, the said commons had requested good governance on many occasions, and their request had been granted. But our lord the king was well aware of how this was subsequently fulfilled and carried out. And for this reason the said speaker prayed in the name of the said commons that since God had endowed him with great sense, and with many other bounties and virtues, that henceforth he might practise and maintain good governance.56 Henry’s reforged masculinity can thus be seen as a reaction to his father’s status as an imperfect and ultimately degenerate king, just as Henry IV’s manhood had been presented in explicit contrast to Richard II’s immaturity in rhetoric surrounding his accession. Henry did not need to be told what was expected of him, or how to be a good king, but it continued to be important to place him in this register to demonstrate that he was aware of his subjects’ concerns.57 The idea of Henry having learned lessons from his father’s reign and being receptive to good advice was reinforced by the tradition of Henry IV’s deathbed speech to his heir, which became well known.58 Elmham wrote a Latin poem about the death of Henry IV, addressed to Henry V, in which Henry IV reiterates the centrality of personal morality to good rule.59 The mastery which Henry V exercised over himself was seen to be extended to his practice of government and politics. Thus he fulfilled the ideal of mirrors for princes by being qualified to govern the kingdom by his own self-rule. Studies of Henry’s practice of kingship illuminate the depth of his personal involvement and control, and highlight his attention to detail even while abroad in France, made manifest in various letters and instructions issued to his servants.60 The records of administration and bureaucracy provide weight to the narrative sources’ depiction of Henry 91
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HENRY V
as dedicated and tireless. Having apparently given up the ‘idle practices’ of his youth, there is little evidence of his having enjoyed traditional kingly leisure pursuits, demonstrating the degree to which his considerable energies genuinely were focused on the business of good rule.61 The contrast between Henry and his father was made more noticeable by the fact that his conduct of government did not involve any innovations. Arguably innovations would have made his subjects uneasy; instead he was able to make the existing system work more efficiently than his father had ever managed.62 The idea of Henry ruling by sheer strength of will is also reinforced by the relatively stable state of the country during his reign; there is a consensus that it was the only fifteenth-century reign that saw little significant disorder.63 Henry was absent from England for much of his reign and the business of law enforcement was carried out by the institutions of justice, but Edward Powell argues for the crucial role of ‘the king’s own personality’.64 Certainly this was noticed by Hardyng who described the lack of insurrection and riots while the country was under Henry’s protection, even while he was abroad:
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Whan he in Fraunce dayly was conuersaunt His shadow so abowmbred all Englonde That pese and lawe wer kept contynuant In his absence full wele thrugh all the londe: And elles, as I can sayne and vndyrstonde, His power had bene lyte to conquerr Fraunce Nor other Reme that wer wele lasse perchaunce.65 Indeed, this domestic stability was an essential prerequisite for Henry’s successes in France, and it further indicates the extent to which he was able to gain his subjects’ confidence, and thus their support. Crucially Henry ‘restored the traditional identity between knighthood and governance’, as G.L. Harriss put it, something which had been missing from the kingships of both Richard II and Henry IV.66 In another act which provided contrast with Henry IV’s reign, Henry sought reconciliation with the heirs of his father’s enemies. Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, and John Holland, earl of Huntingdon, were all restored to their estates and to royal favour.67 All three remained loyal to Henry thereafter, Percy serving him in the defence of Northumberland against Scottish incursion, and Montagu and Holland in France. The reburial of Richard II, as well as providing legitimation for Henry’s rule, was also a gesture of appeasement intended to announce that any remaining disunity inspired by Richard’s deposition should be buried with him.68 As discussed earlier, pity and mercy were crucial qualities in a king, precisely because they could induce accord and harmony in his realm. Bringing these men back into the political fold had 92
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THE NEW MAN
practical ramifications too, as it was another means by which Henry paved the way for his French campaigns.69 The reconciliations allowed Henry to show that he would be fair and dispassionate, rather than cruel and vengeful, and that he therefore possessed the correct balance of manly traits. The importance of being seen to be impartial rather than partisan apparently determined Henry’s response to the discovery of the Southampton Plot just before he sailed to France in 1415.70 As reported at the time, this was a French-backed attempt by Henry, lord Scrope, in concert with Richard, earl of Cambridge and Thomas Grey to depose Henry in favour of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March. However, Mortimer himself disclosed the plot to Henry V and the three leaders were executed. Whether or not this plot posed a genuine threat to Henry, his punishment of the plotters proved that he would deal swiftly and harshly with any who threatened his crown, no matter who they were. His treatment of Scrope in particular has been deemed ruthless, indeed almost heartless.71 Scrope was humiliatingly dragged to his execution on a hurdle, and whereas the families of Cambridge and Grey were permitted to keep their lands, Scrope’s were swiftly seized and redistributed in a possibly unlawful fashion by Henry.72 Scrope seems to have been treated most severely precisely because he had been the closest to Henry, as the Gesta Henrici Quinti puts it ‘the more culpable an enemy because the more intimate a friend’.73 Walsingham states that Scrope’s betrayal moved Henry to tears, and that the king thus showed himself to be like the Emperor Augustus, of whom Ovid had said: ‘Our prince is slow to punish, quick to reward, /And when compelled to toughness, a man of grief.’74 Henry could be merciful, but he would not be overcome by personal feelings or let them compromise his kingship. Henry’s actions therefore served to discourage rebellion while he was away in France. This also helps to explain the plot’s inclusion in the Gesta Henrici Quinti, written when Henry was about to set off for France again. The author presents it as proof of Henry’s status as God’s champion, a status that he had earned by surmounting obstacles: ‘Behold! God, still wishing to make trial of the constancy of His elect, allowed him again to be tested and smitten by yet another hammer-blow causing great perturbation.’75 The terms in which the plotters are described are significant too, as they are shown to be seduced by lust and irrational: ‘These men, in their brutal madness and mad brutality, tainted with a lust for power, but even more so by the stench of French promises or bribes, had conspired all too viciously and inhumanly, not only to prevent the intended expedition but also to inflict disaster by killing the king.’76 This serves to characterize any who would challenge Henry as effeminate in their brutality and lust for power. Indeed, another result of the rebellion was to defuse any lingering threat Mortimer may have posed to Henry’s kingship, and in similar terms. Although from the reported discussion between Grey and Walter Lucy it seems that Mortimer was not taken very seriously as a potential ruler even by the plotters. Grey said that ‘the 93
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HENRY V
Erle of March was but a hogge’ to which Lucy agreed, and added that ‘he shulde be fonde man and chalange his reghte’.77 The perception of Mortimer as rather weak and unmanly partly derived from the fact that Henry IV had kept him under close supervision as a royal ward throughout his reign, transferring him to the guardianship of Prince Henry in 1409. Mortimer could only marry with the king’s permission and although on Henry V’s accession he was allowed to inherit his estates, he appears to have been kept at the king’s side. When he obtained a papal dispensation to marry his cousin Anne Stafford, Henry fined him 10,000 marks.78 As Paul Strohm puts it, Mortimer was maintained in the position of ‘child-dependent’ until well into his 20s, and the fact that he seems mostly to have accepted this position may lie behind the plotters’ disparaging remarks.79 The plotters’ wish to make Mortimer king probably derived from the perception that he, unlike Henry V, could be easily manipulated in their interests.80 Discourses of manhood were also used as a means of combating the other revolt which Henry faced early in his reign, led by the Lollard knight John Oldcastle in 1414.81 Oldcastle was a friend of Henry’s, according to the Gesta Henrici Quinti ‘one of the most valued and intimate members of his household’, having served with him in Wales.82 This fact (as well as his status) helps to explain why, having been arrested and tried for heresy in the summer of 1413, he was not immediately executed following his condemnation. Having refused to recant, Oldcastle was instead sent to the Tower of London for forty days, which Henry must have hoped would inspire a change of heart from which his regime could make propagandist capital. Instead Oldcastle escaped and mounted his revolt in January 1414, but he led a force of only a few hundred and the king had been forewarned, so it was easily quashed and the ringleaders executed.83 Oldcastle himself escaped once more and was on the run until November 1417, when he was finally recaptured and executed in December. This allowed Henry to demonstrate, again, that he would not shrink from exacting due punishment even on a former friend who persisted in obstinate transgression of both religious and secular law. The Gesta Henrici Quinti describes Oldcastle as being ‘of great popular reputation, proud of heart, strong in body but weak in virtue’, thus articulating an idea of his imbalanced manhood as an explanation for his presumptuous rebellion not just against the king, but against the Church.84 This approach is also reflected in Hoccleve’s poem of 1415 addressed to Oldcastle which even more explicitly attributed his errors and treachery to a loss of manliness, describing him as ‘thow þat were a manly knight,/ And shoon ful cleer in famous worthynesse’.85 Hoccleve also noted that in the past Oldcastle was always at the forefront whenever a display of knightly prowess and ‘manhode’ was required, but the Devil had changed him to such an extent that this was no longer true.86 As an antidote to this Hoccleve exhorted Oldcastle to forswear his heresy and rebellion. He also recommended that instead of trying to read holy writ and misinterpreting it 94
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THE NEW MAN
as stupid women do, Oldcastle should consult a programme of more improving literature: Rede the storie of Lancelot de lake, Or Vegece of the aart of Chiualrie, The seege of Troie or Thebes thee applie To thynge þat may to thordre of knight longe! To they correcioun now haste and hie, For thow haast been out of ioynt al to longe.87 As Catherine Nall notes, here Hoccleve presents reading as a corrective activity; the consultation of classic works outlining ideal knighthood and chivalry would allow Oldcastle to reclaim his lost manhood.88 Hoccleve wrote this poem while Henry was on campaign in France and the king and his men are also held up as models to Oldcastle:
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Looke how our christen Prince, our lige lord, With many a lord & knight beyond the See, Laboure in armes & thow hydest thee! And darst nat come & shewe thy visage! O, fy! for shame how can a knight be Out of thonur of this rial viage?89 The implication is clear: how could any real man bear not to be fighting by the side of the king? This renders Oldcastle’s betrayal of the king by whose side he had previously fought all the more monstrous. One of the reasons that Lollardy was seen as a serious threat in this period was because its theology argued for a revolution not just in religion, but in society more widely; the Gesta Henrici Quinti stating that John Wycliffe’s followers sought ‘to overthrow both the spiritual and the temporal estate’.90 Both Oldcastle’s revolt and Lollardy in general served Henry’s devotional and propagandist agenda, giving him the means both to establish himself as a defender of Christian orthodoxy and also to demonstrate that he would show no mercy to those who challenged his rule.91 The Gesta Henrici Quinti and Frulovisi identify Oldcastle’s defeat as a significant first military victory for Henry as king, helping to pave the way for his subsequent victories in France by his willingness to defend the Church.92 Characterizing Henry’s enemies as effeminate served to confirm that Henry’s ‘new man’ stance was not just for show. Henry’s ability to triumph over those enemies was represented as the logical product of his status as the reformed rogue, and also provided a means to gain political support. Harriss observes that Henry’s subjects desired good government for its own sake, but for Henry it was the means to a specific end: the invasion of France.93 This suggests the levels of calculation that lay behind Henry’s image of kingship 95
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HENRY V
and its embodiment of a new start not just for him, but for the whole nation under him. Henry’s virtuous manhood was one of the means by which he could meet the expectations of his subjects and assure them that his interests were their interests. His conduct became the guarantee that the aims of those interests would be achieved. But it also became the means by which Henry could persuade those subjects to view the collective pursuit of his interests in France as being for the common good. If this tactic had not been successful Henry’s military ambitions would never have been realized. Before turning to Henry’s achievements in France, it is worth noting the striking lack of prominent women at Henry V’s court. Even when not on campaign it was an overwhelmingly male environment, with a palpably military stamp. The senior female royal for most of his reign was Henry IV’s queen Joan of Navarre, who remained in England after her husband’s death, living at various royal residences with Henry V’s permission.94 In September 1419 Henry had Joan arrested on entirely invented charges that she had sought to contrive his death by witchcraft. It never came to trial and was clearly an excuse for Henry to commandeer her dowry and other income to support the war effort.95 Even before this Joan played no significant role in politics, and nor did any other woman during Henry’s reign. He remained unmarried, and apparently chaste, until 1420. This was dictated by the vicissitudes of warfare and diplomacy with France. Henry’s intention to marry Catherine de Valois was stated early in his reign (November 1413) and she remained a constant part of his objectives throughout.96 But they did not finally marry until 2 June 1420, following the Treaty of Troyes.97 Another factor which helps to explain why Henry did not marry earlier is that, in the first instance, there was no pressing need for him to produce an heir. He had three energetic younger brothers who shared many of his qualities. Heir presumptive for most of Henry’s reign was Clarence, who was greatly admired as a warrior leader, although an unfortunate lapse of judgement led to his death in battle in 1421.98 All four risked their lives in battles or sieges, but while Henry was on campaign one of his brothers was almost always in England overseeing government. This may have been a deliberate move to ensure that even in the dreadful event of the others being killed, there was always one brother ‘safe’ who could take the crown. There is no evidence that Henry’s subjects were concerned about the lack of a queen or the birth of an heir for most of his reign. However, after Catherine’s coronation at Westminster in February 1421, Henry took her on a royal progress around the country for the next two months.99 This progress was designed to garner support for further campaigns in France at a time when complaints were beginning to emerge about the cost of supporting Henry’s French enterprise and Catherine’s presence may have been particularly significant as a result.100 Henry was by now in his mid 30s and both he and his brothers remained childless (even Clarence, the only one who was married, and he died in March).101 That the issue of the succession had become a concern is 96
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THE NEW MAN
suggested by the granting of a parliamentary subsidy to Henry in December 1421. Given that earlier in the year Henry had been advised that his demands for a subsidy would probably be refused, it is possible that the grant in December was a ‘reward’ to him for the birth of Prince Henry.102 This suggests the development of some impatience regarding an heir. Certainly the birth of Henry was an important morale boost as it settled the succession both in England and France.103 John Hardyng later claimed that news of the birth inspired a number of French towns and fortresses to pledge their allegiance to Henry as regent of France.104 Given his hegemonic status and military accomplishments it was hardly necessary for Henry to employ marriage or fatherhood as evidence of manhood. Indeed, the lack of a queen or of any other visibly important women at his overtly martial court served in some respects to render him more manly, not less. It signified that he was at no risk of being ‘softened’ by female company or having his judgement or physique compromised by a wife’s seductions. The voluptuary Sardanapalus, legendary king of Assyria, often appears in mirrors for princes as an example of the disastrous effects of a king spending too much time with women. According to Trevisa, Sardanapalus was rendered ‘al wommanlich and al intemporate’, to such an extent that a murderous contempt was aroused in one of his nobles, and because the king could not escape the ensuing rebellion he burned himself to death surrounded by piles of treasure and members of his household.105 But there were also more positive assessments of a queen’s influence, as we have seen, and had Henry lived longer Catherine might well have come to play a more conspicuous role as the traditional queenly counterpoint to his kingly mastery. However, in his conduct as conqueror of France, Henry proved that he had the essential balance of desirable attributes in his own person.
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Notes 1 Allmand, pp. 63–64. 2 Chronica Maiora, p. 389. 3 Leopold G. Wickham Legg (ed.), English Coronation Records (London: Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd, 1901), p. 114; for Henry’s coronation Allmand, pp. 64–65. 4 Legg, Coronation Records, p. 114. 5 [Pseudo-Elmham] Thomae de Elmham: Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti, (ed.) Thomas Herne (Oxford, 1727), p. 12; I quote C.L. Kingsford’s translation, Henry V: The Typical Medieval Hero (London and New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1901), p. 86, Kingsford believed this prose life to have been written by Elmham and attributes it to him here. 6 TLF, pp. 4–5; English Life, p. 17. 7 English Life, p. 17; TLF, p. 5. Pseudo-Elmham, Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti, p. 15 has Henry dramatically wailing and groaning on the day of his father’s funeral before going to visit the monk. 8 E.g. Colossians 3:9–10; Ephesians 4:20–24. 9 English Life, p. 18.
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10 M. Staunton, ‘Thomas Becket’s Conversion’, Anglo-Norman Studies 21 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), pp. 193–211; H. Vollrath, ‘Was Thomas Becket Chaste?’, Anglo-Norman Studies 27 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 198–209. In editing the English life Kingsford made no comment on this passage, surprisingly. The trope of a man’s moral transformation on accession to high office is not restricted to a Christian context. See D.S. Richards, ‘The early history of Saladin,’ Islamic Quarterly 17 (1973), 140–59 (147) 11 Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies by Johannes Mirkus (John Mirk), (ed.) Theodor Erbe, Early English Text Society Extra Series 96 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1905), p. 40 for Mirk’s account of Becket’s conversion into ‘anoþir man’. 12 Brut, p. 494. 13 Ibid., pp. 594–96. 14 William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1878) discusses the tradition of Henry’s conversion briefly, without giving much credence to ‘[t]he legends of the wildness of Henry’s youth’, p. 77. 15 E.g. C.L. Kingsford, ‘The early biographies of Henry V’, English Historical Review 25 (1910), 58–92, 87 notes a legendary quality to them, but also ‘we should hesitate to dismiss altogether any of the stories which have survived’, cf his Henry V, p. 92; K.B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 123, ‘[d]isbelieved by Victorian scholars, they have been proved to have contemporary support’; Allmand, pp. 63–64 for the stories; p. 407 ‘There is never smoke without fire.’ Although A.J. Pollard, Late Medieval England 1399–1509 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2000), p. 69 takes a more sceptical approach. 16 Derek Pearsall, ‘Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes: the poetics of royal self-representation’, Speculum 69 (1994), 386–410, 393. 17 See above, pp. 7–9. 18 Rachel E. Moss, ‘An orchard, a love letter and three bastards: the formation of adult male identity in a fifteenth-century family’ in John H. Arnold and Sean Brady (eds), What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 226–44, esp. pp. 230, 236. 19 Kim M. Phillips, ‘Masculinities and the medieval English sumptuary laws’, Gender & History 19 (2007), 22–42 (26). 20 Moss, ‘An orchard, a love letter and three bastards’, p. 236. 21 The princes’ uncle, Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester (himself the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford) fathered an illegitimate daughter and P.H. Cullum notes that the few bishops who are known to have flouted their vows of chastity in this period were all from aristocratic families. She sees this as suggestive of a perception that the ‘normal rules’ of clerical celibacy did not apply to them, ‘Virginitas and Virilitas: Richard Scrope and his Fellow Bishops’ in P.J.P. Goldeberg (ed.), Richard Scrope: Archbishop, Rebel, Martyr (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2007), pp. 87–100 (p. 93). 22 Chronica Maiora, p. 441. John was subsequently awarded lands and revenue in Ireland by Henry V. 23 These names reflect Gloucester’s literary interests. 24 Michael Hicks, English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 42 notes that it is strange that the possibility of legitimizing the royal dukes’ bastards was not raised by anyone at the time, despite the precedent of the retrospective legitimization of the Beauforts, John of Gaunt’s children by his third wife (and erstwhile mistress) Katherine Swynford. But unlike Gaunt the dukes were not married to their children’s mothers, who were likely to have been of lower status. Certainly none of the dukes’ offspring ever became involved in subsequent dynastic wrangling so were evidently not viewed as having any claim upon the throne.
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THE NEW MAN
25 Moss, ‘An orchard, a love letter and three bastards’, pp. 237–38. Gloucester’s case is different, because his second wife Eleanor Cobham had been his mistress (but was probably not the mother of his children, see previous note). There is evidence of public criticism of Gloucester for his abandonment of Jacqueline for Eleanor; a group of women brought protest letters to Parliament, see PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/ report.aspx?compid=116533, accessed 31 Jan. 2013] for the Commons’ supportive statement about Jacqueline on 25 March 1428. These circumstances do not seem to have compromised Gloucester’s political position as long as he remained in the ascendancy at court, but see below, pp. 156–57. 26 TLF, p. 5, my translation. See below, pp. 126–31 for more on the moral conduct of soldiers. 27 English Life, p. 17. 28 John Tosh, ‘What should historians do with masculinity?’ in John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005), pp. 29–58 (p. 43). 29 See W.M. Aird, ‘Frustrated masculinity: the relationship between William the Conqueror and his eldest son’ in Dawn M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1999), pp. 39–55 (p. 50), for similar issues informing the relationship between Robert Curthose and his household. 30 Megan McLaughlin, ‘“Disgusting acts of shamelessness”: sexual misconduct and the deconstruction of royal authority in the eleventh century’, Early Medieval Europe 19 (2011), 312–31 for discussion of the ideological use of sex to justify rebellion against Henry IV of Germany and the damaging potential of such accusations. 31 English Life, p. 17, from Ormond’s account. 32 Neal, p. 243. 33 GHQ, p. 3. 34 Ibid. 35 Neal, p. 243 for rebellious as opposed to regulated masculinity. 36 Cf. Nicholas Scott Baker, ‘Power and passion in sixteenth-century Florence: the sexual and political reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de’Medici’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 19 (2010), 432–47, 444 on the significance of Cosimo being represented as self-controlled in an age that largely tolerated sexual licence among high status men, regardless of whether he really was as pure as his biographers stated. 37 English Life, p. 5. 38 Discussed in relation to Henry VI below, pp. 204–6. 39 McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings, p. 124. 40 Legg, English Coronation Records, p. 113. 41 Allmand, p. 438. 42 Cf. Baker on Cosimo de’Medici, ‘Power and passion in sixteenth-century Florence’, 442– 44; 456. 43 Jeremy Catto, ‘Religious change under Henry V’ in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 97–116 (pp. 106–7). See also Allmand, pp. 272–73. 44 Legg, English Coronation Records, p. 117, pp. 251–52; see below, pp. 110–15. 45 For an account of the foundations see Allmand, pp. 272–77. 46 Catto, ‘Religious change’, pp. 110–11. See Nancy Warren, Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 111–33 for the ‘symbolic capital’ which Henry derived from his foundations. 47 For general discussion of the nature and quality of monastic life in later medieval England see Martin Heale, Monasticism in Late Medieval England c. 1300–1535 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), esp. pp. 6–37. For specific discussion of the Carthusians see Julian M. Luxford, Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late
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48
49
50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59
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60
61 62
63 64 65 66 67 68
Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). See Heale, Monasticism, pp. 141–44 for an account of the exemplary conduct of the prophetic Carthusian John Homersley (d. 1450); Homersley reportedly had a vision of Henry V entering Heaven, having served his time in Purgatory (p. 143). The devotional literary culture among the nuns at Syon has received a great deal of scholarly attention, see for example E.A. Jones (ed.), Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading, Writing and Religions c. 1400–1700 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010). Walsingham described the order’s way of life in some detail, Chronica Maiora, p. 398. Chronica Maiora, p. 398 noted the order’s strictness, see also n. 3. Unlike the other two, which were both established before Henry left on the Agincourt campaign in 1415, this foundation was not successful, Allmand, p. 277 suggests that Henry’s increasing preoccupation with war in France was probably the explanation. Allmand, p. 274, notes that Sir Henry FitzHugh, who became Henry’s chamberlain, visited the order’s headquarters at Vadstena and his influence may also have been important. Henry IV had planned a Brigittine foundation himself, Warren, Spiritual Economies, p. 122. Warren, Spiritual Economies, p. 118. James Clark notes that the ‘disloyal monks’ criticizing the Benedictines here were those of other orders, perhaps in particular Carthusians, Chronica Maiora, p. 440, n. 3. Walsingham was himself a Benedictine. Chronia Maiora, p. 440. Ibid., p. 440. See also Brut, pp. 495–96. For details of the reforms which Henry enjoined on the Benedictines see EHD, pp. 787–90; Allmand, pp. 277–79. TLF, p. 9; English Life, p. 18. Ibid. PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116518, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. Beaufort’s address to Parliament on 15 May had emphasized that Henry would seek ‘good advice and counsel’ in his rule, ibid. G.L. Harriss, ‘Introduction: the Exemplar of Kingship’ in Harriss, Henry V, pp. 1–30 (p. 26). Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), p. 101. Thomas Wright (ed.), Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, vol. 2 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1859), pp. 120–21. Edward Powell, ‘The restoration of law and order’, Jeremy Catto, ‘The king’s servants’, both in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 53–74, 75–96; G.L. Harriss, ‘Financial policy’, Harriss, Henry V, pp. 159–80 (p. 177) for an example of Henry personally checking and annotating wardrobe accounts. G.L. Harriss, ‘Conclusion’ in Harriss, Henry V, pp. 201–10 (p. 206). Harriss, ‘Financial policy’, pp. 178–79; although see W.M. Ormrod, Political Life in Medieval England, 1300–1450 (Houndmills: St Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 136 for the contention that modern praise of Henry’s ability to make the system work overlooks the fact that some of the structures of government urgently needed reform. Powell, ‘Restoration of law and order’, passim; Allmand, pp. 306–32. Powell, ‘Restoration of law and order’, p. 60. The Chronicle of John Hardyng, ed. Henry Ellis (London: F.C. and J. Rivington et al., 1812), p. 745. Harriss, ‘Introduction’, p. 19. Allmand, pp. 371–72. Paul Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation 1399–1422 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 101–27.
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THE NEW MAN
69 Powell, ‘Restoration of law and order’, pp. 72–74. 70 T.B. Pugh, Henry V and the Southampton Plot of 1415 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1988); Allmand, pp. 74–78; Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, pp. 86–100. 71 Pugh, Henry V and the Southampton Plot, pp. 62–63. 72 Allmand, p. 77. 73 GHQ, p. 19. 74 Chronica Maiora, p. 405. 75 GHQ, p. 19. 76 Ibid. Warren, Spiritual Economies, p. 120 notes that some of Scrope’s property was given in May 1415 to the Swedish bishop and knights who accompanied the nuns and brothers sent to be the first inhabitants of Syon, which provides a further indication of the ways in which the plot could be appropriated to serve Henry’s propagandist concerns. 77 Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, p. 113. 78 R. A. Griffiths, ‘Mortimer, Edmund (V), fifth earl of March and seventh earl of Ulster (1391–1425)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/19344, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. 79 Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, p. 113. 80 Brigette Vale, ‘Scrope, Henry, third Baron Scrope of Masham (c.1376–1415)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24959, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. 81 Allmand, pp. 294–304; Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, pp. 66–86; John A. F. Thomson, ‘Oldcastle, John, Baron Cobham (d. 1417)’, ODNB, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20674, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. 82 GHQ, p. 3. 83 For Walsingham’s account of events Chronica Maiora, pp. 405–6. 84 GHQ, p. 3. 85 Hoccleve’s Works: I. The Minor Poems, (ed.) F.J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society Extra Series, 61 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1892), p. 8, ll. 9–10. 86 Ibid., p. 24, ll. 505–8. 87 Ibid., p. 13, ll. 145–52 for the ‘stupid women’; p. 14, ll. 195–200. 88 Catherine Nall, Reading and War in Fifteenth-Century England: From Lydgate to Malory (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012), pp. 1–2. See also Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, pp. 183–85. 89 Hoccleve: Minor Poems, p. 24, ll. 499–504. 90 GHQ, p. 3; Allmand, pp. 292–93. 91 Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, p. 182 for Henry V, unlike his father, seeing the Lollards as an opportunity rather than a threat. 92 GHQ, pp. 3–5; TLF, pp. 6–7; English Life, p. 23. 93 Harriss, ‘Conclusion’, in Harriss, Henry V, pp. 201–10 (p. 204). 94 Michael Jones, ‘Joan (1368–1437)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/14824, accessed 30 Jan. 2013]. 95 Henry ordered Joan to be released and restored to her previous position and income six weeks before his death, perhaps inspired by his illness, the symptoms of which he was already suffering. 96 Allmand, p. 68; she had first been suggested as a bride in 1409, Michael Jones, ‘Catherine (1401–37)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/4890, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. 97 Allmand, pp. 144–50 for details of the treaty and immediate reactions to it. Frulovisi attempted to inject some retrospective romance by having Henry fired with love at his first sight of Catherine (TLF, p. 75; English Life, p. 145) but while Catherine may well have been attractive, Henry married her for purely political reasons. 98 See below, pp. 123–24.
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99 Brut, pp. 445–47; for Catherine’s coronation, J.A. Doig, ‘Propaganda and truth: Henry V’s royal progress in 1421’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 40 (1996), 167–79. 100 For more on the complaints see below, pp. 133–34. 101 I mean that they had no legitimate children. 102 Allmand, p. 377. 103 Ibid., p. 177. 104 Chronicle of John Hardyng, p. 386. 105 The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 73.
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5
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A G I N C O U RT
The image of Henry V as a gifted, charismatic leader and righteous conqueror is abundantly attested in contemporary and near-contemporary sources, both narrative and administrative. Because Henry had proven himself a very capable warrior leader before becoming king he could garner support for the sort of ambitious international campaign which his father had longed to undertake, only to be frustrated by domestic problems and his own ill-health. Henry’s success in France derived a great deal from his personal abilities and the admiration and loyalty which these engendered in those about him. In the accounts of his life set down twenty years later Henry’s personification of exemplary kingship and masculinity was seen to play a vital role in his success.1 Moreover, notions of manhood and honour formed a significant part of the rhetoric of conflict between England and France. War became a test not only of Henry’s virility but that of his army, and the whole nation. English triumphs were interpreted as the proof of superior manliness and French defeat as the result of defect and effeminacy, bound up with a sense of divine judgement on the relative morality of the two sides. But Henry’s fortunes in France were also reliant to a significant degree on circumstances beyond his direct control, in particular the incapacity of Charles VI and the resultant fractures within the French royal family. The question as to why Henry’s kingship was dedicated wholesale to warfare can be answered variously, and in some respects is not straightforward, because his aims and motives changed in response to circumstances. The early rationale was to compel the French to honour the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny signed in 1360, by which Edward III gave up his claim to the French throne and some French lands, but obtained sovereign rights to a number of other territories in France. These were mostly in the south-west (essentially the duchy of Aquitaine as delineated at the Treaty of Paris in 1259 and some additional surrounding areas) but also in the north (Ponthieu, Montreuil, Guînes and the recently acquired town of Calais).2 As we have just seen marriage to Catherine de Valois was among Henry’s aims from the beginning of his reign.3 Once Henry began to win territory it became feasible that he could attain the crown of France itself. On a more 103
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HENRY V
practical level Henry went to war because he could; his control over England gave him the opportunity to take advantage of French disunity and realize claims which had also governed his father’s direction of foreign policy. Undoubtedly part of Henry’s motivation was simply that he was good at warfare and on campaign was where he felt most comfortable. Moreover, in going to war Henry was able to give his subjects exactly what they wanted, fulfilling their expectations not only by embodying an imposing military presence, but also by producing a common, unifying project which promised to restore the standing of the crown and the whole English nation.4 This provided another means by which Henry could emphasize the fresh character of his own kingship in comparison to his father’s, and indeed metaphorically bypass Henry IV’s problematic reign altogether by inviting direct comparison between himself and Edward III.5 A successful foreign campaign was just what the country and the dynasty needed to fuse them together and support for Henry’s military endeavours was therefore uniformly strong for most of his reign. Crucial to Henry’s articulation of his motives for war was the quest for justice, which was widely disseminated as the explanation for his actions.6 The Gesta Henrici Quinti describes the diplomatic lengths to which Henry went in order to try and secure recognition of his territorial rights. He was prepared to make concessions if necessary, only for the contumacious French to refute all his claims.
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At length, not perceiving any other remedy or means by which he might attain his right, he hastened to seek a ruling from the Supreme Judge, deciding to wield, with His help, the power of his just sword and by use of this blameless sword to exact what the French, by their blameworthy and unjust violence, have for so long a period of time striven to usurp and withhold.7 Henry also sent transcripts detailing his claims to the Council of Constance, the emperor Sigismund and several other rulers: ‘that all Christendom might know what great acts of injustice the French in their duplicity had inflicted on him, and that, as it were reluctantly and against his will, he was being compelled to raise his standards against the rebels’.8 He also wrote letters to Charles VI himself in much the same vein.9 This rhetoric was designed to establish that Henry was going to war only as a last resort, having exhausted all other avenues. This was also emphasized to Parliament on 19 November 1414 in a speech by Beaufort which was the preamble to a request for financial support. He explained that Henry will strive for the recovery of the inheritance and right of his crown outside the realm, which has for a long time been withheld and wrongfully retained, since the time of his progenitors and 104
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AGINCOURT
predecessors kings of England, in accordance with the authorities who wish that ‘unto death shalt thou strive for justice’, and ‘that which is altogether just shalt thou follow’: to accomplish which most honourable purpose it is necessary to provide for many things, which the said chancellor then explained through many authorities and notable passages … 10
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The nation was therefore obliged to support Henry’s pursuit of justice; it was presented as a matter of concern for all. Henry canvassed opinion widely to ensure that he could lawfully, and without offence to God, recover his inheritance by force of arms.11 This justificatory rhetoric was not unique to Henry, but given his proclivities for warfare it was perhaps particularly important to underline the rectitude of his decision to go to war.12 Henry was shown to have been forced unwillingly into war, having no other recourse against the unreasonable and dishonest French. Depicting Henry’s actions within a register of justice, measure and restraint would counter any suggestion that he was merely an impatient, belligerent ‘hardy’ youth, motivated primarily by personal ambition and bloodlust.13 Going to war was portrayed as the correct manly course of action in the circumstances; Henry’s honour and manhood had been violated in ways that prevented him from attaining his rightful patrimony and had to be defended.14 Further suggestions of the extent to which Henry’s manhood was implicated in the outbreak of war are found in the famous story of the tennis balls. This is another incident immortalized by Shakespeare, but it was recorded by Elmham, and also by John Strecche (an Augustinian canon at St Mary’s Priory, Kenilworth) writing shortly after 1422.15 According to Strecche, in 1414 Henry sent a group of ambassadors to negotiate with the French about the possible marriage between himself and Catherine de Valois. However, the ambassadors returned bearing only the report of some insulting words from the French, ‘puffed up with pride and lacking in foresight’, who said ‘that as Henry was but a young man, they would send to him little balls to play with and soft cushions to rest on until he should have grown to a man’s strength’.16 When the king heard these words he was much moved and troubled in spirit; yet he addressed these short, wise and honest words to those standing around him: ‘If God wills, and if my life shall be prolonged with health, in a few months I shall play with such balls in the Frenchmen’s court-yards that they will lose the game eventually and for their game win but grief. And if they shall sleep too long on their cushions in their chambers, I will awake them, before they wish it, from their slumbers at dawn by beating on their doors.’ As with the stories of Henry’s conversion a case can be made for this incident being based on an actual event.17 It may be that the rumours circulating in 105
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HENRY V
1412 of Henry’s wild lifestyle and unsuitability to rule had reached France and that these formed the basis for the characterization of him here as immature, fit only for games and sleeping. The advent of a virile young English king would have been especially worrying to the French given the periodic mental prostration of Charles VI. The derision voiced by the French is suggestive of the threat Henry posed, and an attempt to dispel it by ridiculing his manhood. The relation and dissemination of the tennis balls episode rests upon an understanding of adult masculinity in which age is not automatically a benchmark of maturity unless accompanied both by the correct temperate characteristics and by military accomplishments. It also indicates the ways in which gender could be used to undermine a political opponent as well as to form part of a justification for the opening of hostilities. Even if this is merely evidence of a piece of court gossip which made its way to Strecche’s ear, it is nonetheless significant that the story approvingly rationalizes Henry’s decision to go to war as the need to answer an entirely unwarranted attack on his manhood.18 There is a wealth of surviving sources describing the events leading up to Agincourt.19 Henry’s army landed in France on 14 August. His first act on landing was to organize his men, handing out standards and banners to those of the greatest strength and prowess, and the following day they all celebrated the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin.20 Next Henry besieged the nearby town of Harfleur which surrendered less than a month later on 22 September.21 By this time many of Henry’s men were suffering from the diseases which were endemic to soldiers on campaign and after some deliberation Henry decided to send these men home by sea, leave some of the healthy troops to defend Harfleur and march with the rest to Calais (which was under English control).22 Henry and his troops set off in early October, trailed by French forces who prevented them from crossing the Somme as planned, forcing the English to make a time-consuming detour.23 By the time an encounter with the French had become inevitable they were hungry, tired and dispirited. The battle itself occurred on 25 October. The exhausted, demoralized English were also outnumbered by the French, but amazingly they won nonetheless.24 Agincourt was not, strictly speaking, a decisive battle; it did not make Henry’s eventual conquest of Normandy inevitable.25 Even so it was immediately held to be an extremely significant victory for the English. Its comprehensive nature was presented as an endorsement not just of Henry’s rights in France, but of his rule in England. This interpretation informs Beaufort’s speech reporting the victory to Parliament on 4 November, which reiterated the excellence of Henry’s kingship and the divine approval which he enjoyed, before calling on the lords and Commons to make financial provision to continue the campaign which would be ‘expedient for the king’s well-being and honour, and that of all his realm’.26 As well as gaining Henry the joyful admiration and willing support of his people, the victory also enhanced his international 106
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reputation, all of which enabled him to continue the pursuit of his ambitions in France.27 Many English and French commentators sought to make sense of this sensational, unexpected victory and there was a common tendency to do so in moral terms. Central to this approach for the English (and some of the French too) was the exemplary quality of Henry’s virtuous, indomitable character. Anne Curry notes that ‘few medieval men experienced battle in their lives. Even fewer would experience a battle of this kind’, which rendered Henry even more astonishing in the eyes of his contemporaries.28 The Gesta Henrici Quinti says of Henry’s conduct on the Agincourt campaign:
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Nor do our older men remember any prince ever having commanded his people on the march with more effort, bravery, or consideration, or having, with his own hand, performed greater feats of strength in the field. Nor, indeed, is evidence to be found in the chronicles or annals of kings of which our long history makes mention, that any king of England ever achieved so much in so short a time and returned home with so great and so glorious a triumph. To God alone be the honour and the glory.29 Henry’s unparalleled excellence is presented again and again in the written sources as the bedrock of his success, not solely in practical leadership terms, but also because his perfect manhood enabled him to gain divine approval and assistance for his righteous endeavours. How else could the outnumbered and debilitated English forces possibly have managed to win the day against a much larger French army?30 Henry’s confidence in the justice of his cause is also underlined by the offer he made to settle the matter in single combat with the Dauphin Louis after Harfleur had fallen. Henry presented this as a means of ending the controversy over his rights in France without the necessity for wholesale bloodshed.31 The Dauphin did not respond and it is unlikely that Henry expected him to do so. This was largely a conventional gesture designed not just to show Henry’s valour, but also his empathy, in the wish to take on the burden of the fighting alone and spare his men. It also served to reiterate Henry’s belief that he enjoyed divine support, the logic being that God would support the righteous combatant by allowing him to defeat his opponent.32 Frulovisi has Henry commenting explicitly on his status as an instrument of God’s will, and also revealing an understanding of his conduct in France as inextricably tied to his manly reputation. Following the surrender of Harfleur ‘the most vigorous duke of Clarence’ advised his brother that most of the English army should directly set sail for England, in order to avoid an encounter with the huge French army which had been amassed. But Henry would not follow this course, replying thus: 107
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HENRY V
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‘No less does my wish hold to come to see my lands and places which are mine by inheritance. It is clear they may prepare a great army but our hope is in God that no injury will come to either the army or to myself. I shall not suffer that the haughty rejoice with pride for evil doing and unjustly possess what is mine against the will of God. They would say that I had taken flight on account of my fear and had thus abandoned by right. I have the spirit of a very strong man, more willing to enter all dangers rather than anyone should impugn the reputation of your king. We shall go with the judgement of God, unharmed and safe even if they try to hinder us, we shall triumph as victors with great praise.’ As soon as the opinion of the king was heard, he moved the hearts of all, nor was there anyone who wished to contradict him in case his own fear might then be criticised by the most powerful king.33 Hence rather than be accused of dishonourable cowardice and thus jeopardize his cause, the king set out for Calais. One of those on the march (or so he claimed) was John Hardyng, who later wrote that Henry ‘homeward went through Fraunce like a man’.34 Henry’s dauntless courage was crucial to his success not simply for what it enabled him to achieve personally, but because it provided inspiration for his men. On the eve of the battle Henry calmed and reassured his forces by occupying them in drawing up battle formations. Many priests were on hand to hear their confessions and Henry’s reported words before the battle further emphasize his confidence that God would give England the victory.35 When Walter, Lord Hungerford voiced the wish that they had an additional ten thousand archers Henry admonished him saying ‘I would not, even if I could, have a single man more than I do’, and reminding Hungerford that God ‘with these His humble few, is able to overcome the opposing arrogance of the French who boast of their great number and their own great strength’.36 Henry is shown to be confident in the quality of his men, despite the lack of quantity. Elmham has Henry exhorting the troops just before the battle with reference to Edward III, Edward the Black Prince, and previous English victories won against the odds with God’s help.37 Henry calls on the support of St George and the Virgin and also says: ‘England must never lament me as a prisoner or as to be ransomed. I am ready to die for my right in the conflict.’ Having donned armour and crown Henry ‘signed himself with the cross, thus giving courage to his men’. Walsingham has Henry drawing on the words of Lucan to address his men, which reminds us that accounts of battles were often shaped as much (and sometimes rather more) by narrative precedents as they were by the actual events.38 But whatever Henry actually said before the battle he clearly did inspire his men. Overnight rain had made a quagmire of the recently ploughed field upon which the battle was fought, playing a decisive role in hampering the French 108
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mounted forces.39 They were mown down by the English archers and trampled each other underfoot as the vanguard fell, so that towering piles of bodies began to mount up. This was an ignominious end for ‘the flower of French chivalry’.40 The English scrambled over the bodies once they had used up all their arrows, to pursue hand to hand fighting using the weapons of the fallen. There was an immense slaughter of the by now demoralized French, who were struck down regardless of rank. The English appeared to have the upper hand, but then word spread through their ranks that a French cavalry rearguard was on its way to the front. This was the point at which Henry gave the order to kill the French prisoners, to prevent them being able to join any relief force that should appear. This has become notorious as the one ‘black mark’ against Henry’s otherwise spotless chivalric reputation, and even as an incident of ‘war crime’.41 But it is notable that, while lamenting the death of so many noble prisoners, none of the contemporary French commentators criticized Henry for this action, which was not without precedent.42 Seeing the English beginning to slaughter the prisoners apparently convinced the remaining French troops to withdraw, which may have been Henry’s object in giving the order.43 The English were left victorious. While it is true that conditions at Agincourt contrived in Henry’s favour, not least because these allowed the English archers to be masters of the field, his own personal contribution was vital to the outcome. The French lacked any comparable figure of inspirational charisma to unify them. Indeed, there was no single French leader in command. But Henry made himself a visible figurehead for his own forces. The sources note that he wore bright armour and a distinctive helmet topped with ‘an elegant gold crown encrusted with various precious gems and with the insignia of the English and French kingdoms’.44 He also rode a white horse and was followed by a number of other splendidly caparisoned horses; seeing this ‘his army were much inspired to martial deeds’ according to Pseudo-Elmham.45 Henry thus ensured that he made a splendid and galvanizing impression on his followers, and also offered glittering bait to his opponents. His intention may have been to draw their attention towards him and away from the archers, in order to allow them to attack more effectively.46 Henry’s splendid appearance was a performance of great bravery, inspiring his followers to emulate him, and deliberately provoking his opponents with an implicit challenge to take him on and kill him if they could. Jean de Wavrin, who was at the French camp during the battle, later recorded that a group of eighteen French gentlemen did indeed resolve to ‘knock the crown right off his head, or else they would all die in the attempt’.47 One of them got close enough to strike Henry across the head with his axe and break off part of the crown, but subsequently the whole group were cut down and killed. De Wavrin states: ‘if everyone had behaved in this fashion on the side of the French it is credible that the English would have fared much worse.’48 109
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HENRY V
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Henry’s formidable fighting skills are attested to in the accounts claiming authority from Gloucester and Hungerford, who both fought in the battle. Frulovisi states: ‘The renowned king never spared himself from the laborious battle, nor did he shun danger by avoiding it, but like the unconquered lion fighting among the enemy with most ardent spirit he received many blows on his helmet and elsewhere.’49 Pseudo-Elmham names Henry ‘that brightly shining Titan of Kings’ who ‘so much exposed his precious person to every chance of war, that he thundered upon his adversaries violent terrors and unbearable assaults’.50 Both texts recount that Gloucester was badly wounded in the leg and fell to the ground bleeding profusely, in the midst of a crowd of men fighting hand to hand to the death. But the king stood astride him and ‘in this position fought most courageously for a long time so that his brother might be carried safely away from the enemy to his own men’, thus ‘sustaining dangers scarcely possible to be borne’.51 The accounts of Agincourt uniformly identify Henry as the epitome of manliness: powerful, daring and fearless. That they express this in hyperbolic terms, drawing on classical models, apparently reflects perceptions that he really was exceptional, both for what he could accomplish himself, and for the rousing influence which his example had on the men about him. Henry’s response to the victory further underlined his exemplary manhood. This was made publicly apparent by his conduct during the lavish pageants staged in London to celebrate the victory.52 A huge crowd drawn from all ranks of society came to watch the show, in which St George was afforded a conspicuous role.53 The litany repeated throughout was ‘Deo Gracias’, which is also the refrain of the Agincourt Carol, written to celebrate the victory.54 Henry himself, clad in imperial purple, as befitted a Roman-style triumph, complete with prisoners, made his way through the packed streets to the acclaim of his subjects. But he did so not in exalted pride and with an imposing escort or impressively large retinue, but with an impassive countenance and at a dignified pace, and with only a few of the most trusted members of his household in attendance, there following him, under a guard of knights, the dukes, counts, and marshal, his prisoners. Indeed, from his quiet demeanour, gentle pace, and sober progress, it might have been gathered that the king, silently pondering the matter in his heart, was rendering thanks and glory to God alone, not to man.55 Frulovisi adds the detail that Henry refused to allow his damaged helmet and armour to be displayed to the people as evidence of the violent attacks he had withstood.56 Part of the explanation for Henry’s restrained and devout gravity during this celebration may lie in the scale of the losses among the French at Agincourt.57 He was apparently shocked at the carnage left on the field when he visited it the next morning: ‘He declared himself 110
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horrified that so much blood had been spilled and that he felt great compassion for all the deaths, and especially those of his comrades in arms’ according to the Monk of Saint-Denis.58 The account of the large number of French killed in the battle and the small scale of the English losses given in Beaufort’s speeches to Parliament, the Gesta Henrici Quinti and other sources, present this as incontrovertible evidence of God’s judgement upon the French, both for refusing to acknowledge the justice of Henry’s claims and for their inherent immorality.59 In the wake of victory it was evidently deemed important for Henry to show that his redoubtable strength was balanced with other qualities, in order to ensure the continued success of his French project. This is highlighted in a letter written to the king by the convocation of clergy in November 1415. It provides a recap of events in France, lauding the unprecedented and marvellous scale of Henry’s victory against the odds, while observing: ‘Thy royal majesty deems and firmly holds, as I presume, that not thy hand, but the outstretched hand of God, hath done all these things, for His own praise, the honour and glory of the English nation, and the eternal memory of the royal name.’60 The author was at pains to ensure that the victory and attendant rejoicing should not engender sinful exultation among the people: Chiefly let us beware lest, after such victories, the accompaniments of victory vanquish the victors – such as pride, vainglory, boasting, swelling words, cruelty, rage, and the fury of revenge; all of which are enemies greatly to be dreaded by conquerors, and by which the most famous victors have been themselves conquered. Much more let humility, modesty, giving of thanks, piety, clemency, and a warm desire to pardon, prevail.61
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The letter directly addressed Henry himself in the same register: And you, most dread prince, receive not the glory of God in vain, but for the prosecution of your right, casting away the lust of power, go forward manfully (the false dealings of the adversary being retarded and put to flight) and insist, with the utmost vigilance, that he shall not regain his strength. No man putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom [of heaven]; but continued effort usually leads to success; and, according to Tully, it is the part of true virtue not to look on what has been done, but what remains to be done; not what a man has, but what he is wanting in. Moreover, it is fitting that your royal highness should not boast of the past, but be anxious for the future; neither let the power of our enemies drag us back; let not their astuteness disturb us; nor let any fair promises seduce anyone.62 111
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HENRY V
Both Henry’s dominance over the French and his manhood (which enabled it) are presented here as potentially fragile, unless he strove hard to ensure that the correct qualities were always in the ascendancy, otherwise God’s favour would be withdrawn and future endeavours doomed. Significant too in the final line of this passage is the characterization of the enemy as a feminine entity who could tempt Henry in ways that would compromise both his achievements and his masculinity. The author of the letter was possibly either Beaufort or Elmham, and its content is similar to both men’s representation of Henry elsewhere.63 Henry’s own conduct in the procession demonstrated his understanding of the need to embody the right response to Agincourt, and serves as a direct illustration of the letter’s recommendations. The vast majority of people were probably fully confident of his ability to handle the situation appropriately, but it was vital that he be both exhorted, and seen to do so nonetheless. The discourse surrounding Henry’s conduct in victory underlines perceptions of the inextricable connection between his gender and the fortunes of the nation. Henry had won at Agincourt not through simple courage or brute force but because his cause was just and because he was devout and temperate, not bloodthirsty, arrogant or selfsatisfied. If his manhood could be kept in equilibrium it would be the guarantee of future success which would further benefit his realm and his subjects. The quality of Henry’s mercy provided further evidence that he was able to maintain the manly ‘mene between Sparynge and vengeaunce’ identified by mirrors for princes.64 This is something upon which the Monk of StDenis commented: ‘[Henry] treated the knights and esquires [captured at Harfleur] with more softness and generosity than one might have expected.’65 Henry’s campaign in France, especially from 1417 onwards, rested on his claim to be the rightful ruler of Normandy, not simply a greedy usurper, taking advantage of the infighting in the French royal family.66 Thus he had to be seen to treat those whom he claimed as his subjects fairly, unless they opposed him, in which case they were traitorous rebels who had to feel his measured wrath. For instance, during the siege of Rouen which lasted from July 1418 to January 1419 some of the more vulnerable inhabitants were expelled from the city in an effort to conserve remaining supplies.67 These unfortunates found themselves trying to scrape a pitiful existence in the ditches surrounding the city, within sight of the English camp. Towards the end of December an embassy of citizens gained an audience with Henry in which they begged him to show mercy on the starving people, especially those dying in the ditches. But Henry would not yield to their entreaties. An account of the siege was recorded in a poem by one John Page, who participated in it.68 He reported Henry’s response to the citizens: … ’y put hem not there, into the diche of that cite; 112
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I put hem not there; and that wote ye. Thei were not put there at myn ordynaunce, ne non shall passe at my suffraunce; Thei abode there while thei mought;’ and so he seide to hem full ryght; ‘and as to you, ye knoue welle this: ye haue offendid me with mys, and from me kepte my cite, the whiche that is [is myn] heritage fre and [ye] shuld be my liege men.’69
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The message was clear: the people of Rouen had brought these misfortunes upon themselves by resisting their rightful lord and were not entitled to benefit from Henry’s mercy until they acknowledged this. Once the city had surrendered Henry did provide supplies for the inhabitants, although he also took hostages, and only those prepared to do homage to him were permitted to keep hold of their property.70 The image of Henry pursuing an unquestionably righteous path is amplified in the English Life by the addition of an account of the meeting in early summer 1418 between Henry and St Vincent Ferrer at Caen. He was a Spanish Dominican friar and noted preacher who died in 1419 and was canonized in 1455.71 The incident comes from Ormond’s account and a meeting between king and saint is attested to in some of the depositions collected during the process for Vincent’s canonization.72 St Vincent, knowing of the suffering of the local people, currently besieged by Henry’s troops, came to preach before the king. Vincent covered his head with the hood of his habit in order not to look directly upon Henry and lose courage. Then he spoke ‘with marveulous audacitie’ and reprimanded Henry for his conduct: he often demaunded of the Kinge what he was, and if he were better then his predecessors, or better then all other kings and conquerors before his daies, that he had the hart so indurate thus to oppresse the people of Christ; and fynallie he asked him whether he were better then our Lorde Jesus Christ, that, beinge an innocent, for the compassion of mans linage suffered willfull passion and death, and the Kinge to the contrarie destroyeth euen Christians that had not offended him.73 The life relates that Vincent provided abundant illustration to support his attack on Henry (although without giving details of this) and the sermon is of a part with what we know of Vincent’s preaching from elsewhere. Deponents at his canonization process testified to the efficacy of Vincent’s sermons in promoting holiness among his audiences and quashing immorality; in addition one deponent noted that he never found Vincent’s sermons 113
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boring!74 Towards the end of Vincent’s life he was preoccupied with moral reform in the belief that the arrival of the Antichrist was at hand, following a vision of saints Dominic and Francis.75 Henry listened to Vincent’s tirade ‘without anie motion of ire’ and without interrupting, as he felt it was not the time or place to do so. After the sermon had finished Henry had Vincent brought before him and said: Ye asked me this day in your sermon what I was that thus oppressed the people of Christ’s profession, to which demaunde at that time it was not convenient to make aunswere, and therefore nowe I aunswere you this: I am the scourge of God, sent to punish the people of God for there synns.76 Vincent and Henry then had a private conversation for two or three hours. At the end of this Vincent walked back through the king’s nobles (presumably including Ormond) and told them:
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My Lords and masters all, See yee that ye doe to the Kinge yor Master diligent and true seruice, as ye haue till nowe right well done, for in your so doeinge ye shall right well please God. This morning, tofore I came hether, I beleeued that the Kinge your Master had byn the greatest Tyrant amonge all other Princes Christian; but nowe I perceaue the contrary, for I assue you he is the most perfect and the most acceptable vnto God of all them that be heare present this daie, and his quarrel is so iust and so true that vndoubdtedly God is and shalbe his aide in all these warres.77 Henry answered Vincent’s vituperative admonitions not with recourse to hereditary rights, but in strictly religious and moral terms, probably recognizing the wisdom of answering like with like in order to justify his campaign. In their private meeting Henry evidently expanded on his mission at greater length and in convincing terms. Vincent had also been very impressed by Henry’s personal morality. Another possible inference to be drawn from Vincent’s volte-face is that Henry explained how his own scrupulous morality was reflected in the discipline which he expected of his troops, as articulated in the ordinances he issued to regulate their conduct.78 This is another of those episodes whose precise veracity is difficult to judge. But as well as the contingence with what we know of Vincent and his preoccupations it accords well with other evidence for what Harriss terms Henry’s ‘messianic approach to the duties of kingship’.79 Henry perceptively judged the correct moment for performances of dominance which underlined both his hegemony, and the subservience of others. The incidents discussed above suggest his ability to adapt these for different 114
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audiences and to good effect. He made careful use of public ceremonial to mark key victories and the surrender of towns and territories to his lordship. These were events at which it was vital for him to transcend all of his subjects and present an image of awe-inspiring majesty. This served to engender a sense of submission both in those who observed, and in those who participated.80 This was particularly marked on 22 September 1415, at Harfleur, the first town which Henry won. The Gesta Henrici Quinti describes the spectacular impression created by Henry and his chief nobles, waiting outside the town in a pavilion on the top of a hill, all wearing ‘their richest apparel’.81 Henry was seated on a throne covered with ‘cloth of gold and fine linen’, beside him ‘his triumphal helm bearing his crown’. In this fashion they received the town’s representatives and Henry accepted the keys to the town. The king promised their leader, Raoul de Gaucourt:
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that, although he and his company had, in God’s despite and contrary to all justice, retained against him a town which, being a noble portion of his inheritance, belonged to him nevertheless, because they had submitted themselves to his mercy, even though tardily, they should not depart entirely without mercy, although he said he might wish to modify this after careful consideration. Later, before being distributed among Henry’s men, the French hostages were treated to a magnificent meal. This performance was a dimension of Henry’s self-presentation as rightful lord, dealing sternly but fairly with rebellious subjects. The following day Henry balanced this splendid display with an exhibition of humility. He rode to the gates of Harfleur and then descended from his horse, entering the town on foot ‘without hosen or shoes, in greate deouocion’, making his way in this fashion to the church of St Martin and offering heartfelt thanks to God for his good fortune.82 The sixteenth-century translator then offers a telling editorial remark: ‘Oh maruelous constance! That by the prouidence of God had made them habitacion without mutability in this most noble Prince, who in his youth was most mutable and voyde of all spirituall vertues.’83 This makes explicit the connection between Henry’s ‘new manhood’ and the victories he was able to achieve. This may well have been among the messages which Henry himself sought to convey to those observing the diverse complexions of his publicly performed triumphs.
Notes 1 For discussion of Henry’s actions and representation in chivalric terms, including consideration of the implications of this for his masculinity, see Craig Taylor, ‘Henry V, flower of chivalry’ (forthcoming). I am grateful to him for giving me a copy of this prior to publication.
115
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HENRY V
2 W. Mark Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 405–7. For the circumstances and motives leading to the Agincourt campaign Allmand, pp. 66–78; Christopher Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c. 1300–c. 1450 (originally published 1988, revised edition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), for a survey of the entire period of conflict in its socio-economic and cultural settings. David Green’s study of the Hundred Years War is forthcoming for Yale University Press. I am grateful to him for allowing me a preview of the chapter on kingship which explores how English and French kingship both shaped the Hundred Years War and were shaped by it. 3 As discussed above, p. 96. 4 Allmand, p. 438. 5 For the circumstances surrounding the onset of hostilities between England and France in Edward III’s reign see Ormrod, Edward III, pp. 179–246. 6 Allmand, pp. 71–72; for general discussion of medieval notions of a just war, Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, (trans.) Michael Jones (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1984), pp. 260–302. 7 GHQ, p. 15, see also p. 409. 8 Ibid., pp. 17–19; the author notes on p. 19 that the interested reader can find details of the transcript amongst the royal records, something he does on a number of occasions, making assumptions about availability of such records to his readers. See Craig Taylor, ‘War, propaganda and diplomacy’ in C.T. Allmand (ed.), War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), pp. 70–91, for the point that whereas a substantial discourse of French propagandist polemic developed during the latter years of the Hundred Years War, there was no comparable body of texts produced in England, and the implications of this. 9 The English Life includes a letter taken from Monstrelet’s account, pp. 30–32. For Henry’s final demands made by ambassadors on his behalf see EHD, p. 209. 10 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116520, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. 11 TLF, p. 6; English Life, p. 24. 12 Ormrod, Edward III, pp. 212–14 for the justifications set forward by Edward III in 1340 after he had proclaimed himself king of France. 13 As discussed above, pp. 24–25. Henry’s later campaigns in France were framed in the same fashion. 14 Christopher Fletcher, ‘Manhood, kingship and the public in late medieval England’, Edad Media Revista de Historia 13 (2012), 123–42; 130–33 for discussion of the ‘rhetoric of manhood’ employed both by Edward III and Richard II in going to war (in the latter case this relates to Richard’s campaign to Scotland in 1385). 15 Charles Augustus Cole (ed.), Memorials of Henry the Fifth, King of England (London: Rolls Series, 1858), pp. 100–1; Elmham located the incident at Kenilworth, as did another contemporary chronicler, who dated it to Lent 1414, John Taylor, ‘The chronicle of John Strecche for the reign of Henry V’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 16 (1932), 137–87; 145. 16 EHD, p. 208, for this and what follows; Taylor, ibid., 149 for the original. 17 See Allmand, pp. 71–72; English Life, pp. xliii–lv, Kingsford judged that the episode had the qualities of a romance but was not necessarily complete invention. 18 The story became well known later in the century, see Brut, p. 374. 19 Curry, pp. 9–22 for discussion of the chronicle accounts. While their precise veracity and reliability can be questioned in places, overall they are good evidence for the central role which Henry’s conduct during the battle (and in its aftermath) played in substantiating ideas of his formidable manliness. They also indicate the relative currency of particular incidents and tropes.
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AGINCOURT
20 TLF, p. 8; English Life, pp. 33–34. 21 GHQ, pp. 27–55. 22 Ibid., pp. 59–61. Allmand suggests that Henry had only ever intended this campaign to be an initial foray, designed to gain a secure foothold in Normandy, p. 83. 23 GHQ, pp. 61–77 for detailed account of events on the march. 24 Curry, p. 12 for a table listing the varying estimates of the size of the armies made by contemporary chroniclers, English and French. Traditionally it has been claimed that the English were significantly outnumbered but she contends that there were about 9,000 English to 12,000 French. For the detail of her argument and a lucid survey of the whole campaign see Agincourt: A New History (Stroud: Tempus, 2005). 25 Curry, p. 2; Allmand, pp. 99–101. 26 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116521, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. See also GHQ, pp. 123–27. 27 Allmand, pp. 408–10; for a detailed account of the immediate aftermath of the battle and Henry’s decisions and actions in the ensuing months, Anne Curry, ‘After Agincourt, what next? Henry V and the campaign of 1416’ in Linda Clark (ed.), Conflicts Consequences and the Crown in the Late Middle Ages (The Fifteenth Century VII) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), pp. 23–52. 28 Curry, p. 473. Siege warfare was more common than pitched battles by this period, partly because it entailed less risk to the forces and the number of casualties was generally smaller, Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 221–22. 29 GHQ, p. 101. 30 The English chroniclers emphasize the overwhelming size of the French forces in comparison to the English, Curry, p. 12. 31 As recorded e.g. by the GHQ, pp. 57–58. TLF has the same challenge being issued by Henry before the capture of Caen in 1417, pp. 34–35; English Life, p. 83. 32 The Brut account of the tennis balls incident (p. 374) places mocking words about Henry’s immaturity in the mouth of the Dauphin, Louis, who was only 18. If there is any truth in this Henry’s challenge to him would have had a personal edge. Louis died in December 1415. 33 Curry, p. 56; TLF, p. 12 ‘Est animus michi, viri fortissimi’ is the original of ‘I have the spirit of a very strong man’; English Life, p. 42; Pseudo-Elmham also has Henry advised not to march on, but stating that he was determined to see ‘his’ lands and would rather place himself and his men in God’s hands than diminish his honour by being seen to flee, Curry, p. 65. GHQ, p. 61 depicts Henry being advised against this course by his council, but Henry confidently placed the outcome in God’s hands. 34 The Chronicle of John Hardyng, ed. Henry Ellis (London: F.C. and J. Rivington et al., 1812), p. 375. Curry, Agincourt, pp. 78–80 for discussion of his status as a source for the Agincourt campaign. 35 One of these clerics was the author of the GHQ, present in the king’s train during the battle and offering prayers for English victory throughout. 36 GHQ, p. 79. See also Frulovisi’s account, Curry, p. 60; English Life, p. 54. 37 Curry, p. 46 for this and what follows. For further discussion see Anne Curry, ‘The battle speeches of Henry V’, Reading Medieval Studies 34 (2008), 77–98. 38 Chronica Maiora, pp. 410–11. See Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London and New York: Hambledon, 2004), pp. 2–3, 99–111. 39 My brief account comprises a synthesis of various of the surviving accounts. The battle is the centrepiece to the GHQ, pp. 87–93. 40 Walsingham’s epithet, Chronica Maiora, p. 412. 41 Allmand argues that the scale of the massacre has been exaggerated, pp. 94–95, but Anne Curry notes that it may explain the large proportion of French nobles and
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HENRY V
42 43 44 45 46 47 48
49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62
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63 64 65 66 67 68
gentry who died, rather than being ransomed (as was customary after such a battle), pp. 472–73. See Taylor, ‘Henry V’, for detailed discussion and the point that Henry’s order was neither unchivalric nor unlawful by contemporary standards. See e.g. TLF’s account, p. 62. This is Frulovisi’s description, Curry, p. 59, see also p. 70 (Pseudo-Elmham), p. 154 (Le Fèvre and de Wavrin, for whom see note 48 below). Curry, p. 70. Allmand, pp. 88–89. Curry, p. 157 for this and what follows. This incident is also recounted by Jean Le Fèvre; see Curry, p. 138 for the relationship between de Wavrin and Le Fèvre’s chronicles which were written in the mid-fifteenth century. De Wavrin was fifteen, Le Fèvre, who was with the English forces, was nineteen. It is not clear whether either of them fought in the battle. See p. 47 (Elmham), p. 73 (Pseudo-Elmham), for other accounts of damage to the crown. Curry, p. 62; English Life, p. 60. Curry, p. 73. Ibid., p. 62 (Frulovisi), p. 73 (Pseudo-Elmham); English Life, p. 60. Described in detail by GHQ, pp. 101–13; Allmand, pp. 410–13. GHQ, p. 113 for the volume of the crowd. Helen Deeming, ‘The sources and origin of “The Agincourt Carol”’, Early Music 35 (2007), 23–38. GHQ, p. 113. TLF, pp. 22–23; English Life, p. 65. As suggested by Curry, p. 473. Ibid., p. 108. The monk was probably Michel Pintoin who died in 1421, see pp. 99–101 for discussion of his writings and their significance; p. 166 for Le Fèvre and De Wavrin’s accounts of Henry’s reaction after the battle. For Beaufort’s speeches, see note 26 above; GHQ, pp. 95–99. Curry, p. 12 for the different chronicle accounts of the death tally, all of which see a huge disparity between the numbers of English and French lost. Curry, p. 271. Ibid., p. 273. Ibid., pp. 273–74; for the original, Letters of Queen Margaret of Anjou and Bishop Beckington and Others, ed. Cecil Munro, Camden Society 86 (London, 1863), pp. 1–6 (manfully = viriliter, p. 5). Curry, p. 271. See above, pp. 29–30. Curry, Agincourt, p. 101. Allmand, pp. 81–82, 114–17, 186–89; Anne E. Curry, ‘Lancastrian Normandy: the jewel in the crown?’ in David Bates and Anne Curry (eds), England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London: The Hambledon Press, 1994), 235–52. TLF, pp. 65–69 for an account of events; English Life, pp. 117–39, see also Allmand, pp. 124–25. This poem is reproduced in the Brut, pp. 404–22 and also in Gregory’s Chronicle [http:// www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45550, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. This chronicle is named after its purported author, William Gregory, who was mayor of London 1451–52 and died in 1467, but Mary-Rose McClaren questions this identification. Whoever the author he wrote after 1461 and from a Yorkist-sympathizing perspective, although he was an eye-witness to certain events, such as Cade’s Revolt in 1450 and the Second Battle of St Albans (17 February 1461); The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in Writing (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2002), pp. 29–33.
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AGINCOURT
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69 Brut, p. 410, ll. 11–21. 70 Rouen finally surrendered on 19 January 1420, Allmand, p. 126 for discussion of the terms of surrender, Brut, pp. 419–22 for Page’s description of Henry taking possession of the city, see also TLF, p. 69 and English Life, p. 137. 71 Laura Ackerman Smoller, ‘From authentic miracles to a rhetoric of authenticity: examples from the canonization and cult of St Vincent Ferrer’, Church History 80 (2011), 773–79. There is no modern scholarly biography of Vincent. 72 English Life, p. xxxv. Kingsford states that Vincent and Henry actually met at Caen in late April or early May 1418 and suggests that Ormond may have been confused in his reminiscence by placing the meeting at Rouen, p. xxxvi. 73 Ibid., pp. 130–31. 74 See the extracts edited and translated by Laura Smoller in Thomas Head (ed.), Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 785–803 (p. 786). 75 Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Poets, Saints and Visionaries of the Great Schism (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2006), pp. 78–81. 76 English Life, p. 131. 77 Ibid., pp. 131–32. 78 See below, pp. 127–31. 79 Harriss, ‘Introduction’, p. 10. 80 Allmand, p. 81. 81 For this and what follows GHQ, p. 53; cf TLF, pp. 10–11. 82 English Life, p. 40, this passage drawn from Monstrelet. Similarly when Caen fell in August 1417 Henry’s first act on entering the city was to go to the church and give thanks for his victory, TLF, p. 40; English Life, p. 91. 83 English Life, p. 40.
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HEGEMONIC H ENRY
In describing Henry’s conduct at Agincourt Pseudo-Elmham offers the telling observation that ‘if the prince [Henry] had been of inferior rank amongst the combatants, he would on account of his extraordinary gallantry, have deserved to be crowned with a laurel of honour above others.’1 Henry demonstrated that he was qualified not just by his rank, but by his masterful exploits to rule over others. But this also implies that a lower-status man could have fought as hard and impressively as Henry, and would thus be worthy of great praise and social distinction. Walsingham described Henry at Agincourt ‘fulfilling the role of soldier as well as of king’ and being ‘the first to charge the enemy … giving his men in his own person brave examples of daring as he scattered the enemy ranks with his ready axe’.2 Henry’s masculinity was hegemonic because it rendered him peerless, but also because his dauntless display inspired his exhausted and outnumbered men to extraordinary feats of personal bravery. This revealed the extent to which Henry was different to his men in degree, not kind. They were all on the same continuum of masculinity, albeit occupying relative positions, determined by social status as well as accomplishment. But regardless of individual status, by doing Henry’s bidding and following him into battle, all of his men could partake of his qualities. Henry’s troops were raised by indenture, an agreement whereby an individual was paid in return for agreeing to serve as captain for a set amount of time and to provide a specified number and type of fighting men.3 These men often had some family or tenurial tie to the captain but not always.4 Sometimes Henry offered specific financial or territorial ‘perks’ in order to attract members of the nobility to sign up.5 In addition to the financial incentives honour and chivalric endeavour as a collective experience remained an important motivation for noble participation in warfare, despite the increasingly ‘business-like’ approach to its organization and conduct.6 Henry gave all his men the opportunity to accrue a different sort of profit by realizing their own manliness in pursuit of a righteous cause; to display their prowess and gain a reputation for valour which could benefit families as much as individuals. This can be viewed as a variety of the ‘patriarchal 120
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HEGEMONIC HENRY
dividend’ which Connell identifies as central to the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity.7 The close relations which Henry fashioned with men of the nobility (and some of lower ranks) have been identified as the heart and spine of his successful kingship, providing him with reliable support which ensured the smooth running of government during his increasing absences abroad.8 Significantly many of those in the royal household who were closest to Henry had served with him in Wales, for example Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel and his father’s half-brother Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter.9 These men shared with Henry formative military experiences which promoted close homosocial bonds of mutual trust and esteem.10 Henry’s relationship with them took the form of a network constructed from their shared attributes and chivalric solidarity of outlook which created a type of brotherhood among them. These men had also proven themselves capable of taking on key administrative roles, and were further unified by their service to Henry and to England’s interests abroad.11 Such positions offered both prestige and monetary benefits, but there is little evidence of self-serving among Henry’s officials; instead there seems to have been a genuine ‘team spirit’. This is testament both to Henry’s good choice of servants, and to the loyalty with which they served him. Henry was also carefully even-handed with his dispensation of patronage, rewarding those who clearly deserved such recognition, but in a measured way.12 There was no profligacy or overt partisanship to cause resentment or upset the other members of the ‘team’ and the bonds between them persisted beyond his death, in unified devotion to his memory. There is no direct evidence as to exactly how the nobility perceived the king, or the precise nature of their influence upon him, but given the king’s military renown it was evidently an honour to serve him.13 Being subservient to such a leader was a means for these men to increase their own honour and standing over that of other men. Henry also benefited from an instance of dynastic serendipity which found him at the centre of a nobility of his own age, Harriss noting that in 1413 eleven out of seventeen members of the upper nobility were between 18 and 32, with Henry in the middle at 26.14 This lent further substance to perceptions of the fresh start attendant on Henry’s accession and contributed to the atmosphere of reconciliation at court. There was a sense that the new generation, now finding themselves in power, were united in a wish to leave the divisions of the past behind and march together into a glorious future. Indeed, the letter from Convocation, quoted above, makes reference to age as a key factor in Henry’s forces at Agincourt, drawing on the language of rebirth and revivification: the glory and honour of the famous realm of England, for a long time wholly lulled to sleep and forgotten, [is] roused from its heavy 121
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HENRY V
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slumber. For now winter is gone – the winter, that is, of sloth and idleness, that I say not timidity or madness. Flowers have appeared – the flowers of vigorous and warlike youth; and flourishing vines – whereby I understand that noble progeny of kings and nobles of England, which rooted in virtuous arts, formerly spread their branches throughout the world, have given forth the odours of fame and of worthiest probity and victory unheard of in all time … 15 Adam of Usk also emphasized the age of Henry’s army in relation to the events of 1419, noting that: ‘Then the lord king, accompanied by the youth of the nation, set out once again in his warlike glory to subjugate France, and within two years he had subjugated it to his will.’16 In addition to the nobles Henry was also fortunate in the loyalty and accomplishments of his close male relatives: the Beauforts and his brothers Clarence, Bedford and Gloucester.17 All three brothers were responsible for the direction of England in Henry’s absence at different times, and all fought in France too.18 Gloucester was with Henry at Agincourt and later during the conquest of Normandy. Bedford spent the most time of the three in England, being entrusted with the lieutenancy of Normandy during the Agincourt campaign, and again in 1417–19 and 1421–22, but he did also participate in the fighting with some distinction. Next to Henry it was Clarence who was most admired by the English and feared by the French. Clarence missed Agincourt, having been forced by a bout of dysentery to return to England. But from the time of the siege and capture of Caen in August 1417 until his death on 22 March 1421 at the Battle of Baugé, he was almost wholly occupied with campaigns in France in support of Henry’s interests. Frulovisi’s account contains many instances of Clarence’s impressive exploits, for example describing the duke and his men scaling the walls of Caen on 4 September 1417 and then rampaging through the streets.19 According to Ormond (who was at Clarence’s side) the king awarded all of the town’s treasure (with the exception of ‘a goodly French Booke’) to his brother who, in turn, distributed it amongst his followers, ‘whereby he maruelouslie obtained theire fauour and love’.20 In his poem recounting events at Rouen, Page described Clarence thus: He ys a prynce for to comende; But all to fewe of suche ben founde; He is manfulle whanne werre dothe laste, And mercifull whanne hit is paste; Manhode, mekenesse, witte and grace, Is conteynyd with hym in a litull space; He wantith nothynge a prynce shold haue; Almyghti God mote hym saue!21 122
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HEGEMONIC HENRY
The poem also reiterates Henry’s own ‘worthy manhode’ in terms of his mercy and discretion, noting that: ‘[a]boue alle pryncis he is pryse’, and it is significant that Clarence is represented within an identical register of temperate masculinity.22 Henry was impressive alone, but rendered even more formidable when supported by his brothers, Clarence in particular. Henry’s dedication to warfare provided his brothers and his nobles with a welcome opportunity to distinguish themselves internationally in the arena which defined and justified their place at the top of the social hierarchy. One has the sense of a ‘locker room’ atmosphere of competition, not just with the French, but with each other, all striving to outdo their companions in heroic deeds.23 Properly channelled they provided Henry with a set of fearsome subordinates. But there was always the risk that such competition could lead to unwise decisions and rash manoeuvres in pursuit of renown, which could undermine the whole undertaking. Henry is always described as master of his emotions. For example shortly before Agincourt Frulovisi recounts that he granted an audience to three heralds sent by the French nobles who presented their cause as just and promised Henry that they would avenge the insupportable devastation he had wreaked upon France. Given Henry’s own claims to be pursuing a just cause these words were surely calculated to provoke an angry response, but to no avail: ‘Then the English king with brave heart, with a fixed expression, and with no anger, with no change of colour of his face answered with modest speech in these words: “Whatever is pleasing to God shall be pleasing to all”.’24 Similarly on arrival at the battle site:
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Without trembling or showing any anger, he set spurs to his horse and rushed to see the approaching enemy. Once he had seen and obtained certain knowledge of the army which was too large to be counted, he returned to his men with steady heart, and unflinching for he placed all hope in the singular justice of God alone.25 This manifestation of appropriately manly self-control contrasts with intimations that his brothers did not always act so sensibly, with dangerous, even fatal, results. According to some accounts the reason why Gloucester was so badly injured at Agincourt was because although he ‘fought bravely’ he did so ‘without caution’, ‘pushing forward perhaps too vigorously on his horse into the conflict’.26 Not only might this have cost Gloucester his own life, but it seriously endangered the life of the king too, as Henry’s actions in saving his brother exposed him to additional peril: ‘dangers scarcely possible to be borne’.27 There was general agreement at the time that Clarence’s death at Baugé on 22 March 1422 was the direct result of impetuosity and glory-hunting. Henry was in England at this point and Clarence was in charge of Normandy. Clarence was en route to Anjou when he was informed that the Dauphin’s army (made up of French and Scottish troops) was 123
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HENRY V
nearby. According to Walsingham, Clarence ‘was unreasonably excited by the news and to a greater degree than was fitting for such a great general’.28 Doubtless eager to score a momentous victory against the Dauphin (Charles, the future Charles VII) Clarence set off to meet the army, with only a few men. In this he ignored advice not to pursue the Dauphin, issuing orders for the rest of his forces (who were scattered across the countryside) to follow him. But Clarence found himself on marshy land which he crossed with great difficulty and the loss of a number of men and horses. Thus he encountered the enemy with his troops scattered about and far from being in any sort of proper battle order. Clarence’s force was outnumbered and overwhelmed, he was killed alongside several of his nobles. The later Brut gets to the heart of the matter with its judgement that Clarence died ‘be-cause he would not be gouerned and have take hys ost with hym’, and, we might add, because he would not govern himself.29 Perhaps Clarence had undertaken to attack the Dauphin in order to achieve a sensational personal victory which would allow him to emerge from Henry’s shadow, but, if so, the outcome only served to emphasize the superiority of Henry’s more intellectual, less visceral, approach to warfare.30 Taken as a pair they provide a complementary object lesson in how to be correctly manly. Walsingham clearly believed that Clarence had betrayed his reputation for gifted leadership by letting his passions get the better of his reason. Clarence’s conduct at Baugé was that of a ‘hardy’ man, not a ‘manly’ man, and this cost him his life.31 Henry’s sorrow at the news of his brother’s death was likely to have been a combination of personal and other, more strategic, considerations. Clarence was still heir to the throne at this point, which heightened the significance of his loss and Bedford became heir presumptive until the birth of Henry VI in December. It was the first serious military setback Henry had faced since the start of his French campaigns, although, characteristically, he did not panic.32 It was fortunate that the French had no dashing leader of Henry’s calibre to take advantage of this calamitous English defeat and his position was not significantly undermined by it. But it did reveal how England’s achievements in France depended to a very great extent on Henry himself. Despite their superficial similarities (especially in martial terms) the brothers all had differing characters, priorities and abilities, determined to some extent by their order of birth as well as their upbringing.33 It was important for Henry to direct his brothers in ways that made the best use of their skills, but without eclipsing his own achievements. Ambitious younger brothers could otherwise pose the same problem as ambitious sons, all the more so as long as Henry remained unmarried and childless. It says something for Henry’s management skills that he was able to keep all his brothers in a harmonious and productive balance with himself at the apex. Henry gave them all substantial roles in his affairs, which allowed them to exercise power and to distinguish themselves in a fashion that earned them great 124
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HEGEMONIC HENRY
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praise from contemporaries.34 These subsidiary yet crucial roles were both a reflection of their abilities and a means of keeping them occupied. All three were evidently prepared to acknowledge Henry as their superior (although Clarence may not have been entirely happy to do so). An important additional factor is the admiration and affection in which Henry was certainly held by both Bedford and Gloucester. Moreover, the brothers’ status and their achievements on Henry’s behalf meant that, although subordinate to him, they were pre-eminent over all the other men at his court. All three brothers provided an invaluable extension of Henry’s kingship, and, crucially, this was in conspicuous contrast to the squabbling male members of the French royal family at the same time, of which the English royals took full advantage.35 The extent to which the balance between the brothers was maintained by Henry’s presence is revealed after his death, when previously unobservable personal and political rivalries between Bedford and Gloucester came to the fore.36 It seems that while both brothers were willing to be Henry’s auxiliary neither was prepared to afford the same concession to the other in the absence of his dominating presence. The vertical bonds Henry maintained with the rank and file were as important as the horizontal ones he established with the nobility, especially in terms of popular perceptions of his kingship. This was exemplified in Henry’s conduct during the siege of Rouen: This most worthie Kinge, takinge vppon him the care of all his hoast, passed manie a longe winter night without sleepe or repose. He dilligently visited the watches and stacions of euery companie. And whome he found negligent he corrected, and the dilligent he praised and rewarded. The thinge that was to be purueyed was prouided that thing that he wanted he restored; and generally there was nothinge in the siege, but he surueyed and ordered. And because he was informed that much people of his hoast for pride had sett there tents and pauillions from there fellowes, by occasion whereof they might be lightlie surprised by there enemies; and if there companie had anie neede of them there lodges were so farr that they shoulde come to late to there aide; he caused to be proclaymed openly, that euerie man shoulde lodge himselfe and his companie within a circuit lymitted to him; and that no man shoulde presume, without the Kings lycence or commaundment, to passe that precinct. By force of which proclamacion the Englishmen lodged themselfes more nighe together then they had before.37 Henry’s famous attention to detail is apparent here. As well as ensuring that everything ran correctly and efficiently his perambulations around the camp, even at night, served to place him regularly among his troops.38 His instructions relating to the placement of tents and the insistence that no-one 125
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HENRY V
should set themselves apart reveal a concern that there should be a certain equality to camp life. This was important both for practical reasons of security, but also to engender a proper esprit de corps. Everyone should share comparable danger and be ready to defend any of their fellows, regardless of status. This passage also underlines the extent to which Henry shared the lifestyle of his men, something proclaimed by Beaufort in his speech to Parliament of 4 November 1415 which stated that Henry undertook to restore his rights ‘forsaking therefore all kinds of personal pleasure, comfort and safety’.39 Even if Henry had not been so willing to share the discomforts experienced by his soldiers, there was only so far that conditions in a camp could be ameliorated for a king. In the end living among his troops cost Henry his life, for he was not immune to the diseases which so frequently ravaged armies. Henry was such an inspiring leader partly because he was not asking anything of his men that he was not prepared to do himself. It is often argued that Henry’s endeavours to contrive a common identification between his interests and those of his people in general were further bolstered by his use and promotion of the English language.40 The evidence of the London pageant and other literary celebrations of Henry’s triumphs certainly reveal the development of a specifically nationalist discourse both to express Henry’s purpose in going to war, and to explain his successes against the French.41 In these settings Henry was presented as a symbol of national identity and the England he embodied was unequivocally masculine. Therefore his men fought to defend the honour and manhood not just of their king, but of the entire realm. By doing so they could imbibe something of Henry’s manliness, understood as special and distinct in both moral and nationalistic terms. The army was conceived as an extension of the king; the instrument by which he pursued his rights and attained them on behalf of his subjects. So it was vital that it be seen to have a character which reflected the qualities of Henry’s ideal kingship, including his manhood. Contemporary observers noted and praised the control which Henry was able to exercise over his army, thanks both to his intimate involvement in its organization and the force of his personality. This was seen to contrast with the disordered nature of armies earlier in the Hundred Years War.42 On first landing in France in 1415 Henry issued orders designed to regulate the behaviour of his men: The king had prudently issued, amongst other most worthy ordinances, a command to the army that under pain of death there should be no more setting fire to places, as there had been to begin with, and that churches and sacred buildings along with their property should be preserved intact, and that no one should lay hands on a woman or a priest or servant of a church, unless he happened to be armed, offered violence, or attacked anyone.43 126
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HEGEMONIC HENRY
Before the siege of Harfleur these ‘worthy ordinances’ were reiterated with respect to the treatment of the townspeople.44 The seriousness with which Henry treated the discipline of his army was illustrated by the fate of one soldier who, during the march to Calais, had stolen a silver pyx from a church. As soon as he found out Henry halted the army in order to expiate this sacrilegious act, which was also a contravention of his direct orders. The guilty man was detected and the pyx restored to the church. Then an example was made of him: ‘the trespasser was ledd bounde as a thiefe thorough the hoast, and after hanged vppon a tree, that eueryman might beholde him.’45 This is another place where the English translator adds editorial comment, noting how impressive it was that Henry carried out the sentence, even though the time was approaching when he would have need of every last man. This proved the king’s utmost faith in God and justice over simple numbers. The translator concludes his aside: ‘And vndoubtedly he that shall attayne to conquests and honour must first by th-example of this invincible conquerour conforme himself to semblable vertues.’46 The incident was actually rather useful for Henry in allowing him to demonstrate that sentence of death for transgressing his orders was no empty threat.47 Henry’s unyielding approach reinforced his authority over the army, and events at Caen and Rouen were designed to convey a similar message to the inhabitants of other towns. The object was to persuade those in his path to surrender forthwith, so that they could experience his clemency alone without the precursor of violence and suffering which these two towns had endured. After the surrender of Rouen a number of nearby towns did indeed yield to Henry without resistance.48 We gain detailed knowledge of the discipline which Henry enjoined on his army from surviving versions of the so-called ‘Mantes Ordinances’ which are usually dated to 1419, although may have been produced in 1421.49 One version of the ordinances is included in Nicolas Upton’s De Studio Militari (On Military Studies) which is undated but was dedicated to Gloucester. It was possibly written in the early 1430s, just after Henry VI’s coronation as King of France in December 1431.50 They had been translated into Middle English by the mid fifteenth century and their didactic potential is also suggested by their inclusion in Sir John Paston’s ‘Grete Book’, a miscellany of chivalric and heraldic works, which also contains an English translation of De Re Militari and a translation of the Secreta Secretorum by John Lydgate and Benedict Burgh.51 Upton’s version includes a preamble in Henry V’s voice explaining that the fundamental purpose of the ordinances is to limit ‘unbridled cupidity, the mother of strife, the enemy of peace, the source of contention’ so that the men should behave themselves as God intended, namely in a manner ‘restrained, pacific and honest’.52 Otherwise greed would ‘swallow up the whole discipline of our Christian army, and the commonwealth in which we live and reign would be destroyed’. The ordinances would thus ensure ‘that our army may be happily governed in both war time 127
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HENRY V
and peace time and the said commonwealth remain prosperous’. Thus the conduct of the army was important not only to its own moral state and success, but also because it impinged upon the welfare of the entire nation whose interests it represented. Within the ordinances themselves first and foremost the men were enjoined to observe the chain of command unquestioningly: the opening clause orders that all men of ‘whatever estate, condition or nation’ must obey king, constable and marshal on pain of forfeiture of body or goods.53 The second clause forbade touching the host or any vessel in which it was kept. Next, they were commanded not to rob or attack men of the church and women, or to rape women, on pain of death. When they acquired victuals and other goods lawfully they were not to steal them from each other. The soldiers also had to pay a third of any gains they made to their lord or captain. No assault of a castle or town was permitted unless initiated by a man of estate or a captain. Other clauses relate to the proper handling of prisoners, which is not so much a concern for their well-being in custody, as an expression of their status as prizes belonging to those who had captured them. Sometimes more than one man had a claim, hence the need to formalize the means by which a prisoner’s value was properly shared out if necessary, in order to avoid arguments which could escalate into riot. Disagreements of any kind, whether over prisoners, arms, or lodgings, were not to degenerate into brawls but be reported to superiors to resolve. Prostitutes were not to live in camp, especially at sieges, nor were they allowed to stay in towns, castles or fortresses once they had been taken, in both instances they had to maintain a distance of at least a league from the army. Henry ordered that copies of the ordinances were to be given to all the lords or commanding officers, whose responsibility it was to disseminate the contents to their men.54 The preamble states that the ordinances are intended to help those responsible for maintaining discipline to ‘judge and discern the more prudently in each case’ and warns that no-one can claim ignorance of them in order to try and escape punishment.55 An example of the potentially serious consequences of disobeying Henry’s instructions is given by Frulovisi.56 Shortly after insisting that all the men camp together in close proximity (as quoted above), Henry made a circuit of the watch posts and discovered two men wandering outside their allotted area. They were immediately hanged. Although many of the concerns tackled in the ‘Mantes Ordinances’ are also to be found in earlier examples, they contain additional clauses which demonstrate that the regulatory discourse was not static, but could be adapted in response to the particular circumstances of Henry’s campaigns in France.57 Henry was legislating against issues which had emerged while on campaign and trying to find solutions for these. Discipline was essential to the efficient running of an army on the march, lending a practical dimension to Henry’s attempts to quell the division and ferment inspired by greed and resentment. The percolation of these ordinances down through the ranks was 128
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HEGEMONIC HENRY
intended to inculcate harmony and render the army a more harmonious and therefore effective unit.58 The very success of the campaign and the rewards which it increasingly offered made this an ever more pressing issue as time went on.59 The very need for more detailed ordinances suggests that the men were not always conducting themselves appropriately and needed to be corrected. There was also a vital moral dimension to Henry’s endeavours here, which owed some of its ideological power to well-established understandings of virtuous and honourable conduct as an essential prerequisite for military success.60 The morality of the army also relates to ideals which dictated a lord’s responsibility to the vulnerable; to protect those who could not protect themselves from depredations wreaked by those who took unlawful advantage of their superior strength. As noted above, this was also part of the means by which Henry sought to impress upon the inhabitants of conquered towns (and those yet to be conquered) that he was not a cruel tyrant, but their rightful ruler.61 Both Henry and his men had to maintain a tricky balancing act between aggressive force and measured mercy in their progress through France, in order to demonstrate the rectitude of his claims. No amount of legislation could completely stamp out trespass among the troops, however, and this problem was not unique to Henry. The necessity of strictly regulating misdemeanours occupied all military commanders to some extent. Solutions to these often drew on ideals of manhood as a means of enjoining a more appropriately measured response to the temptations for personal gain and renown which warfare offered.62 But there is a sense that Henry was particularly dedicated to solving the problem of disorder in his army, for reasons that were dictated by his specific situation and went beyond the strictly practical. There is one element that appears to reflect Henry’s own attitudes: Curry states that Henry’s ordinances evince a preoccupation with the army’s sexual conduct. This concern is not paralleled in earlier comparable ordinances, and after Henry’s death there seems to have been a slackening of the restraints that he had put in place to try and control the sexual activities of his men.63 The clause from the ordinances that sought to limit congress between soldiers and prostitutes was summarized above and may actually date to 1417.64 In addition, in 1421 instructions were issued to the captains governing garrison stations in towns which, inter alia, ordered that no garrison soldier (of any rank), nor their servants, should keep a concubine, or be in an adulterous or otherwise unsanctioned relationship with a woman.65 Those who disobeyed this injunction were to be imprisoned for a month (or longer), to have their wages docked for the same period, and only to be released on payment of bail, which would be rescinded in the event of future transgression. Curry contends that ‘it is interesting to speculate that the orders against sexual activity may have been issued partly because of the King’s own obsession’, relating this to Henry’s apparent change of character and adoption of chastity on accession and suggesting that ‘perhaps we have a 129
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HENRY V
classic case of the over-zealous recent convert’.66 If this does indeed reflect something of Henry’s personal convictions, it was not simply a fastidious fixation on sexual purity for its own sake. It also suggests something of Henry’s attempt to shape the army in the image of his own supremely selfcontrolled manhood. Isabel Davis notes the usefulness to the authorities of discourses articulated in contemporary chivalric literature which ‘glamourized the ideal of the soldier who was sexually reserved’ to the attempted imposition of a ‘required masculinity’ upon armies.67 These ideals rested upon the idea that troops could secure inviolability both in metaphorical and physical terms through the preservation of chastity. This allowed them to avoid the potentially effeminizing effects of sex which could sap an army’s strength, as well as invite divine disapproval. Upton discussed this in his De Studio Militari drawing on classical precedents as illustration.68 Henry’s regulations actually betray a practical dimension in that they do not absolutely forbid sex per se, but were intended to keep the indulgence of sexual urges away from the garrison itself (whether it was on the move, or stationed in a town). Similarly any relationships with women could not be exclusive or formalized (hence no concubines could be maintained by soldiers, or live with them).69 This was doubtless designed to prevent discord and rivalry between the men, who might otherwise get involved in the sorts of fights over a woman that the ordinances suggest were inspired by arguments over prisoners and booty. The presence of women in garrisons had the potential to disrupt the homosocial bonds which were so vital to camaraderie and success. In addition, in the ordinances concerning both prostitutes and rape there was evidently a concern that randy and unruly soldiers should not upset relationships between garrisons and the local population.70 This would be detrimental to Henry’s claims that his conquests were morally justified. In placing an emphasis on continence Henry therefore required the troops to imitate his own behaviour and to understand that self-control more widely was a vital mainstay of their continued success (both in practical and moral terms). But the very need to control the men’s sexual conduct through ordinances and the comparative lack of concern for chastity exhibited by other English commanders in this period suggests that the majority of soldiers did not perceive the benefits of abstinence in the same way that Henry did.71 The youth of the army undoubtedly played a role in establishing that the dominant culture was one in which manhood involved flouting ideal, chaste norms in favour of immoderation and excess.72 Even if some of the soldiers were older and/or had left wives and families behind, the garrison environment rendered them figuratively young nonetheless. Evidence for the actual sexual conduct of the men in Henry’s army is limited, but wider indications about the conduct of English troops in France later on during the English occupation suggest that the types of behaviour which Henry was attempting to curb were fairly standard practice.73 It was fairly commonplace for higher status men on campaign in Normandy to have mistresses.74 130
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This demonstrates the extent to which the precise relationships between masculinity and sexuality were dependent upon setting. What was understood as appropriate manly behaviour within the notionally all-male environment of a military camp was at odds with the standards expected to be met by men of equivalent background when living among family and other dependants.75 The ordinances imply that sexual relationships with women were a source of competition among men, which also suggests that such activities served as a means of impressing one’s comrades. We might even regard being on campaign as something akin to the ‘homosocial paradise’ which Tosh argues the colonial life offered to men in a later period; a setting in which a particular version of youthful masculinity could be adopted without compromise.76 Alongside the material rewards and potential for improving one’s social standing which joining Henry’s army entailed, this may well have served as an additional incentive for some. It is no startling revelation to learn that soldiers were more likely than not to be dissolute on occasion, but it does further suggest that there was something unusual and therefore revealing about Henry’s stance. His men may have shown little interest in imitating him, but would probably have been aware that in promulgating ordinances to enforce chastity Henry certainly practised what he preached. This would be all the more impressive if there were rumours that he had once been ‘one of the lads’, like his brothers. I noted above that the soldiers had the potential to share many of Henry’s qualities, but his chastity was an element that set him apart from them. It signified that he and he alone truly embodied the standards of hegemonic masculinity which lent such authority to his rule. This may be why Henry chose to place an emphasis on chastity in the ordinances alongside the other measures put in place to try and contain the excesses of his men. Given his familiarity with life on campaign it seems unlikely that he would have been surprised that most of them did not follow his dictates with respect to sex. But this usefully emphasized his own singularity by contrast, as well as the seriousness with which he took his responsibility for the moral conduct of those beneath him. This is certainly the interpretation suggested by the later lives of Henry in the direct lines of cause and effect that they draw between his unblemished manhood and his conquest of France. Contemporary interpretations of the French defeat in moral terms further highlight the extent to which correctly moral and manly deportment was deemed crucial to military success. The French evidently assumed that, regardless of the dreadful conditions, their numerical superiority would be decisive. This, in combination with the lack of clear overall leadership, contributed to a somewhat cocksure and therefore undisciplined approach.77 The Monk of Saint-Denis singled out amongst other French failings the rash behaviour of ‘the young men who heeded nothing but their own excessive ardour’ and the failure of the older more experienced lords to check them.78 The Monk interpreted the defeat as the judgement of God because the 131
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French had degenerated from the virtuous condition of their forebears. He identified the behaviour of men both clerical and secular as responsible for the general state of French depravity which had earned divine opprobrium, first castigating clerics: For it is such men whom God established to set the example of obedience to his commands, to be the mirror of honour, the model of chastity and abstinence, the rule of humility and patience, the bringers of consolation to the poor and afflicted, putting aside their passions, rejecting ambition and devoting themselves to prayer and giving their time to pious reading. But they have observed none of this. They have rushed headlong into vice without shame or reserve.79 The Monk went on to criticize the nobility, apparently not trusting himself to deliver an objective assessment of their role in France’s disaster:
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I shall leave to those who are more circumspect to decide if we should attribute the ruin of the kingdom to the disorders of the French nobility, who as everyone knows, have all fallen into luxury, delivering themselves up to all passions and vanities of the world, to the point where there is not a man amongst them who follows the ways of his ancestors.80 At the root of the Monk’s understanding of events is a failure of manhood: French men had fallen under the sway of passions which they should have been able to master. This rendered them unable to offer effective resistance to the English. The fact that these were exactly the men who should have been setting an example of virtuous self-control to the people undermined the French cause irrevocably, because it allowed sinful destabilizing effeminacy to percolate down through society.81 By comparison the Monk presented a favourable depiction of Henry V as a temperate conqueror, which serves as a means of emphasizing further the failings of his own compatriots.82 Frulovisi has the citizens of Rouen blaming their unmanly nobles for their terrible experiences during the siege. This appears as part of their appeal to Henry for clemency, claiming that while they were suffering and starving the princes of France ‘keepe them couert in houses after the manner of weomen’. They continued: Thou preuaylest by battaile and by armes; and our people sitteth at home in deuision and altercacions and after the right of weomen, and repose them in there pallaces in there longe gownes and furred soft; and generally to speake, they liue in all delights.83 132
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It made sense even for some among the French to understand Henry’s achievements within a register of manliness which their own fragmented and immoral nobility were wholly unable to match. From an English perspective this lent further weight to Henry’s claims to be doing God’s work in defeating the arrogant, sinful and dishonourable French. All this rhetoric serves as a reminder of the potential fragility of a reputation built on warfare. Should the political scene have changed in ways which contrived against Henry, both his conquests in France and the image of his ultra-manly kingship that they enabled would have been seriously undermined. The circumstances surrounding the Battle of Agincourt itself are suggestive of this. We have seen that Henry’s decision to march on Calais was presented as evidence of his courage and manhood, and of the conviction that God would protect his decimated force.84 The question of whether or not this was a sensible strategic decision for Henry to have made, or whether he was simply lucky to have won the battle and thus overwritten what could have been an extremely costly miscalculation, continues to exercise modern historians.85 The accounts make clear that in taking this decision Henry went expressly against the advice of the majority of those around him, including Clarence. In retrospective knowledge of the triumph at Agincourt this could easily be recast as evidence of Henry’s essential superiority. But had he not won the battle Henry’s decision could have been evidence instead for an unwise and reckless bravado, with Clarence rendered more rational and manly by contrast. Moreover, there is evidence that enthusiasm in England for Henry’s French project was waning in the early 1420s, when complaints about the burden which his campaigns placed upon the English people were starting to be voiced. As long as there was an observable correlation between Henry and England’s interests in the pursuit of his claims in France he enjoyed support. An unwillingness to keep paying for this does not mean that the project itself was being questioned.86 But the problem with an emphasis on Henry’s rights was that once these had been confirmed at Troyes, it was felt in England that the responsibility for providing financial support for his rule in France should logically shift from his English subjects to his French subjects.87 Parliament’s unwillingness to grant Henry a subsidy in early 1421 also seems to reflect a perception that he was preoccupied with France at the expense of the welfare of England.88 Towards the end of his reign Henry became particularly reliant on loans and the evidence suggests that areas which saw him and Catherine in person during their 1421 progress responded more positively and generously than areas which did not.89 However, there are also indications that Henry’s money-raising was deemed rapacious and ruthless. Adam of Usk stated that Henry was determined to avenge his brother’s death at Baugé: and it is in order to avenge it more completely that the lord king is now fleecing everyone with any money, rich or poor, throughout the 133
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HENRY V
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realm, in readiness for his return to France in great force. Yet I fear, alas, that both the great men and the money of the kingdom will be miserably wasted on this enterprise. No wonder, then, that the unbearable impositions being demanded from the people to this end are accompanied by dark – though private – mutterings and curses, and by hatred of such extortions; and I pray that my supreme lord may not in the end, like Julius and Ahasuerus, and Alexander, and Hector, and Cyrus, and Darius, and Macchabeus, incur the sword of the Lord’s fury.90 These rulers, while admired, had all died relatively young, mostly through violent means.91 Arguably Henry had bitten off more than he could chew in committing England wholesale to an essentially unwinnable conflict, and then he died, leaving his relatives to deal with the consequences.92 Henry’s actions in the early 1420s appeared to be governed more by the immediate circumstances than by any consideration of their long-term implications, although the extent to which it is fair to expect him to have foreseen subsequent developments is debatable.93 On the other hand his policies in France were well managed in the early years of Henry VI’s reign.94 We simply cannot know how Henry V would have handled resurgent French unity and the advantage Charles VII was able to gain from this. It is not my purpose here to pass judgement on the extent to which Henry should be retrospectively viewed as a ‘good’ king. More significant to my exploration of Henry’s kingship and masculinity is how he was represented at the time and to what ends. Henry’s untimely death played a crucial role in his subsequent reputation. It served to crystallize the image of him as a king at the zenith of his achievements, notwithstanding the expression of grievances expressed in the early 1420s. We never see Henry in decline, as a man losing his grip on power, or on his faculties, as had happened to Edward III and to his own father Henry IV. Henry V was commemorated by his council as ‘the most Christian warrior of the Church, the shining light of prudence and the exemplar of justice, the unconquered king, the flower and glory of all knighthood’.95 The idea of Henry’s kingly excellence and the extent to which this was predicated on his exemplary manhood was clearly not a fabrication but reflected contemporary assessments of his rule and conduct, as well as owing something to his own self-fashioning. Henry’s example loomed very large after his death, which placed a difficult burden on his only son.96 Commemoration of Henry V’s character and exploits was a vital element of attempts to maintain his legacy to pass on to the son whom all anticipated would closely resemble him. Analysis of Henry VI’s disastrous reign often comments on the ‘uniquely daunting’ inheritance left by Henry V to the 8month-old son whom he had never seen.97 However, the legacy of Henry V’s image as the vital, manly conqueror was to prove just as problematic for 134
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Henry VI as the more strictly political and territorial elements of his inheritance. As Henry VI grew older the currency of Henry V’s example only served to make his son’s shortcomings all the more apparent. Henry V’s ideal masculinity served many purposes in his own reign, but from the 1430s it served a new one. It was appropriated and elaborated to form part of the attempted solution to his son’s shortcomings, and the worrying ramifications which these entailed for the development of his manhood and kingship.
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Notes 1 Curry, p. 73. 2 Chronica Maiora, p. 411. 3 Anne Curry, ‘English armies in the fifteenth century’ in Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994), pp. 39–68 (pp. 41–48); for a representative indenture made between Henry V and Sir Thomas Tunstall, 29 April 1415, Curry, pp. 436–38; pp. 438–39 for further evidence of the arrangement made between Henry and Tunstall. 4 Curry, ‘English armies’, pp. 43–44 and her discussion of the example of Sir John Cressy (d. 1445), pp. 65–68. 5 Ibid., p. 42. 6 W.M. Ormrod, Political Life in Medieval England, 1300–1450 (Houndmills: St Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 98–02, esp. p. 100; Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 219–37. 7 R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p. 79. 8 G.L. Harriss, ‘The king and his magnates’ in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 31–52; Allmand, pp. 2, 62, 347. 9 Allmand, pp. 353–55 for these and other examples. 10 Harriss, ‘The king and his magnates’, p. 44. 11 Allmand, pp. 354–56. 12 Harriss, ‘The king and his magnates’, p. 51. 13 Ibid., pp. 50–51. 14 Ibid., p. 40. 15 Curry, p. 272. 16 The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, (ed.) Chris Given-Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 269. Anne Curry, ‘Sex and the soldier in Lancastrian Normandy, 1415–50’, Reading Medieval Studies 14 (1988), 17–45; 32 on the youth of the army. 17 Allmand, pp. 333–38. 18 For details of their lives and careers: G. L. Harriss, ‘Thomas, duke of Clarence (1387–1421)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/27198, accessed 30 Jan. 2013]; Jenny Stratford, ‘John, duke of Bedford (1389–1435)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14844, accessed 30 Jan. 2013]; G.L. Harriss, ‘Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (1390–1447)’, ODNB, online edn, May 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14155, accessed 30 Jan. 2013]. 19 TLF, p. 39; the English translator adds to Frulovisi’s account to describe Clarence’s actions as born of ‘incredible audacitie and manhoode’, English Life, p. 90. 20 English Life, p. 92.The author says he does not know what the book was, although he implies it was some sort of chronicle. 21 Brut, p. 406, ll. 2–10. 22 For the extended passages from which these quotations are taken: ibid., p. 405, ll. 11–15; p. 407, ll. 5–28.
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41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
50
With thanks to David Green for his thoughts on the all-male nature of Henry’s court. Curry, p. 58; English Life, p. 48. Curry, p. 59; English Life, p. 50. Curry, p. 62 (Elmham), p. 73 (Pseudo-Elmham). Even Frulovisi indicates that Gloucester fought somewhat recklessly, ‘incautius forte pugnaret’, TLF, p. 20, although this sense was not reproduced by the English translator, English Life, p. 60. Curry, p. 73 (Pseudo-Elmham). Chronica Maiora, p. 441 for this and what follows; see also The Chronicle of John Hardyng, ed. Henry Ellis (London: F.C. and J. Rivington et al., 1812), pp. 384–85; Allmand, pp. 158–59; Harriss, ‘Thomas, duke of Clarence’. Brut, p. 447; cf. Allmand, p. 344, ‘Clarence could not contain his energy and impose discipline upon himself’. Allmand, p. 336 speculates that Clarence may have been jealous of Henry, see also Harriss, ‘Thomas, duke of Clarence’. See above, pp. 24–25. Allmand, p. 160. Bedford seems to have been the most like Henry in terms of character and posthumous reputation, see below, pp. 173–74. Like Edward III Henry turned war in France into a ‘family enterprise’, W.M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his family’, Journal of British Studies 26 (1987), 398–422 (esp. 403–13). Tracy Adams, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp. 1–37, 88–102. E.g. Griffiths, pp. 42–44. English Life, p. 126; TLF, p. 63 has the tents being set up apart out of ‘temeritate quadam’ which implies a certain thoughtlessness or even recklessness to the decision. For further discussion of Henry’s management of both military and naval forces see Allmand, pp. 205–32, also C.T. Allmand ‘Henry V the soldier, and the war in France’ in Harriss, Henry V, pp. 117–36. PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116521, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. E.g. Allmand, pp. 420–25; although in his analysis of petitions to the crown Gwilym Dodd argues against a deliberate ‘language policy’ in Henry V’s use of English and identifies the 1430s as a more significant period in the development of its use in central government, ‘The rise of English, the decline of French: supplications to the English crown, c. 1420–50’, Speculum 86 (2011), 117–50. Allmand, pp. 414–18; David Green, ‘National identities and the Hundred Years War’ in Chris Given-Wilson (ed.), Fourteenth Century England VI (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), pp. 115–29. Allmand, p. 218. GHQ, p. 27. GHQ, p. 27; English Life, p. 34; TLF, pp. 8–9. English Life, pp. 44–45; TLF, p. 13; GHQ, p. 69. English Life, p. 45. Allmand, p. 219. TLF, pp. 69–70; English Life, pp. 137–38. Anne Curry, ‘The military ordinances of Henry V: texts and contexts’ in Chris Given-Wilson, Ann Kettle and Len Scales (eds), War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c. 1150–1500 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), pp. 214–49; pp. 233–37 for detailed discussion of the possible context in which the ordinances were composed and issued, which is complicated by their later copying and dissemination. Ibid., p. 221.
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HEGEMONIC HENRY
51 Ibid., p. 217. G.A. Lester, Sir John Paston’s ‘Grete Boke’: A Descriptive Catalogue, with an Introduction of British Library MS Lansdowne 285 (Cambridge: Brewer, 1984). For Lydgate and Burgh’s text see below, p. 169, n. 67. 52 For this and what follows, Curry, ‘Ordinances’, p. 239. 53 In what follows I summarize some of the main concerns from Curry, ‘Ordinances’, pp. 240–49, which provides a full concordance of the clauses created from the 5 surviving versions. 54 Ibid., p. 249. 55 Ibid., pp. 239–40. 56 TLF, p. 63; English Life, p. 126. 57 Curry, ‘Ordinances’, p. 231. 58 Allmand, pp. 218–20. 59 Curry, ‘English armies in the fifteenth century’, p. 47 for the point that Henry’s activities in Normandy offered ‘unparalleled opportunities to the professional soldier below the rank of knight’. 60 Christopher Tyerman discusses Henry’s appropriation of the discourse of holy war and argues that his success in presenting national war in these terms subsumed the crusade as an individual endeavour in this period, England and the Crusades 1095–1588 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 302–42 (esp. pp. 341–42). 61 Above, pp. 112–15. 62 C.T. Allmand (ed.), Society at War: The Experience of England and France During the Hundred Years War (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1973), pp. 77–96 for examples of contemporary discussion of the potential rewards of warfare, the problems of discipline to which this could give rise and solutions to these. 63 Curry, ‘Sex’, pp. 19 and 32. 64 Curry, ‘Ordinances’, p. 249. 65 Curry, ‘Sex’, p. 21 for this and the penalty following. 66 Ibid., p. 27. 67 Isabel Davis, Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 87. 68 Curry, ‘Sex’, pp. 23–24. 69 Curry, ‘Ordinances’, p. 247. 70 Curry, ‘Sex’, p. 26, pp. 37–38. 71 Ibid., p. 21, e.g. Bedford’s ordinances of December 1423 contain no reference to sexual conduct. 72 Above, pp. 121–22 on the youth of the army. 73 Curry, ‘Sex’, p. 30; for further discussion of the lifestyle of English soldiers, Anne Curry, ‘Isolated or integrated? The English soldier in Lancastrian Normandy’ in Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks and A.J. Minnis (eds), Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 191–210. 74 Curry, ‘Sex’, pp. 35–36 notes that this was perhaps even expected of them. 75 As encapsulated in Neal’s definition of ‘husbandry’, pp. 57–89. 76 John Tosh, ‘Manliness, masculinities and the new imperialism, 1880–1900’ in his Manliness and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2005), pp. 192–214 (p. 208). 77 E.g. Curry, p. 71 (Pseudo-Elmham). 78 Curry, p. 106. 79 Ibid., p. 339. 80 Ibid., p. 340. 81 Cf Tosh, ‘The new imperialism’, p. 195 for imperial reverses in the 1890s as ‘a reflection on the virility of the British people’. 82 Curry, p. 100.
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HENRY V
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83 English Life, p. 133; TLF, pp. 66, 67 for the same contrast between the womanish nature of the French nobility and Henry’s manliness. 84 See above, pp. 107–8. 85 E.g. Clifford J. Rogers, ‘Henry V’s military strategy in 1415’ in L.J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (eds), The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 399–428. 86 Allmand, ‘Henry V the soldier’, p. 122. 87 Allmand, pp. 166–67, 376–83, 397–403. 88 Ibid., pp. 376–77. 89 Ibid., p. 398, notes that this also indicates that Henry could still rely on support from a broad section of society. 90 Chronicle of Adam of Usk, p. 271. 91 Taylor, ‘Henry V, flower of chivalry’, discusses the criticisms expressed by later French and Burgundian chroniclers who characterized him as an ambitious, vainglorious tyrant. Given the tone of Usk’s comments here it seems likely that English assessments would also have become far more negative had Henry lived and events in France slipped from out of his control to the detriment of England’s prosperity, security and reputation. 92 See A.J. Pollard’s assessment, Late Medieval England 1399–1509 (Pearson Longman: Harlow, 2000), pp. 83–88. 93 Maurice Keen, ‘Diplomacy’ in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 181–200 (p. 199); Allmand, pp. 439. 94 Griffiths, pp. 178–216. 95 PPC, III, p. 3, my translation. See also Walsingham’s tribute to Henry, Chronica Maiora, pp. 445–46. 96 In addition to the abundant literary materials attesting to Henry’s commemoration see Allmand, p. 430 for the point that new foundations to offer prayers and masses for Henry’s soul were still appearing in the 1450s; Griffiths, p. 751 for Parliament’s nostalgic recollection of the ‘golden age’ of Henry V’s rule in 1455. 97 R.A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI (1421–71)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/12953, accessed 28 Jan. 2013].
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7
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THE K ING WHO NEVER GREW UP?
From Henry VI’s earliest conscious moments he was king, not just of England but also of France. Others had succeeded to the throne as minors: Henry III at nine, Edward III at fifteen and Richard II at eleven.1 These provided some precedent for handling the minority of Henry VI, but his case is unique in that he was still a baby and thus it would be many years before he could realistically be expected to rule in his own right. In contrast to his predecessors there was no single, clearly announced moment at which Henry became ruler of England in fact as well as name. It was a process which took several years. As a result modern historians continue to disagree as to the precise point from which Henry should be regarded as responsible for government and the direction of policy. This is further complicated by the opinion of some that Henry never really did rule in his own right. There has been much discussion of the implications of Henry’s accession as a baby and a long minority for the formation of his character and kingship, and for contemporary assessments of these.2 From the perspective of Henry’s gender identity these circumstances also render problematic the question of exactly when he made the transition from youth to adult man; or, indeed, whether he did so at all. The arrangements made to manage Henry’s minority need to be explored in order to draw conclusions about their possible impact on his maturation, and the implications of this for understandings of his kingship and gender. Although Henry V’s death on 31 August 1422 was unexpected, he first began to exhibit symptoms of illness (probably dysentery) in May of that year. It was only towards the end that Henry acknowledged the inevitability of his death and made explicit provision for the direction of affairs once he had gone. On 26 August Henry dictated his final codicil which named Gloucester as guardian and protector of the infant king, with Thomas Beaufort responsible for his personal care, and appointing his servants.3 Gloucester had been appointed to rule over England in Henry’s absence in May 1422, and continued in this role following Henry’s death, while Henry nominated Bedford guardian of English territories in France on his deathbed.4 There were some differences of opinion between the two brothers and 141
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HENRY VI
their uncles Thomas Beaufort and Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, as to exactly how the regime should work in practice.5 All wanted to assure themselves a key role within it. Indeed, it appears that both Gloucester and Bedford believed that Henry had intended there to be some sort of formal regency in England (it may be that this is what Henry himself anticipated in fact). This certainly seems to have been what Gloucester tried to create for himself, as outlined in the text of a commission communicated to the Privy Council on 5 November.6 But the assembled lords would not assent to this and, in the event, while Bedford became regent in France, on 18 December Gloucester was appointed ‘protector and defender of this realm and his principal councillor by the king in the absence of the mighty prince the duke of Bedford’.7 Additionally, Gloucester was to serve alongside a formal council during the king’s minority, but there was no explicit statement or suggestion as to how long this might last. Walsingham described the ‘great dread’ which the death of Henry V inspired in England, all fearing for the security of the realm now that it was ruled not by ‘a puissant king and discerning lord who was splendidly equipped with all the characteristics of goodness’ but by ‘his weak, infant son who was not yet a year old’.8 Walsingham noted that their concerns were summed up by Solomon’s well-known pronouncement: ‘Woe to the land whose king is a boy’, which was often quoted in relation to minority regimes, and also to critique the rule of kings felt to be insufficiently mature.9 But the accession of Henry VI actually happened very smoothly. There was no question surrounding the event despite his age. Because no regent had been appointed Henry was king from the beginning, and ‘he’ even ordained Parliament to meet on 9 November 1422, informing them via a statement he had ‘witnessed’ that ‘we are, however, unable to attend the aforesaid Parliament in person on account of certain reasons’. Therefore Henry had given Gloucester full power to open Parliament and ‘to proceed with it and to carry out each and every thing which is to be done there on our behalf and by us for the good rule and governance of our aforesaid realm’.10 This fiction of Henry VI as ‘actual’ ruler, but perforce absent from government, and represented by Gloucester, served to enhance the continuity between arrangements for the management of politics before and after Henry V’s death. Given Henry V’s frequent lengthy absences from England during his reign and his brothers’ established position as his stand-in, it must have felt somewhat like business as usual for most of his subjects. The hope was that Henry V, or rather his simulacrum, would eventually return in the person of his son, grown to manhood. There was no reason, in the first instance (or for some years after Henry VI’s accession), to believe that this would not happen in due course. The crucial question for the minority regime, however, was when would this happen? Contemporary understandings of maturation did not offer a universally agreed moment to act as benchmark.11 However, if Henry had 142
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THE KING WHO NEVER GREW UP?
displayed the right qualities from his mid-teens then his specific age would have been more or less irrelevant. After all, his rival Edward IV deposed him at the age of eighteen, and his qualification to rule was not questioned on the grounds of his age; he had provided copious evidence of his manhood, especially on the field of battle. There was an essential dynamic between kingship and manhood, but usually kings demonstrably became men before they became kings, not vice versa. Thus, in deciding at what point to hand power over to Henry, the acid test for those directing government on his behalf had to be some exhibition from the young king of adult qualities. They, and Henry’s subjects more widely, were looking for a palpable indication that he was his father’s son. The evidence for Henry’s upbringing and education certainly suggests that every effort was made to mould him to this end. What we know of the arrangements for Henry’s care in his early years accords well with other evidence for the upbringing of high status boys at the time.12 Initially his mother, Queen Catherine, took a central role (Henry lived with her during his first decade), and nurses were assigned to tend to him.13 In April 1424 when Henry was just over two years old, Dame Alice Boteler, whose son Ralph had been one of Henry V’s close companions in France, and was now one of Henry VI’s councillors, was appointed as a sort of governess. She was instructed to lay the foundations for Henry’s education in matters of courtesy; a number of other young nobles also became part of his household and were trained alongside him, as was commonplace.14 These included Richard, duke of York, who was ten years older than the king.15 Presumably it was hoped that the older boys would start to set a good example of appropriate conduct and accomplishments to Henry. On 1 June 1428, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick was appointed to govern and train Henry.16 The king was seven in December, the customary age at which a boy’s education stopped being the province of women, and began to be directed by men.17 Warwick’s charge involved teaching the young king to be devout, and setting him to academic study, but also to ‘generally norysshe hym and drawe to vertues and to eschewing of vices’, and to do so in ways suitable for a boy of his age, ‘leiyng before hym mirrours and examples of tymes passed’ which would show him the prosperity of virtuous kings and the disasters which had befallen those of ‘contrarie disposicion’.18 Warwick was also given authority and power to punish the king if he misbehaved, or disobeyed any instruction. Henry was king, but that would not exempt him from suffering the consequences if he was a naughty boy, which may have started to feel like something of a contradiction to him as he grew older. The council’s instructions for Warwick’s ‘syllabus’ are generic rather than specific; a nobleman of his standing did not need to be told how to prepare a boy for manhood. In addition the council expressed concern that the king should be surrounded by the right sort of people. Warwick was empowered to police those who had access to the king, and to remove from the king’s 143
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HENRY VI
presence any person whom he deemed ‘suspect of misgovernance and not behoveful nor expedient to be aboute þe Kynges persone’ until he could consult either Bedford, or, in his absence, Gloucester on the matter.19 Later on the council was to have good reason to be concerned about Henry’s susceptibility to bad influences. 1429 was an important year for Henry, marked by a number of significant developments. The Dauphin was crowned as Charles VII in July, necessitating Henry’s own coronation as the ‘real’ king of France.20 But first Henry needed to be crowned king of England, and his coronation took place on 6 November.21 Unlike Henry III and Richard II, Henry VI had not been crowned on his accession. In order for the ritual to have meaning the king had to be old enough to participate physically and verbally; to be able to take his vows and secure a contract with his subjects. Perhaps some thought had been given to using Henry’s coronation as a means of marking his transition to actual rule, but its timing was dictated by pressing political circumstances and thus lost as an opportunity to provide a clear moment of transition to power and adulthood. It did roughly coincide with the point at which he had started to follow a regime of ‘serious’ training for kingship, under Warwick’s tutelage, and on 15 November Gloucester formally relinquished his title of protector, following parliamentary deliberation which decided that this was the best course of action in the light of the king’s coronation.22 But despite these events there was no transformation in Henry’s status and no sense, other than technically, in which he was any more involved in government than he had been before. The coronations did not serve as a reflection of any change in Henry’s status. But Henry’s coronations are likely to have had an impact on his understanding of his own status, especially as he was, uniquely, the centre of this lengthy and splendid ritual not just once, but twice. Henry was crowned king of France in Paris in December 1431.23 It is impossible to know for sure how Henry perceived himself as king, but it may be that the coronations, in concert with Warwick’s tuition, added a new dimension to Henry’s understanding of his position and its possibilities. On 29 November 1432, Warwick reported to the council a concern that his current powers over the king’s person were not sufficient to govern him properly and needed to be reconfirmed. He identified the chief cause of danger as ‘ungoodely or unvertuous men’, those ‘suspect of mysgovernance and not behovefull nor expedient to be about þe Kyng’ and asked to have authority to remove them from the king’s presence and service, pending discussion with Bedford or Gloucester and the council.24 Henry was being unduly influenced by unsuitable people around him with the result that ‘he hath be sturred by some frome his lernyng and spoken to of divers matiers not behovefull’.25 The nature of some of these ‘matiers not behovefull’ is suggested by Warwick’s remark: ‘blessed be God the Kyng is growen in years in stature of his persone and also in conceyte and knowleche of his 144
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THE KING WHO NEVER GREW UP?
hiegh and royale auctoritee and estate the whiche naturelly causen hym and frome day to day as he growth shul causen hym more and more to grucche with chastysing and to lothe it’.26 The council acknowledged the seriousness of Warwick’s unease about ‘þe harme þat might fall to þe Kyng’ as a result of unsuitable company, confirming his authority to chastise Henry ‘for his defaultes or trespas’ in order that ‘he forbere þe more to doo mys and entende þe more besily to vertue and to lernyng’ and promising that the next time the king came to London he would be visited by the whole council who would declare this to him.27 In addition it was confirmed that all interviews with the king had to be held in the presence of Warwick, a knight, or some other person appointed by Warwick. This incident suggests that Henry was beginning to rail against the constraints placed upon him by a paradoxical arrangement in which he was both anointed king (twice over), and yet subject to the control and correction of others. Although in ‘grucching’ Henry was simply complaining, which is hardly outright rebellion. Besides, it is significant that the impression given in this account is that Warwick believed Henry’s grousing stemmed largely from the prompting of others, rather than being an expression of personal dissatisfaction. It is generally agreed that the chief instigator of this prompting was actually Gloucester. Certainly Gloucester was responsible for a number of new appointments to the king’s household while it was in France, and after it had returned to England in early 1432.28 For example Lord Cromwell complained in Parliament that when he was removed by Gloucester from his position as chamberlain to the king in March 1432, after only holding the post for three months, Gloucester had not consulted the council first, as he should have.29 Gloucester was no longer protector, but in determining the make-up of the king’s household he was attempting to assure himself of a continued central role in directing political affairs on behalf of the king. Nor was this just a matter of the ongoing rivalry between him, his brother and Cardinal Beaufort. Gloucester’s actions suggest that he was beginning to worry about the nature of the young king’s developing character, and had decided to intervene to ensure that it was properly moulded. Tellingly, several of those whom Gloucester appointed had been close to Henry V, such as the new chamberlain Sir William Philip, who had also served as Henry V’s household treasurer, appointed at the same time as the new steward, Lord Tiptoft, who had served Henry V in the same capacity and been one of the executors of his will.30 It was these appointments which contributed to Warwick’s fears later in the year that his authority over the king was being undermined, and the king himself being encouraged to defy chastisement. And, despite the reassurances of the council in November 1432, this attempted erosion of Warwick’s influence continued in the following years. On 12 November 1434 further evidence emerges of the king being influenced by ‘mocions and sturinges’ designed to make him question his 145
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HENRY VI
continued position of subjection, as witness the words which the council ordered to be conveyed to him:
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þat howe it be þat God of his grace have endowed þe King with as greet understanding and felyng as ever þei sawe or knewe in eny prince or oþer persone of his age, wherof þei þanke God with alle þeire hertes as þei have greet mater and cause. Never þe lesse to quite hem treuly to God to þe King and to his poeple þei dar not take upon hem to put him in conceit or opinion þat he is as yit endued with so greet feling knouleche and wisdame þe whiche muste in greet part growe of experience ne with so greet forsight and discrecion to departe and chese namely in maters of greet weight and difficultee.31 Thus for his own good, and for the good of his realm, Henry should leave government in the hands of his council and the others appointed for the task, and ignore the ‘sturinges or mocions’ of those who sought to convince him otherwise. The council noted that Henry still needed to develop until ‘be heryng seyng and experience he be ferþer grown and encresced in feling and knouleche of þat þat belangeth to goode reule’, but reassured him that with God’s grace he would develop these ‘as soone as any is possible by nature and as it hath be seen in any persone afore þis tyme’.32 But until then, he should continue to follow the advice of his councillors ‘in þe wyse as it hath liked him to do but late ago’. Indeed the council stated that following their advice would be ‘oon the grettest seuretee þat can be advised to þe weel and prosperitee and his noble estate and alle his lands and subgittes’. This incident further conveys an image of Henry, by now nearly thirteen, as impatient to rule in his own right, and aware that he had arrived at the point in his life where he could expect to do this, if not immediately then very soon. The council praised Henry for his maturity, but deemed that he was not quite ready to govern yet, while recognizing that he would naturally develop sufficiently to do so very soon. However, the reference to experience as well as knowledge poses something of a conundrum: how was Henry supposed to get experience without actually ruling in person? Unlike Henry V, Henry VI had no opportunity of an ‘apprenticeship’ in ruling, because of his father’s early death. Griffiths argues that this episode is of a part with other contemporary evidence that Henry was showing an interest in politics and understood the implications of events for his own status.33 On the other hand Watts sees it not as offering any particular reflection of the king’s developing character but as revealing more about the increasing uncertainty surrounding his status: was he still a boy to be disciplined, or a ruler, implicitly adult, whose opinions should determine his councillors’ actions, not vice versa?34 The terms in which the events of 1432 and 1434 are couched, the emphasis on Henry’s tendency to act at the behest of others 146
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THE KING WHO NEVER GREW UP?
(rather than the sense that he was growing tired of his effective powerlessness and trying to do something about it), certainly give the impression of Henry as prone to the influence of those about him. They also reveal the council’s concern that Henry did not possess sufficient judgement or prudence to make the distinction between good and bad advice.35 These events also suggest that Gloucester, concerned that Henry was not asserting himself, attempted to make him a more masterful character by having those around the king provoke him into a protest that he was being held back. The following year witnessed more milestone events in the long march towards Henry’s personal assumption of power. His uncle Bedford died somewhat unexpectedly on 14 September 1435, and this marked the point at which Henry started to take a more active part in politics. The signing of the Treaty of Arras, which happened a week after Bedford’s death, also played a key role, marking as it did Burgundy’s recognition of Charles VII as king of France, substantially undermining Henry VI’s claims and leaving England diplomatically isolated in the attempt to maintain them.36 On 1 October Henry attended the first council meeting at which his presence was not merely ceremonial.37 December saw his fourteenth birthday. This was the point at which many contemporaries would have expected to see Henry start to take a more tangible role in government. Indeed, the council had it reported to the Estates in Normandy that Henry was directly and regularly involved in political affairs from his fourteenth birthday.38 1436 saw Henry making grants and appointments in his own name for the first time (with the advice of the council to begin with) and this sense that Henry was finally beginning to make the change from boy to adult was further confirmed in May 1436 when Warwick resigned as Henry’s governor and was not replaced.39 Henry first began to make grants in his own name alone in July 1436 just before Gloucester was to lead a campaign to the aid of beleaguered Calais.40 This was a crucial moment, notionally at least, for it marked the reappearance of royal grace and a ‘proper’ monarchy for the first time since Henry V’s death.41 And yet this transformation in Henry’s status was dictated by events, rather than by any consistent indications in his own conduct that he had now had the experience and maturity to rule which the council had deemed to be lacking in 1434. Nor was it apparently inspired by any insistence from Henry himself that he be allowed to rule. Instead, changing circumstances in France and the need to bolster the fading fortunes of the dual monarchy necessitated that England be united in its efforts, and this included being led (or at least seen to be led) by the king.42 Presenting Henry as ruling in person also lent greater validity to the claim that he was true king of France, in the face of the counterclaims of the adult Charles VII, who must have seemed preferable to many on those grounds alone.43 It is probably for this reason that some thought was given to having Henry lead the Calais army in person, rather than just being its captain in name, but in the event Gloucester actually took command and Henry stayed in England.44 147
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HENRY VI
Despite the contingency between this sequence of events and the normal ‘script’ of maturation as it was understood at the time, this was not clearly the point at which Henry became an adult man. Henry’s rule was still not genuinely personal. Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort were the ones directing policy and pursuing rival interests; Gloucester wished to continue an aggressive military approach to defending England’s interests in France (his Calais campaign was a success, which bolstered his position for a while), whereas Beaufort preferred to try and settle the matter peacefully, by negotiation.45 1436–37 saw something of a division of labour between king and council, whereby Henry was exercising his prerogative (though chiefly with regard to matters of grace: patronage and pardons) but the actual business of government and matters of policy lay with the council.46 This situation was formalized in a declaration of 13 November 1437, just before Henry’s sixteenth birthday.47 The declaration derived its formula directly from the terms drawn up in 1406 when the ailing Henry IV needed his council to remove much of the burden of government from him.48 Although that case dealt with an older king and this with a young king, it is easy to see why the precedent was deemed appropriate to Henry VI’s situation, especially as Cardinal Beaufort had also been involved in proceedings in 1406. Both cases involve a nominally adult king who, for different reasons, was not able to exercise his authority fully; an abnormal situation for which legislation was needed. In neither case was there any restriction on the king’s prerogative or limitation of his powers, and the declaration states that ‘yf it happen any mater or maters of greate weght and charge to be moved among hem the Kyng woll that þei common [discuss] þe matiers but not conclude fully þerynne withouten his advis’, which appears to give Henry the final say, but in fact implies that the council could choose not to follow his advice.49 Essentially the arrangement left the lion’s share of actual government in the hands of the council. This declaration is often identified as having ended the minority, but opinion is divided as to the extent to which Henry was actually responsible for the government of the realm after this date. Some have seen this as the moment of Henry’s evolution from boy to man, arguing that it was the date from which ‘the full power of personal kingship in England were formally restored and vested in Henry of Windsor’, as Wolffe puts it.50 Similarly Griffiths contends that the declaration ‘marked a return to normalcy in government under an adult king’, arguing that the whole process was gradual ‘probably because it happened peacefully and without crisis’.51 He also affirms that during the mid 1430s neither Gloucester nor Cardinal Beaufort tried to prolong the minority, instead each man worked to ensure that he would be chief councillor when the minority finally ended.52 The establishment of a system whereby a young, inexperienced king was enjoined to heed guidance can be seen as merely a sensible formalization of the expectation that all kings would seek advice from their councillors before taking action. 148
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THE KING WHO NEVER GREW UP?
Arguments in favour of 13 November 1437 as a restoration of the adult monarchy tend to emphasize the lack of direct evidence for any anxiety about Henry’s development up to that point, although it has to be said that there is little surviving evidence which gives us much insight at all into what Henry was like as a boy and youth. The brief remarks of some French and Italian commentators writing in the 1430s describe him as handsome, decorous and regal.53 The only detailed account of Henry’s character from these years comes from Piero da Monte, an agent of Pope Eugenius IV (whom Beaufort was supporting in his dispute with the Council of Basle).54 Da Monte was in England in 1437 and recorded his impressions of Henry in a letter to the archbishop of Florence, which constitutes an admiring litany of Henry’s spiritual and pious pursuits and exemplary morality. Da Monte confessed himself amazed that ‘such a young prince should be so religious and so devout’, and, furthermore, remarked ‘I judge him to be not a king or a worldly prince … but a monk or a religious man, more religious than a man of religion.’55 Da Monte outlined Henry’s daily programme of devotional reading and attendance at Mass, his fasting, his physical self-mortification and continence: ‘he flees the sight and speech of women’ and detested ‘scurrilous pageants’ and the ‘indecorous gestures of mimes and plays’.56 This account accords well with later versions of Henry as other-worldly saint, whose fastidious spirituality rendered him unfit to rule and could be read as early intimations of this. But this is to read against the admiring tenor of the letter and is likely not how its recipient would have understood this depiction of Henry.57 It is not surprising that a man of Da Monte’s profession should place such approving emphasis on Henry’s temperate religiosity, and we should be wary of automatically reading it as evidence that there was something abnormal about the young king.58 But part of the interpretive problem here is that we have so little against which to measure this account. The lack of descriptions of the young Henry may well indicate that there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about him. Both Wolffe and Griffiths argue that there is no reason to believe that Henry was regarded as anything other than a normal young man who would ‘develop into an able and thoroughly satisfactory king’ as Wolffe put it.59 The fact that no other accounts survive may indicate that there was nothing particularly striking about him, either for good or ill. Or, perhaps, that those who could have left their impressions in writing did not have much sense of what the young Henry was really like, beyond his physical appearance and participation in courtly ritual. In the absence of more direct evidence, historians have drawn differing conclusions about Henry’s character from the course of events. Wolffe sees in the council minutes of 1434 and 1436 quoted above evidence that Henry displayed ‘the natural ambition of a young monarch to become king, in fact as well as name’, and concludes that this (at least in part) lay behind the developments of 1437.60 However, Watts insists that Henry was not the driving force behind events, and that ‘the slow and halting progression to 149
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HENRY VI
something resembling full authority’ reflects the contemporary realization that Henry was not showing any sign of being ready to rule on his own.61 In other words, that Henry had not yet grown up sufficiently. Furthermore, Watts maintains that the minority did not really end at all; instead the councillors had to resort to creating an appearance of the king acting through them, when in reality the initiative continued to come from them.62 The tone of the 1434 statement is underpinned by the awareness that if Henry had announced that he no longer wanted to abide by their recommendations, there was nothing they could do to prevent him from taking on government personally, whatever they advised. But the fact that Henry did not actually do so is suggestive in itself. Henry was at an age when high status young men frequently took on adult responsibilities and positions of leadership. Many contemporaries would doubtless have recalled that Henry’s own father had been leading military campaigns in Wales at the age of sixteen. But as time went on Henry seems to have been quite happy with the division of responsibilities between himself and the council, which renders questionable the notion that he was personally eager for real power. The evidence that he was ambitious is equivocal at best; chafing at the bit somewhat in 1432 and 1434 certainly, but seemingly put up to this by others. And these are the only indications of any tension or discord over Henry’s degree of power and status. Essentially there was nothing about Henry which gives the impression that he embodied the notion of youth as rebellious and unmanageable.63 While the exhibition of such qualities posed a potential threat to the hegemonic masculine status quo, hence the need for such boisterousness to be properly channelled, the apparent absence of them posed a different problem. Unlike his father, whose wild youth was being written about by PseudoElmham and Frulovisi at just this time, Henry did not go through a rowdy phase which he could grow up and out of, demonstrating self-reflection and strength of will as he did so. This contributes to the image of Henry as a man who was temperamentally just not very masculine. This cannot have been lost on those around him. Gloucester’s political motives in attempting to render Henry a more forceful character have already been noted. Moreover, at just this time it appears that he was losing the struggle with Beaufort to determine England’s policy in relation to France. The negotiations with France near Gravelines in 1439 were conducted with Henry’s authorization, which has been taken by some as an indication that the king preferred peace to war (although it may just be a reflection of Beaufort’s increasing influence over him).64 Certainly, the maturing Henry was showing little evidence of sharing any aspect of his father’s warrior persona, and in attempting to make Henry a partner in his military policies Gloucester was also doubtless motivated by the gradual worrying realization that Henry VI was nothing like Henry V. Nor was Henry showing signs of becoming so, despite the fact that Humphrey had filled his household with men, like Walter Hungerford, 150
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THE KING WHO NEVER GREW UP?
who had been close to Henry V and could be relied on to provide regular reiterations of his spectacular achievements and the necessity for Henry VI to imitate these.65 The belief that the young king needed to adopt a recognizable proportion of his father’s qualities and bearing in order to make a success of kingship surely lies behind the timing of Titus Livius Frulovisi’s Vita Henrici Quinti which was dedicated to Henry VI in the late 1430s. The prologue expresses the hope that Henry would imitate the ‘brilliant deeds’ of his ‘most victorious father’, noting that it was widely expected that he would do so.66 The life can be seen as part of Gloucester’s last-ditch attempt to inculcate something of Henry V’s example in his son and thereby retain control both of the king’s development and of government.67 But the later 1430s saw Gloucester’s political role much diminished and Cardinal Beaufort in the ascendancy.68 The Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti written for Hungerford, comprising a lengthier iteration of Henry V’s accomplishments (which provided Frulovisi with the substance of his account), also likely reflects unease about Henry VI’s potential to fill his father’s shoes, given Hungerford’s involvement with the young king’s upbringing.69 There is other evidence for disquiet about Henry’s development in this period. The lengthy and lavishly illustrated Life of St Edmund written by Lydgate, and dedicated to Henry VI to commemorate his stay at the abbey of Bury St Edmunds in 1433, draws explicitly on the language and tropes of mirrors for princes in its presentation of the saint.70 In Lydgate’s narrative Edmund is a boy king, yet he embodies the standards of ideal kingship despite his youth, making him the perfect model for Henry:
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Yong of yeeris, old of discrecion Flouryng in age, fructuous of sadnesse, His sensualite ay soget to reson, And of his counsail discrecioun was maistresse. Foure cardynal sustre, fforce and rihtwisnesse, Weied alle his werkis by prudence in ballance, Al passiouns voide in his attemperance.71 Lydgate was part of the regency administrative team in Paris in the late 1420s and is often seen as a Lancastrian propagandist. In addition to the works he wrote for Henry V and Gloucester, he also produced poetry explaining Henry VI’s claim to the French throne, and to mark a number of state occasions, such as those surrounding Henry VI’s two coronations.72 Karen A. Winstead argues that Lydgate was aware of anxieties surrounding Henry’s maturation, and that the life reflects these, depicting Edmund as the perfect blend of both chivalry and piety in terms which were intended to call Henry V to mind.73 Similar preoccupations inform Lydgate’s Fall of Princes which was written for Gloucester in the 1430s.74 Another didactic text, Tractatus De Regimine Principium ad Regem Henricum Sextum (On the Rule of 151
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HENRY VI
Princes to King Henry VI), dates from the late 1430s (or very early 1440s).75 The manuscript in which this work is preserved is of fine quality, including several illuminations, and was probably created as a presentation copy for Henry VI himself, having once contained a portrait of him in the opening pages.76 It was commonplace for kings to be the named recipient of didactic texts, but the timing of this one strongly suggests that its presentation and contents were not simply formulaic. The author opens with reference to contemporary events in France, noting the threats currently posed to the lands which his father had conquered there and notes recent successes in defending these (such as Gloucester’s at Calais in 1436).77 Griffiths argues that the author was very likely a member of Henry’s household; one of the candidates he suggests is John Somerset, Henry’s doctor and mentor, who was also the dedicatee of the second recension of the Pseudo-Elmham life of Henry V in the 1440s.78 But whoever wrote it, he was evidently one of several men around Henry VI who were apprehensive about the king’s initial foray into government and felt that he needed continued guidance.79 Henry’s shortcomings as a ruler were predicated on his failure to cultivate and display the martial qualities, decisive disposition and prudent acumen which were so essential. The young king and his advisers were thus stuck in something of a vicious circle. Offering him handbooks of advice was all very well, and there is evidence that Henry did enjoy reading, perhaps particularly chronicles.80 The presentation manuscript of Lydgate’s life of St Edmund is dazzling and includes two depictions of the young king himself, so it is tempting to imagine that this is indeed a book that Henry would have enjoyed reading.81 But we have no way of knowing for sure that he read any of these works and some indications that he misinterpreted them if he did.82 Henry needed experience in order to rule successfully, but as he appeared not to have attained the necessary maturity, his councillors (with the apparent exception of Gloucester) were probably reluctant to give him the opportunity to gain it, especially with events in France turning against England. But those very events dictated the need for the strong direction of an individual, and the longer they continued to deny Henry indisputable power, the more difficult it would be for him to learn how to wield it properly. Gloucester may have felt that it would have been better simply to throw Henry in at the deep end and let him get on with it, hence the attempt to goad Henry into feeling that he was being unnecessarily constrained by the council. But, as we have seen, these attempts only inspired Henry to complain, rather than to do anything more dramatic and forthright, which cannot have been very encouraging for his uncle.
Notes 1 W.M. Ormrod, ‘Coming to kingship: boy kings and the passage to power in fourteenthcentury England’ in N.F. McDonald and W.M. Ormrod (eds), Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century (York: York Medieval Press, 2004), pp. 31–49.
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THE KING WHO NEVER GREW UP?
2 E.g. Griffiths, p. 51 on the importance of his early years in establishing character and forming attitudes, although he notes that we have to guess as to precise origins of these; Watts, p. 102 states that the king’s personality and long minority shaped the rule of England to some extent. 3 Allmand, pp. 171–72. 4 [Pseudo-Elmham] Thomae de Elmham: Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti, ed. Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1727), p. 157 for an account of Henry’s death written for Walter, Lord Hungerford, who witnessed it and then played a key role in Henry VI’s upbringing. EHD, pp. 230–31 for a translation. 5 For detailed discussion of the arrangements for government and its functions in the early years of Henry’s reign see Griffiths, pp. 11–50. Henry Beaufort was made a Cardinal in 1426 and I shall use this title hereafter. 6 PPC, III, p. 6. 7 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116529, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 8 Chronica Maiora, p. 446; Griffiths, p. 11 for grief at Henry V’s death; Allmand, pp. 178–82 for his funeral, tomb and chantry chapel. 9 Chronica Maiora, p. 446; the source is Ecclesiastes 10:16. See below pp. 162–66. 10 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116529, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 11 See above, pp. 7–9. 12 Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), esp. pp. 1–44. 13 Griffiths, pp. 51–52. 14 Ibid., p. 52. 15 Ibid., p. 54. 16 PPC, III, pp. 296–300. 17 Orme, Childhood to Chivalry, p. 7. Catherine de Valois no longer lived with Henry after 1431, probably in part because she had secretly married Owen Tudor at around this time, Griffiths, pp. 60–61. 18 PPC, III, p. 299. 19 Ibid., p. 300. 20 Griffiths, pp. 189–94. Coronation was a means of ritually confirming kingship not of a creating a king; Henry was king of England from the moment of his father’s death. 21 Brut, pp. 437, 450–51, 454. 22 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116534, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 23 Brut, pp. 458–65 for an account of pageantry surrounding the Paris coronation and Henry’s reception in London on his return from France (he landed in Dover on 29 January 1432); see also The Minor Poems of John Lydgate: Part 2. Secular Poems, ed. Henry Noble MacCracken, Early English Text Society original series, 192 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 630–48 for a versified account of the pageantry in London. 24 PPC, IV, pp. 133–34. 25 Ibid., p. 135. 26 Ibid., p. 134. 27 Ibid., p. 136. 28 Griffiths, pp. 58–59; Watts, pp. 118–19 sees this as an attempted and failed coup on Gloucester’s part, with Warwick’s complaints to the council in November 1432 as a direct response to Gloucester’s actions. 29 Griffiths, p. 58. 30 Ibid. See below, pp. 173, 184–85 for more on the significance of Henry VI being surrounded by men who had served Henry V.
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HENRY VI
31 PPC, IV, p. 287. 32 Ibid., p. 288 for this and what follows. 33 R. A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI (1421–71)’, ODNB, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, September 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12953, accessed 28 Jan. 2013]; Wolffe, pp. 65, 79 sees it as the inevitable impatience of the boy king to attain real power. 34 Watts, p. 119. 35 Cf. Watts, p. 122. 36 Griffiths, pp. 199–200. 37 Griffiths, ‘Henry VI’. 38 Wolffe, p. 88. 39 Watts, p. 129: ‘His childhood was at an end.’ 40 Griffiths, p. 231 for 28 July 1436 as the date of the first surviving warrant personally authorized by Henry. 41 Watts, p. 129. 42 Ibid., p. 130: ‘Henry had had greatness thrust upon him, and its architects appear to have been his councillors.’ 43 Charles was 18 years older than Henry, having been born on 22 February 1403. 44 Watts, p. 130. The implications of Henry not leading the expedition are explored below, p. 145. 45 Most historians see a rivalry between war and peace parties dominating politics in this period, but see Watts, p. 181 on the problem of Henry himself (‘a somewhat infantile king’) as also causing splits and clashes. 46 Griffiths, pp. 232–35; Watts, pp. 131–33. 47 PPC, VI, pp. 312–15. 48 PROME 22 May 1406 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116513 [accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 49 PPC, VI, pp. 313–14. 50 Wolffe, p. 87. 51 Griffiths, ‘Henry VI’, see also Griffiths, pp. 277–78. 52 Griffiths, p. 232. 53 Ibid., pp. 241–42. 54 Margaret Harvey, ‘Monte, Piero da (1400x04–1457)’, ODNB, online edn, [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/50258, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 55 I quote Karen A. Winstead’s translation, John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 135. 56 Ibid. 57 Griffiths, p. 235 suggests that the letter may also have been intended for circulation in England. 58 See below, pp. 201–2. 59 Wolffe, p. 92, also Griffiths, p. 241 on Henry as normally developed physically and mentally. 60 Wolffe, p. 92. 61 Watts, pp. 123, 131–32. 62 Ibid., pp. 133–35. 63 See above, pp. 8–9. 64 Griffiths, pp. 446–50 for detail of the negotiations and outcome. 65 See below, p. 173 for further discussion. 66 TLF, pp. 1–3 of original for the dedication to Henry; p. 2 for the exhortation to imitate Henry V. See also English Life, pp. 6–7. 67 Susanne Saygin, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390–1447) and the Italian Humanists (Leiden, Boston and Cologne: Brill, 2002), pp. 58–63; she notes that Gloucester owned at least eighteen different mirrors for princes (p. 60).
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THE KING WHO NEVER GREW UP?
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68 G. L. Harriss, ‘Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (1390–1447)’, ODNB, online edn, May 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14155, accessed 30 Jan. 2013]. 69 See above, pp. 49–50. 70 For an account of Henry’s stay at Bury, Martin Heale, Monasticism in Late Medieval England c. 1300–1535 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 189–93. 71 John Lydgate’s Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund and the Extra Miracles of St Edmund, eds Anthony Bale and A.S.G. Edwards (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009), p. 44, ll. 316–22; see pp. 56–63, ll. 778–1036 for a detailed account of Edmund’s exemplary rule of East Anglia. 72 Catherine Nall, Reading and War in Fifteenth-Century England: From Lydgate to Malory (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012), pp. 75–113 contends that Lydgate’s works are not straightforwardly propagandistic but also engage with wider issues revolving around the ethics of war-making and ideals of kingship and chivalry. See John Lydgate, Mummings and Entertainments, ed. Claire Sponsler (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010) available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/scjlintro.htm, accessed 2 February 2013] for a selection of texts written to entertain Henry and/or mark ceremonial occasions. 73 Winstead, John Capgrave, pp. 118–37. Nicholas Rogers argues that the visit to Bury was actually designed to teach Henry something about ideals of kingship; ‘Henry VI and the proposed canonisation of King Alfred’, in Jenny Stratford (ed.), The Lancastrian Court: Proceedings of the 2001 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2003), pp. 211–20 (p. 212). For discussion of Edmund’s presentation as an exemplar of ideal masculinity see Katherine J. Lewis, ‘Edmund of East Anglia, Henry VI and ideals of kingly masculinity’ in P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), pp. 158–74. 74 Jonathan Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002), p. 31. 75 Jean-Philippe Genet (ed.), Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), pp. 40–173 for discussion and full text. It includes lengthy passages lifted directly from Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum amongst other didactic authorities. 76 Ibid., p. 40. 77 Ibid., pp. 53–54. 78 Griffiths, p. 265, n. 47 for the full list of candidates. 79 Griffiths, p. 240. 80 Ibid., p. 242. 81 It is now British Library MS Harley 2278 and a facsimile is available online [http:// www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_2278, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. The depictions of Henry are on f. 4v and f. 6. 82 Griffiths, p. 240; Watts, p. 110.
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8 THE B EGINNING OF PERSONAL RULE?
On 14 October 1440 Henry explained his decision to found Eton College in these terms:
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Wherefore we also, who by the disposition of the same King of Kings (through whom all kings do reign), have now taken into our hands the government of both our kingdoms, have from the very beginning of our riper age carefully revolved in our mind how, or in what manner, or by what royal gift, according to the measure of our devotion and the example of our ancestors, we could do fitting honour to that our same Mistress and most Holy Mother [i.e. the Church], to the pleasure of that her great Spouse [i.e. God].1 This statement that the now mature king was personally ruling his kingdom is reflected in his regular attendance at council meetings from late 1437 onwards and some governmental and household appointments may have been at his behest.2 However, it appears that Cardinal Beaufort, rather than Henry himself, was the one actually directing policy into the early 1440s. But the negotiations at Gravelines in the summer of 1439, which were very much Beaufort’s project, did nothing to consolidate England’s position in France, failing to gain recognition of the title to Norman lands conquered by Henry V.3 Beaufort had even agreed that Henry VI’s title to the throne of France would be suspended during any truce.4 The council and Gloucester vehemently opposed these terms and the negotiations ended as nothing much more than a demonstration that a peace treaty between England and France was impossible. Gloucester attempted to capitalize on this failure of Beaufort’s policy by making charges of corruption against him in Parliament in early 1440. He accused Beaufort, among other transgressions, of having deliberately estranged Gloucester (and others) from the king, which was probably at the heart of the matter for Gloucester.5 Gloucester obviously hoped to remove Beaufort and thus regain control both over Henry and the direction of policy. Although these charges had no immediate effect on Beaufort’s status his position had been undermined. He was now in his mid 156
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THE BEGINNING OF PERSONAL RULE?
sixties and it became apparent that he was no longer the force in government that he had been, attending council less regularly after 1440. But Gloucester did not benefit from these developments; his own position was irrevocably damaged in 1441 by the arrest, trial and conviction of his wife, Eleanor Cobham, on charges of treasonable witchcraft.6 Eleanor had consulted astrologers and other occult practitioners, which was not, of itself, uncommon among her peers. However, rumour spread that she had asked them to cast the king’s horoscope and that they had predicted his possible death from illness in the near future. Her husband’s status as heir presumptive made the implications clear and scandalous, especially taken in concert with her admission that she had employed a witch, Margery Jourdemayne, to help her conceive a child.7 Eleanor was found guilty, forced to do public penance in London, divorced from the duke and then imprisoned for the rest of her life. Those accused with her were all executed. It is likely that Eleanor herself was guilty largely of being foolish and careless rather than anything more sinister, but the ramifications for her husband’s standing were disastrous (even though there was no suggestion that he had been personally involved). It is conceivable that Gloucester’s enemies took advantage of her activities in order to ensure his public disgrace and prevent him from regaining his sway over the king.8 The dubious circumstances of their marriage and the fact that Eleanor had once been Gloucester’s mistress now took on enhanced significance. She could very easily be represented within the established register of attitudes about the malign influence of women upon powerful men. There was a suggestion that Eleanor had sought to take advantage of the king’s youth and gain control over him, so this episode also testifies to ongoing concern about the king’s malleability and the event may have partly inspired a restoration of conciliar government in late 1441.9 Certainly, the waning of the old adversaries Beaufort and Gloucester did not signal the waxing of Henry’s autonomy. The council continued to play a significant role in government but the involvement of key members of Henry’s court and household increased in this period, to the extent that they had established control over politics by late 1443.10 Most important of all was William de la Pole, later duke of Suffolk, who had been steward of Henry’s household since 1433 and a member of the council from 1441.11 Part of the reason for these developments was a changing of the guard; in addition to Beaufort and Gloucester many of those who had served Henry for much of his life either died or retired in the early 1440s, and were replaced by men drawn from the ranks of Henry’s court to fill key positions.12 Henry’s policies were apparently determined by those closest to him to a much greater degree than was usual. Suffolk’s position at the head of political affairs was unassailable in the mid 1440s; he maintained tight control of the king and his resources, essentially occupying Henry’s place as lord of the royal household and subsequently extending his lordship to encompass the entire kingdom.13 Henry was king in name, but Suffolk was king in 157
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HENRY VI
fact, although the extent to which this was the result of Suffolk’s ambition, or dictated more by Henry’s personality is impossible to gauge for certain.14 So, what should have been the early years of Henry’s personal government, officially, actually witnessed government resting in the hands of others at least to a significant degree. The succession of mentors attempting to guide Henry to a more substantial role were all, arguably, trying to find an antidote for his passivity, or at least a solution which could work around it to create the appearance of a monarch actively engaging with the polity and representing its interests. It may be that Henry was bored by the day-to-day routine of government and saw no reason to change the established situation in which others took care of the more tedious business on his behalf.15 Certainly the only areas in which Henry appeared to exert himself were those involving matters of grace, which he had been exercising personally since July 1436. But it became apparent that he was not using his grace correctly or sensibly. Henry’s profligate generosity became a matter of great concern, partly because of the financial implications of his apparent inability to refuse requests, especially when made in person.16 Moreover, the ability to exercise patronage and manage one’s household and resources correctly was one of the benchmarks of high status adult masculinity.17 Thus Henry’s indiscriminate approach indicated a rather puerile lack of discretion and judgement.18 He gave the appearance of a child eager to please others, heedless of the damaging expense.19 Nor did Henry seem to understand the intended function of such patronage in political terms. Handing out presents hand over fist to anyone who asked denuded them of their value to him as lord. He should have been dispensing them far more shrewdly and conditionally, extracting the promise of some return on what was an investment in his supporters. As it was he seemed unable to exert any restraint over the process and his actions began to eat into the crown’s resources with damaging results for the efficient and honest management of government administration and royal justice on a local level.20 Moreover, factional rivalries grew among those who wished to control the king and his stream of liberality. Suffolk and other members of the king’s household benefited enormously from this culture, amassing land, offices, wardships and other expressions of the king’s bounty, not just for themselves but for their friends and followers.21 This aroused great resentment among those who did not benefit similarly and also led to further abuse of position and perceptions of corruption at the heart of government. As Henry’s household became ever larger, and ever more expensive, it became a focus of discontent and criticism, expressed in Parliament but also more widely.22 Although this was aimed at Henry’s officers rather than himself at this stage, the state of his household still reflected poorly on his character because it implied a telling lack of moderation and all-important self-control in his own person. In 1444 a commission was appointed to achieve a regularization of the king’s patronage, but despite issuing ordinances advising the king how to 158
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THE BEGINNING OF PERSONAL RULE?
handle petitions, and trying to establish a transparent paper trail of exactly who had asked what of him, and what he had given, these measures had no noticeable effect on Henry’s over-generosity.23 Henry seems not to have resented this attempt to interfere in his exercise of grace, perhaps because he realized that although the council could advise him in this respect, they could not actually prevent him from acting as he pleased; they could only draw his attention to the reasons why an overhaul of the system was desirable. Hence their acknowledgement that they raised the matter with him ‘oonly by wey of advertisement and noon oþer wise’, and that ‘the Kynges good grace do at all tymes as it shall plese him and use his power and wille as it perteyneth to his roial estate.’24 Given that Henry was disposed to grant verbal requests from anyone who gained access to his person, the attempt to get him to keep proper records of what he had granted (and to think more carefully about his actions) was doomed. The wanton enthusiasm of his patronage suggests that Henry failed to understand the impression of himself and his government that such poor management was conveying to his subjects.25 However, the councillors in 1444 did express concern for issues of reputation, morality and unrest. Their recommendations to Henry concluded:
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Item in eschyng of riottes excesses misgouvernance and disobeisauns ayens the Kinges estate and for the pesible gouvernable of his laws and in example yeving of restful rule and goode gouvernable hereafter to all his subgittes, yif it like unto þe Kinge and undre his correccion and grace it is semith right be hooful and expedient þat it be ordained þat noo lord of what estate degre or condicion þat he be of wittingly receive cherish holde in householde ne maintene pilous robbours oppressours of þe people mansleers felons outelawes ravisshours of women or any other open misdoers.26 The council further stipulated that no lords should take up ‘othir mennes cause or quarrel in maintenance ne conceive ayens any juge or officer indignation or displesaince for doing of his offices’.27 The lords were to be enjoined to observe this ‘not oonly in þeir awne persones’ but also to ensure it was followed by their followers. Any members of the council who did not obey were to be removed from their position, and any other lord or man who acted contrary to this was not to be made justice of the peace or appointed to any other office. This reveals an awareness of the dangerous implications inherent to the king’s inability to exercise husbandry correctly, what this suggested about him as a man, and the impact it would have on the ethical conduct of government in the localities.28 These concerns were augmented by Henry’s similarly immoderate attitude to pardons, which evinced the same lack of rational prudence as was revealed by his patronage. Henry’s approach even to those guilty of treason and 159
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HENRY VI
murder was far too lenient, and he frequently vacillated, passing sentence and then rescinding it for a less severe punishment, even pardoning the miscreant/s altogether.29 There was no sense of a considered weighing up of the case and having arrived at a rational verdict in Henry’s handling of justice. A king was expected to show mercy, but in order for it to have meaning and political worth this had to be the result of deliberation and seen to be commensurate with the circumstances. Henry’s excessive mercy only served to highlight the unequal nature of his character. It appeared more like the mercy of a child who assumed innocence in all, or of a woman, born of softness of heart and the inability to witness suffering.30 Henry’s mercy had no resolution or prudence to balance it out and his lack of firm direction in matters of justice led to serious disorder and lawlessness in his kingdom.31 He did not occupy a position of hegemonic masculinity in relation to his magnates that would have allowed him to defuse quarrels and clashes among them from a superior position. Indeed, his attitude to patronage and justice, and the resultant nature of his household and chief advisors, often served to intensify such disputes instead. The fact that Henry continued to show no interest in adopting a warrior’s mien while England was rapidly losing hold on her remaining territory in France in this period only served to highlight further his manifest lack of strength and authority.32 So, despite ostensibly being in charge of government from 1437 Henry did not emerge clearly as a ruler in his own right during the late 1430s and early 1440s. He was either unwilling or unable to adopt the conventional bearing of a king and exercise his powers decisively, even when he reached the age at which this could reasonably be expected of him. The circumstances of his minority can be seen either as a response to his inadequacies or the cause of them, or even a combination of the two. But in the absence of a consensus as to the origins of Henry’s shortcomings, we can still draw some conclusions about how his gender identity operated within this by considering the impression which he made upon his subjects. Their perceptions of the relationship between the deficiencies of his gender and his inability to rule as they expected are revealing. The success of the minority government in maintaining the stability and prosperity of England during Henry’s infancy, coupled with Henry’s status as the son of Henry V (raised by his redoubtable brothers), must have led his subjects to assume that Henry VI would be well qualified to exercise kingship successfully when the time came. But it became apparent that Henry was not ruling even adequately, let alone as splendidly or forcefully as they anticipated. Most of his subjects would not have seen him in person because Henry did not travel around his kingdom as extensively as most of his forebears had done, and thus did not take the opportunity to show himself and his kingly power to a wide range of his people.33 This further contributed to the sense that Henry had only negligent direct involvement in the processes of government and justice in the localities. But rumour of Henry’s appearance 160
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THE BEGINNING OF PERSONAL RULE?
and conduct clearly spread, and were easily and inevitably linked to the detrimental effects of his heedless and inefficient rule, which they did experience firsthand. There was abundant awareness that the king was dominated, rather than dominating. His subjects knew that a king should represent their interests and take counsel to help him make decisions on theirbehalf. He was not supposed to be a cipher for the decisions of others and merely rubberstamp them, especially when those others were not acting in the interests of his subjects. The evidence for widespread concern about Henry’s kingship can be found in reports of seditious speech criticizing him which emerge from criminal cases brought before the King’s Bench. Many of these date from the mid 1440s to early 1450s and taken as a whole they reflect dissatisfaction with Henry’s kingship in remarkably similar terms. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of those involved, or the precise reasons why they were accused, the volume of cases brought indicate the levels of unease surrounding Henry’s ability to govern effectively. They also reveal the extent to which those who made these remarks about Henry were judging him against the criteria of ideal qualities expected of a king and by standards of masculinity that were more widely applicable.34 They reflect a burgeoning comprehension that Henry was not actually in command of his kingdom, which was to burst into aggrieved rebellion under Jack Cade in 1450. Henry was frequently seen as idiotic, simple and led by others (especially Suffolk). He was ‘a natural fool’ who was ‘no person able to rule the land’ and had to be replaced, as John and William Merfeld from Brightling in Sussex were alleged to have said in public in July 1450.35 He was also seen as having squandered the legacy of his predecessors in both financial and territorial terms.36 Particularly noteworthy in all this is the commonplace judgement that Henry was not a good king because he was not a man; for example two other charges of seditious speech, one from Suffolk in 1446 and one from Cambridgeshire in 1449, contained reference to Henry looking like a child.37 The idea that Henry had failed to grow up was evidently held by many to explain the problems of his rule. This probably derived both from the legacy of his minority and the rather unclear transition to majority, as well as from interpretations of his character as it was made apparent to them. Perceptions of Henry as immature spread more widely as the 1440s progressed: Henry was now in his twenties yet it seemed he still was not autonomous and in firm control of government. The case of Thomas Kerver, bailiff of the abbot of Reading, tried and condemned for treason in August 1444, illustrates this contention well.38 Kerver was accused of having made a number of treasonous pronouncements about the king on 13 and 14 April of that year, to several other members of the abbot’s household. Kerver was alleged to have wished that the king was dead; even to have indicated that he would kill Henry himself, encouraging others to join him in this project.39 In justifying this extreme course of action to his audience Kerver told 161
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HENRY VI
one man that England would have been better off if Henry had never been born, and another that it would be better if he had died twenty years before. Kerver also cited the text ‘Woe to the land whose King is a boy’ by way of further justification, claiming that a sermon on this very text had been preached before the king by Friar John Curtays during Lent just past.40 As we have seen, this expression was quoted by Walsingham and others earlier in Henry’s reign. Yet the country had not suffered while Henry actually was a boy. The difficulties were seen to derive from the fact that Henry had grown older without apparently maturing. Perhaps most significantly, Kerver compared Henry unfavourably with the Dauphin Louis (the future Louis XI) in terms of their respective gender:
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Then and there, and at sundry other times and places, he said that the dauphin of France was in Aquitaine and Gascony with a great force, acting manfully to obtain and possess those lands by conquest and if the king were of like stuff, as he was of the like age as the dauphin, he would be holding those lands peacefully and quietly.41 This provides yet another indication of the symbiotic relationship which was felt to exist between kingship and the attributes of a warrior.42 Taken in concert with an emphasis on Henry being, essentially, a boy, this identified the fundamental problem of his kingship as a lack of mature masculinity, especially because this had rendered him unable to take decisive action in France.43 The weight of evidence suggests that Kerver and others were expressing ideas about Henry which circulated widely throughout the kingdom, and percolated down the social scale.44 The emphasis on Henry’s youth and the potential for harm which this entailed also derived from the replacement in the mid 1440s of the ‘old guard’, noted above. This probably served to classify Henry’s newer councillors as ‘young’ and therefore unreliable and fickle in the eyes of many, as well as further emphasizing the extent to which Henry VI and his household fell short of the high standards and spectacular achievements of his father’s reign.45 In addition to treasonous speech there are other indications that contemporaries still viewed Henry as young even when he was in his late teens and older.46 In 1445 a Middle English translation of Claudian’s De Consolatu Stilichonis was written for York, probably by the Augustinian friar Osbern Bokenham.47 Flavius Stilicho had served as regent for the late Roman child emperor Honorius (d. 423), leading his military forces as York had done in France for Henry in the early 1440s. If York was Stilicho then Henry was clearly Honorius, surrounded by evil advisers whose self-serving influence was destroying the empire/kingdom.48 A Prussian diplomat visiting the court as late as 1450 reported that the now twenty-nine-year-old king ‘is very young and inexperienced, and watched over as a Carthusian’.49 162
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THE BEGINNING OF PERSONAL RULE?
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In 1447 John Capgrave presented to Henry a series of exemplary portraits of men who shared his name: the Book of the Illustrious Henries.50 This commemorated his visit to the priory of Lynn (of which Capgrave was prior) in that year and includes portraits of his father and grandfather, as well as his great-great-grandfather, Henry, first duke of Lancaster and other English royal Henries. It also includes the Emperor Henry II, who had been canonized in 1146, various French royal Henries, saintly Henries and Henry Despencer, Bishop of Norwich. In the preface Capgrave extols Henry’s virtues, referring to him as one who ‘has chosen the best rule of conduct and has abhorred the craggy ways of vice’. He also stated that he wrote: ‘to increase your desire to follow in the steps of the best of men’.51 Capgrave included a portrait of Henry himself which is largely flattering, naturally, especially of Henry’s exemplary piety.52 But this is expressed in rather tepid terms which, usurprisingly, place more emphasis on what Henry will hopefully achieve in the future than on what he had achieved to date.53 In particular Capgrave hoped Henry would ensure the stability and prosperity of his realm, through a combination of sensible rule and military victory, and also that he would father children. Particularly revealing are Capgrave’s remarks on the ‘persons of a malignant disposition’ who ‘continue to sow among the people such murmuring words as these, – “Alas for thee, O land, whose king is a boy, and whose princes eat in the morning.”’54 This shows Capgrave’s awareness of the common theme of popular criticism of Henry and is further evidence that it was still current even when the king was in his mid twenties. Capgrave attempted to dispel this condemnation of Henry: ‘But this saying of Solomon’s ought not, I apprehend, to be applied to the number of years, but to immaturity of manners’ and goes on to give examples of Biblical figures (such as Josiah) and saints (such as Kenelm) who came to the throne as boys.55 This is a curious approach given that the gist of such critiques was precisely about Henry’s immaturity of manners, not about his age per se. This was an issue on which Trevisa commented: no differens is bytwene a child of Ȝong age and one with maneres of Ȝong age, for on þat vseth soche liking. For thei he be olde of tyme and of age, for a is a child in maneres, he [is] unworthy to be a prince.56 Trevisa further noted that ‘it is vunsemelich to a kyng to be a child in maners and not folwe resoun but passions’.57 Analysis of the autograph manuscript of Capgrave’s Book of Illustrious Henries demonstrates that the portrait of Henry VI himself was added later, perhaps after Henry, during his visit, had discovered what Capgrave was working on and requested to be included within it.58 Capgrave’s tactic overall was therefore to present an admiring account of Henry, but one which conveyed what he and others felt to be areas of his kingship that 163
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HENRY VI
needed to be improved for the welfare of the nation.59 Tellingly, during his portrait of Henry VI Capgrave states: ‘What does it avail us to read of the examples of these illustrious men, and not to imitate them?’ before lamenting the decline of England’s naval dominance and the threat this has posed to the kingdom’s security.60 Capgrave must not have been alone in suspecting that Henry had paid little heed to the myriad instructional texts and other guidance which had been offered to him over the years. Capgrave perhaps feared that his own text would suffer the same fate, but tried to intervene with advice of his own nonetheless. This suggests that he felt it was not necessarily too late for Henry to grow up and into his role. But Solomon’s pronouncement continued to dog Henry and interpretations of his reign, being used by de Wavrin over a decade later as part of a justification for Henry’s deposition and replacement by Edward IV.61 In addition to the implicit criticisms of Henry’s rule presented by Capgrave in his Book of the Illustrious Henries, Winstead argues that another of his texts, the Life of St Katherine of Alexandria, written at around the same time in the mid 1440s, was intended as a commentary on Henry’s poor kingship and the problems to which it was giving rise.62 The version of the life of St Katherine upon which Capgrave elaborated at length presents her as a sovereign queen prior to her conversion to Christianity, mystical marriage to Christ and martyrdom.63 Winstead notes the similarities between Capgrave’s Katherine and Henry VI: ‘Like the saint, he was the only child of a king renowned for his military exploits, and his reign, like hers, was marked by economic decline, territorial losses, threats of attack from abroad, and local disorder.’64 Katherine and Henry are also shown to share other worrying qualities such as being overly lenient with wrong-doers, and displaying an inappropriate proclivity for chastity when an heir was desperately needed. Moreover, the concerns raised in the life by Katherine’s lords are directly paralleled in those voiced at the time about Henry’s rule.65 Capgrave’s version of the life thus responds to contemporary circumstances in presenting Katherine’s gender as being at the heart of her inability to rule correctly, or to answer the concerns of her subjects satisfactorily. The problem of a female ruler matches the problem of a boy ruler, and Capgrave’s approach here echoes contemporary formulations of the relational nature of gender: essentially neither Katherine nor Henry is a man.66 Suffolk and others at the centre of power were also well aware of the serious problem posed by the appearance of the king’s immaturity despite all attempts to present Henry as an adult king in charge of his affairs.67 They were also aware that these attempts were not fooling many (if any) of the king’s subjects, hence the seriousness with which they treated the charges of seditious speech.68 The best example of this is provided by the circumstances surrounding the fate of Thomas Kerver, whom we have already encountered.69 Kerver was arrested soon after he made his treasonous comments, and tried in July 1444, pleading not guilty to the charges. Although he was 164
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THE BEGINNING OF PERSONAL RULE?
found guilty on all but one of the six counts (that of having tried to recruit others to contrive Henry’s death), this was evidently not a satisfactory outcome as far as the government was concerned and a second trial was held in August. Members of Henry’s household were closely involved with proceedings as the charges against Kerver were refined, particularly the accusation that he had incited others to share his ‘false, nefarious and traitorous imaginings’.70 This time Kerver was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to a traitor’s death. He was to be led and then drawn (on a hurdle or at a horse’s tail) through Reading and other Berkshire towns, ending at a local gallows for the execution.71 This grim procession took place, but Henry, who was in the area, saved Kerver’s life, issuing a pardon which commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. Kerver still had to go through the horror of being hanged and cut down, before he was apparently whisked away by one of the king’s trusted servants, John Say.72 Henry’s rationale for issuing the pardon was that the Feast of the Assumption was imminent and this had special significance for his foundation at Eton, as it was the day on which those who visited could gain papal indulgences.73 It was presumably no surprise to those around Henry that the king wanted to pardon Kerver, though undoubtedly vexing nonetheless, when the intention must have been for his death to set a terrible example and dissuade others from voicing their opinion of the king’s defects. Indeed, the pardon ends by noting that if anyone else offended similarly, even if they were of royal blood, they would be punished in full, with no reprieve.74 However, there is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, an instruction that the pardon should remain secret, probably in the hope that most people would assume that Kerver had undergone the full penalty and thus future sedition would be stifled.75 That Kerver was pardoned at Henry’s behest, despite the effort that the regime had put into his trial, does show that even those closest to Henry could not stem his excessively merciful impulses, which suggests that he was not entirely putty in their hands. In the comparable case of Richard II, Fletcher states: ‘As the king reached an age at which his status as a man was becoming difficult to deny, it became paradoxically more and more necessary for his subjects to insist upon his youth as a means of containing his assertiveness.’76 But the preceding account demonstrates that this is not true of Henry VI. Instead there is evidence that some of those closest to Henry, especially Gloucester, were urging him to be more assertive. In the case of Henry VI his subjects highlighted his youth because of the fear that his life-cycle had stalled. Drawing attention to this may, in some instances, have been part of attempts to compel him to graduate into adulthood. Both Richard and Henry experienced minorities, but reacted differently to them. Richard felt thwarted and expressed frustration.77 But Henry apparently became accustomed to dependence.78 In this respect there is some validity to the idea of Henry’s reign as ‘forty years of virtual minority’, in appearance at least.79 The impression given to his 165
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HENRY VI
subjects was that Henry never emerged from the supervision of others to function independently, as a sovereign should. Thus he remained a malleable child, not a self-determining man. In proffering an explanation for this one is forced to speculate. It may be that the minority government, and Henry’s uncles in particular, ruled too successfully, leaving Henry with little apparent comprehension of the need to assert himself. He was always king, but played no operational part in government for years, yet government worked nonetheless, and worked well. It is perhaps therefore hardly surprising that he grew up happy to leave the dull routine aspects of the administration and the difficult decisions to others, preferring to focus on the more pleasurable aspects of kingship (such as giving people presents). This was in marked contrast to Henry V who was personally involved, at some level, with every aspect of government and administration. Those about Henry VI clearly became very worried about his maturation. The evidence of the conduct literature directed at him was merely the tip of the iceberg compared to the frequent informal instruction and guidance he must have been offered. But perhaps this had the opposite effect of failing to inculcate any autonomy or dynamism in the young king. In the introduction we saw that mirrors for princes were designed to encourage restraint in a king, not to inject him with vigour, so we might wonder how helpful they could ever have been in stirring Henry VI to more virile action.80 Another explanation for Henry’s lack of vigour is that, unlike his father and grandfather (and indeed his successor Edward IV), he did not have to prove or justify his kingship in the first instance. Henry was king virtually from birth, there was no serious question of his right to rule for decades, and yet he was one of the least kingly individuals ever to wear the English crown, which is perhaps no coincidence. Moreover, Henry did not achieve manhood through his own actions, instead manhood was artificially conferred upon him by others, and not because he had provided abundant proof of it in any of the usually recognized areas of masculine accomplishment. It had no palpable social presence of its own.81 Hence the confusion as to whether or not Henry really was a man at all, especially as he seemed unable to provide any evidence of hegemonic masculinity in his handling of government. But ultimately the compound image of Henry as essentially unmanly did not just derive from the circumstances of his youth and maturation. They were reinforced by his lack of distinction in other key areas which were held to entail an announcement of manhood, and especially by his failure to imitate the martial excellence of Henry V.
Notes 1 This comes from the foundation charter, quoted by Griffiths, p. 243, see below pp. 183–84. 2 For Henry’s councillors and household in the early years of his (nominal) majority, Griffiths, pp. 278–84, 301–4.
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THE BEGINNING OF PERSONAL RULE?
3 Ibid., pp. 446–50. 4 G. L. Harriss, ‘Beaufort, Henry (1375?–1447)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1859, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 5 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116540] Appendix 2: Protest of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Gloucester was also greatly angered by the release of the Duke of Orléans, see below, pp. 176–77. 6 R.A. Griffiths, ‘The trial of Eleanor Cobham: an episode in the fall of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester’ in R.A. Griffiths (ed.), King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (London: Hambledon, 1991), 233–52. 7 Jessica Freeman, ‘Sorcery at court and manor: Margery Jourdemayne, the Witch of Eye next Westminster’, Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004), 343–57. 8 Griffiths, ‘The trial of Eleanor Cobham’, notes that although contemporary chroniclers did not interpret her downfall in political terms, the fact that she was said to have started consulting occult practitioners in around April 1440, at exactly the time when Gloucester found himself ‘cast into the political wilderness’, may well have been significant and something of which his enemies could take advantage, pp. 237–38. 9 Watts, pp. 190–91 and p. 191, n. 292. 10 Griffiths, pp. 278–82. 11 John Watts, ‘Pole, William de la, first duke of Suffolk (1396–1450)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2012 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22461, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 12 Griffiths, pp. 280–81. 13 Watts, pp. 155–99 for discussion of Suffolk’s rule. 14 Watts, ‘Pole, William de la’. 15 Griffiths, p. 283. 16 Watts, pp. 142, 154–55. 17 See above, pp. 32–33. 18 Griffiths, p. 251. 19 Wolffe, p. 106 on Henry’s generosity appearing initially to those about him ‘as largely inevitable in a good-natured boy of sixteen’ and subsequently becoming a matter for concern. 20 For the detail of this Griffiths, pp. 329–75; Wolffe, pp. 117–25. 21 Wolffe, pp. 106–16. 22 Griffiths, pp. 366–67. 23 PPC, VI, pp. 316–20; Griffiths, pp. 282–84. 24 PPC, VI, pp. 316–17. 25 Wolffe, p. 133. 26 PPC, VI, pp. 319–20. 27 Ibid., p. 320 for this and what follows. 28 I use husbandry following Neal’s definition, p. 58. 29 Griffiths, pp. 249, 595; see also Henry’s last-minute pardoning of Gloucester’s household men (including his illegitimate son Arthur) when they were on the point of being executed for plotting to kill the king and putting Gloucester in his place, Wolffe, pp. 132–33. This was just after Gloucester’s own arrest and death in custody (probably from a stroke) on 23 February 1447. Suffolk and his coterie moved against Gloucester for fear that he would become a figurehead for their opponents. 30 The Governance of Kings and Princes, pp. 198–99; see above, pp. 29–30. 31 For detailed discussion Griffiths, pp. 562–609. 32 As discussed in the next chapter. 33 Griffiths, pp. 562–63. In the early 1450s Henry did make several tours around England, see below, pp. 215–16. 34 Christopher Fletcher, ‘Manhood, kingship and the public in late medieval England’, Edad Media Revista de Historia 13 (2012), 123–42 (134–35).
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HENRY VI
35 EHD, p. 264. 36 Wolffe, p. 17. 37 I.M.W. Harvey, Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 31; Neal, p. 22 on the derogatory connotations of being called ‘a boy’ in this period. 38 C.A.F. Meekings, ‘Thomas Kerver’s case’, English Historical Review 90 (1975), 331–46; Wolffe, pp. 128–29. 39 Meekings, ‘Kerver’s case’, 331–32 for a list of the charges collated from his two trials. 40 Ibid., p. 332. Curtays did preach before the king on occasion (p. 332, n. 1) but if he ever preached on this text it seems highly unlikely that the content would have been critical, especially if Thomas Gascoigne was right in his claim that tight control was exerted over what could and could not be preached to Henry, Loci e Libro Veritatem, (ed.) J.E.T. Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881), p. 191. 41 ‘Kerver’s case’, 332. Louis had been born in 1423. 42 See also the treasonous remarks of William Parker which criticized Henry for not occupying himself in warfare discussed by Fletcher, ‘Manhood’, p. 134. 43 See below, pp. 177–79. 44 Meekings, ‘Kerver’s case’, 342–44. 45 Watts, p. 235. 46 Ibid., p. 181 and references in n. 243. 47 John Watts, ‘De Consolatu Stilichonis: texts and politics in the reign of Henry VI’, Journal of Medieval History 16 (1990), 251–66; A.S.G. Edwards, ‘The Middle English translation of Claudian’s De Consulatu Stilichonis’ in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions (York: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 267–78. York was the major patron of Clare Priory, where Bokenham was based, see below, p. 207. 48 For the text E. Flugel, ‘Eine mittelenglische Claudian-Ubersetzung (1445)’, Anglia 28 (1905), 255–99. 49 Quoted by Griffiths, p. 254. 50 John Capgrave’s Book of the Illustrious Henries, trans. F.C. Hungeston (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1858). 51 Ibid., p. 3. 52 Ibid., pp. 144–61. 53 Karen A. Winstead, John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), pp 157–61 (p. 159; ‘tepid’ is her epithet). 54 Book of Illustrious Henries, p. 148. 55 Ibid., p. 149. 56 The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 18. 57 Ibid., p. 73. 58 Winstead, John Capgrave, p. 161. 59 Ibid. 60 Capgrave, Illustrious Henries, p. 155. 61 Recueil des croniques … par Jehan de Waurin vol. 4, ed. W. Hardy and E.L.C.P. Hardy, 5 vols., Rolls Series, 39 (1884), pp. 350–55. 62 Karen A. Winstead, ‘Capgrave’s Saint Katherine and the perils of gynecocracy’, Viator 26 (1995), 361–76. 63 John Capgrave, The Life of Saint Katherine, ed. Karen A. Winstead (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/ camelot/teams/katintro.htm, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 64 Winstead, ‘Capgrave’s Saint Katherine’, 368. 65 Ibid., 367–71; Winstead, John Capgrave, pp. 137–57 for further discussion. 66 Cf. Winstead, ‘Capgrave’s Saint Katherine’, p. 369. At around the time Capgrave wrote these texts the second recension of the Pseudo-Elmham life of Henry V was dedicated to
168
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THE BEGINNING OF PERSONAL RULE?
67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77
78 79
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80 81
John Somerset. In the late 1440s Lydgate began to translate the Secreta Secretorum which was completed by Benedict Burgh and dedicated to Henry, Lydgate and Burgh’s Secrees of Old Philisoffres, ed. Robert Steele, Early English Text Society Extra Series, 66 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1894). Given the direction that Henry’s rule had taken in the 1440s these texts may well have been further interventions to try and persuade him to adopt the correct bearing of a king. Watts, ‘Pole, William de la’. Wolffe, pp. 128–29; Watts, p. 212, n. 25 suggests that the realization that Henry was not likely to make an effective king is an explanation for the regime’s uncompromising attitude to seditious speech. Meekings, ‘Kerver’s case’, 335–38, for this and what follows. Ibid., 338. Ibid., 338–39. Ibid., 339. This was also given as the reason for pardoning Gloucester’s household in 1447, Wolffe, p. 132. Meekings, ‘Kerver’s case’, 339. The attempt at secrecy failed, and the fact that Henry had pardoned Kerver is related in positive terms in the Brut, p. 485. Christopher Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics 1377–99 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 127. Fletcher, Richard II, pp. 97–150 for discussion of Richard’s ‘pursuit of manhood’ between 1382 and 1386 and his attempts to dispense with the various constraints which continued to hamper his political autonomy. Ormond’s Secreta Secretorum claimed that Richard’s later years of tyrannous rule stemmed from his anger at having been governed by others in his youth, Secreta Secretorum, p. 136. Griffths, p. 254. K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 284, discussed by Watts, p. 364. See above, p. 30. I draw here on Neal’s discussion of the importance of ‘social presence’ to masculine identity, pp. 7–8.
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9 THE UNWARLIKE KING
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By medieval standards Henry VI was a peculiarly unwarlike king, a fact rendered even more conspicuous by circumstances which demanded that he must become an effective military leader. Taking a substantial fighting force into France would have been the only way in which English territories there could have been properly secured. That Henry showed little interest in pursuing such a course conveyed disconcerting messages about both his kingship and manhood. The ceremony of knighthood was often used as a benchmark moment of maturity for high status young men.1 But in Henry VI’s case the opportunity to use knighthood as a marker of his adulthood was missed; he was knighted by Bedford in May 1426, at the age of just four.2 Henry’s martial shortcomings were certainly not the result of any gap in his education. Contemporary educational prescriptions generally held that the real business of learning warfare would not begin until a boy was in his mid teens (fourteen to sixteen).3 Trevisa discussed this with an emphasis on physical accomplishment as essential to young men who were being trained for political life: fro fourtene Ȝeere forward children scholde vse so strong traueille þat þei scholde vse wrastlyng and ridyng oþer some dedes liche to the dedes of armes so þat þei ben in þe eiȜtene Ȝeere lerned and itauȜt in wrastlyng and rydyng and in oþere deds of armes and of cheualrie so þat þei mowe vse traueille or cheualrye. For a man is wel desposid in his bodi whanne his bodi is such as nediþ for his office, as a knyth is wel desposed in his body whanne his body is suche as nedeþ for a knyȜtes office; and þat may not be without strong dedes and trauele. þanne for alle þat wol haue politik lif in comynte comynne and by lawe mot som tyme haue strong traueylle for defens of þe comynte, al þat wol lyue suche a lyf scholdde, fro fourtene Ȝere and so forþ, schold lerne and vse stronge dedes and trauele so þat Ȝif tyme come þat comyntee haue nede to defence þat here body be so desposed þat þei mowe take such trauele an honde þat þe comynte may be defended by hem.4 170
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THE UNWARLIKE KING
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It was commonplace to introduce elements of military training earlier than fourteen.5 One of Warwick’s responsibilities as Henry’s governor was doubtless to begin his training in this arena, alongside the other accomplishments appropriate to a high status young man. We have seen the significance of Warwick’s appointment when Henry was seven, and at the same age two ‘lytill cote armurs’ were made for him.6 During the course of the 1420s Henry was given eight swords of differing lengths ‘for to lerne the kyng to play in his tendre age’ and when he went to France in 1430 Warwick had a suit of armour made for him which had gold decoration.7 Nicholas Orme notes that, unlike other royal boys to whom similar gifts were made, ‘Henry’s military games bore singularly little fruit in adult life’, but these gifts were only one part of the serious effort which was made to mould Henry into a fighter.8 To begin with there was clearly felt to be no reason why he should not grow up to imitate his father. Many contemporary commentators felt that the early death of a father and the consequent increased role of a mother in rearing a son would have a terrible effect on that son’s development, causing him to become dissolute and unmanageable.9 But this did not apply to Henry VI. Once he had left his infancy behind women played no significant role in his upbringing, not even his mother. Instead Henry was in the hands of his uncles and other men of an entirely conventional, military bent, many of whom had served in France with his father. The plethora of conduct literature directed at Henry all emphasized, as was customary, the central importance of warfare to a king, as a means of defending his rights and his people. As with so much else relating to ideal manhood, this entailed restraining aggressive impulses and demonstrating strength of character as well as physical force. In the case of Henry VI, though, the reining in of aggression was not an issue, which posed a different problem. The solution to this was evidently an intensification of attempts to persuade the young king to imitate his father and also to recognize the significance of being seen to be like him. The life of St Edmund which Lydgate wrote for Henry VI in the mid 1430s presents a unique depiction of the saint as a renowned warrior who slaughtered countless pagan enemies in battle: Edmond that day was Cristis champion, Preuyng himsilf a ful manly knyht … The soil of slauhtre isteynyd was with blood The sharp swerd of Edmond turnyd red For ther was noon that his strook withstood Nor durste abide afforn him for his hed … 10 Moreover, Lydgate included in his text an account of Edmund’s cousin, the lesser known St Fremund. Fremund was supposedly another young king (of Mercia) who abdicated after only a year of rule in order to live as a 171
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HENRY VI
hermit. On hearing of Edmund’s murder Fremund felt compelled to take up arms and waged ferocious war on the Danes to avenge Edmund’s death.11 Both saints are depicted in illuminations engaging in hand to hand combat with the Danes, wielding swords covered in gore.12 Given the explicitly didactic discourse of the text Lydgate’s novel approach in combining the lives of Edmund and Fremund and presenting them both as accomplished warriors constitutes a response to rising unease about Henry’s lack of developing martial qualities. Having made Edmund a warrior, in order to return to the standard narrative wherein he was captured by the Danes and martyred, Lydgate shows the king deciding to give up fighting, horrified by the slaughter he has both caused and witnessed.13 Fremund, on the other hand, did not give up fighting, but died due to the betrayal of an erstwhile ally, Oswy, who sided with the Danes and beheaded Fremund while he knelt, giving thanks for his victory.14 Fremund may thus have been included in order to balance out Edmund’s example, and prevent Henry from gaining the impression that a king should ever forswear fighting. As Winstead notes: ‘Edmund fails when he lowers his royal sword; Fremund fails until he takes his up.’15 But if that was the lesson Lydgate intended, it was apparently not one which Henry took on board. Mirrors for princes were all predicated on the understanding that a king must be prepared to fight if necessary. Frulovisi’s prologue enjoins Henry VI to imitate his father’s virtues but notes:
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Not that I preferr and laude war and discention, rather then tranquillitie and peace; but if thou maiest haue none honest peace, that then thou shalt seeke peace and rest with victorie to both thie realmes by thy vertue and battaile, and by those feates by which thie Father attamed both his aduersaries and thine.16 Similarly the Tractatus de Regimine Principum addressed to Henry states that although a king’s primary objective should be to maintain peace, he must also be ‘mighty in war’, continuing that in Henry’s case this was necessary in order to defend his incontrovertible rights in France.17 At about the same time that the Vita Henrici Quinti and the Tractatus were written for Henry, an intriguing piece of propaganda was produced, probably from Henry’s household, which sought to represent the young king in the same register as his father. It takes the form of a letter purporting to come from the Sultan of Syria, soliciting a military alliance from Henry and offering in return the hand of his daughter, three million pounds of gold, Christian relics which had been lost by the crusaders centuries before (including the Holy Cross) and to make him emperor of thirty-seven Christian kings (of whom he lists eighteen, which comprise the major kingdoms of western Europe and some eastern).18 Lesley A. Coote discusses the status of this letter as part of a wider genre of ‘crusade letter’, similar examples of which were addressed to a 172
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THE UNWARLIKE KING
number of other fifteenth-century rulers.19 She argues that the purpose of this letter was ‘to elicit loyalty to the king as the embodiment of national identity and aspiration, and as the inheritor of his great father’s prophetic destiny’.20 This further demonstrates the expectation surrounding the shape of Henry’s kingship and the importance of reassuring his subjects that he would grow into another Henry V. It was written at a time when those closest to the young king had evidently realized that there was little resemblance between father and son, but apparently believed that this could yet be cultivated. Significantly at the same time Gloucester was filling Henry’s household with men who had been close to Henry V. Watts suggests that Gloucester was deliberately trying ‘to recreate the martial ambiance of Henry V’s establishment with his appointments’.21 These men could be relied upon to keep up a steady stream of anecdotes about Henry V which would reiterate the central lessons of the two written accounts composed in the later 1430s: Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti and the Vita Henrici Quinti . Henry V’s brothers also kept alive his brand of warrior kingship by continuing to pursue his policies in France. They both demonstrated a keen awareness of the crucial role which visual and literary propaganda played in articulating and disseminating Henry VI’s claims to the French crown. Emphasizing Henry’s status as the rightful heir both to England and France involved, of necessity, frequent reiterations of his father’s achievements which were particularly marked in 1429 and 1432 in the pageantry surrounding Henry’s two coronations.22 This appeared in various forms as tableaux vivants, banners hung from trees and marzipan ‘soteltes’ at his coronation feast. One of these depicted:
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th’emperour [Sigismund] and the kyng that ded is, armed, and here mantelles of the garters; and the kyng that nowe is, knelying bifore hem with this reasoun: Ageinst miscreauntes th’emperour Sigismound Hath shewid his might which is imperial; Sithen Henry the Fifth so noble a knight was founde For Cristes cause in actis martial; Cherisshying the Chirch, Lollardes had a falle, To give exaumple to kynges that succede And to his braunche in especiall While he dothe regne to love God and drede.23 While the political value and necessity of such displays is obvious, Henry V’s brothers did too good a job of maintaining his presence at the heart of royal theatre, especially as they were also seen to be keeping alive his qualities in their own persons.24 Bedford was recognized as being, in essence, king until 173
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HENRY VI
his death in 1435, not just by dint of his paramount position in the minority government, but because of his astute and capable management of politics, in combination with his personal valour.25 Given that Bedford was only a year older than Gloucester, it is tempting to wonder how Henry VI’s reign and kingship would have developed had he lived as long as his brother, or longer.26 Assessments of Gloucester tend to be more mixed and judge that whiles not lacking in courage and ability, he was more concerned to be admired as a bold and decisive leader than he was able to provide proof that he deserved such recognition.27 Capgrave described Gloucester as ‘a man who among all the princes of the world is most distinguished for a knowledge of letters’ and the duke is often identified as one of the early English humanist patrons, being the first to commission works from Italian authors.28 While the precise quality of Gloucester’s own engagement in this can be questioned, he undoubtedly possessed a perceptive understanding of the value of literature in promoting self-image and policy in memorable and persuasive terms. In addition to the life of Henry V, which identified him as a worthy successor to his brother (in terms of character and ability), Gloucester also commissioned from Frulovisi at about the same time a poetic celebration of his own exploits in Flanders in 1436, the ‘Humfroidos’.29 These exploits took the form of a three-week chevauchée of questionable strategic value. Gloucester may also have sponsored popular ballads celebrating these events, some written by Lydgate, as well as others expressing anti-Burgundian sentiment.30 However, this does not mean that Gloucester’s insistence on a military solution to England’s problems in France in this period should be seen purely as an expression of self-aggrandisement, or an attempt to bolster his waning political influence (although these did play some part). Gloucester saw the direction of English policy and its emphasis on a diplomatic solution as a betrayal of his brother’s memory. He clearly understood the potentially disastrous implications of this for general perceptions of Henry VI’s kingship, especially taken in concert with Henry’s apparent lack of ambition to rule alone. In this Gloucester showed himself to be in tune with the opinions and wishes of many of his subjects and they valued him for it. Although the epithet ‘good Duke Humfrey’ was applied to him retrospectively it indicates that people viewed him as a man who embodied the qualities to which Henry V had made them accustomed in a king, and which they were beginning to realize were lacking in their actual king.31 This is evident in the epitaph written to be displayed on Gloucester’s tomb at St Albans (and possibly also displayed in London) which describes him in the familiar terms of ideal rulership.32 Thus the actions and deportment of Henry V’s brothers put off the necessity of coming to terms with Henry V’s death. They also encouraged the belief that when Henry VI was old enough, his kingship would follow seamlessly on from that of his father. Henry’s unsuitability for such a role must therefore have come as even more of a disturbing disappointment. As 174
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THE UNWARLIKE KING
neither Bedford nor Gloucester fathered legitimate sons of their own, Henry VI was, in some sense, the son they never had and thus their sole means of leaving a political legacy. This may have given an extra edge to their determination that he should resemble his father as closely as possible. But whatever their motivations the attempt was unsuccessful. By the late 1440s there was no-one left to occupy a yawning gap at the centre of the polity, which desperately needed to be occupied by a masterful individual of flair and verve. And yet Henry VI still seemed not to comprehend this despite all the guidance he had received. When it came to learning how to be a soldier, advice literature could only achieve so much. It could encourage Henry to be martial by pointing out the benefits of such conduct to successful rule, but the way to learn how to really fight, and how to command others, was by employing one’s training in the field.33 Henry had been knighted, but he had not travelled to the battlefield, or fought upon it, and this was considered by some at the time to be the most crucial element of a young nobleman’s education.34 Military accomplishment was also perceived as an hereditary quality, which obviously underpinned the expectations vested in Henry VI as Henry V’s son. There is no clear reason to think that Henry VI’s biological inheritance had anything to do with his failure to become a warrior (before 1453 at least). Henry was possibly quite tall and enjoyed hunting, which suggests that his frame was perfectly adequate.35 Henry could not, however, inherit the experiences which had created his father’s exceptional talents in this arena. Henry V had no choice in the matter; in his mid-teens circumstances made it essential that he went to war to defend his own and his father’s rights. Regardless of physique, personal inclination or ability, Henry VI simply was not provided with the opportunity to prove himself at a similar stage. As we have seen, in 1436 some thought was briefly given to having Henry lead the campaign to Calais.36 He would not have been in effective command, but it would have made an important statement for him to be seen at the head of an armed force, especially as the first experience of battle was another of the ways in which the adult masculinity of a high status youth could be made manifest, as it had been in Henry V’s case. That this did not come to pass for Henry VI may well reflect a feeling that it was simply too risky for him to be in the vicinity of combat. If anything had happened to the young Henry V there were three ‘spares’ to take his place. But there were no such replacements for Henry VI. This must have played a considerable role in determining that the various forces which went to France in the 1440s were led by others such as the brothers John and Edmund Beaufort, successively dukes of Somerset, Humphrey, earl of Stafford, and the Duke of York on Henry’s behalf.37 That no heir was immediately forthcoming from Henry’s marriage in 1445 probably played a role too, for there was still no clear successor and were he to have been killed in battle there would have been political turmoil in England. 175
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HENRY VI
Henry’s failure to adopt a warrior persona has been interpreted by some as indicative of a marked aversion for warfare, even of a pacifistic disposition. Griffiths contends that Henry ‘seems to have been repelled by war – its misery, waste and expense’ and that he ‘harboured a sincere, Christian revulsion at the further shedding of blood in his name’.38 In addition to the perception that Henry was uncommonly pious, among the key evidence for this purported aspect of his character is a declaration issued in his name by the council in October 1440. Earlier that year, following the failure of the negotiations with France at Gravelines in 1439, Charles, duke of Orléans was released.39 This was in order that he should act as an intermediary with Charles VII and help to arrange an effective peace treaty. Orléans had been in English custody since Agincourt, when he had been the most important prisoner captured by Henry V. The declaration explained why Henry VI had decided to release him in the face of spreading ‘noyse and grutching’ from those who did not believe this to be a sensible move.40 The declaration sought to reassure that this decision was not taken lightly and should not be seen as evidence of ‘symplesse’ or ‘self wille’ on the part of the king, but that he was acting for the welfare of his people and also in response to ‘secrete causes’ which could not be made public.41 It also states that this was the king’s own decision and a rational one: ‘that he hath doen in saide mater he hath doen of himself and of his own advis and courage … moeved and stured of God and of raison as he trusted fully.’42 His primary motivation is then established as a ‘singular desire … above alle othr erthly things, that is to saye, that the goode paix might be had’ to bring to a conclusion the war which had lasted over a hundred years ‘and that the grete and innumerable mischieffs and inconvenients, whiche fro tyme to tyme ensewe therof, might cease and take ende’.43 A number of reasons were put forward for trying to draw hostilities to a close, starting with reference to the contemporary schism in the Church which the king states to be prolonged by the conflict between England and France. Enumeration was then made of the achievements of Edward III, but also of the great cost which these entailed, both in terms of money ‘in the same werres ben exspended in two yeeres and an half, five hundredth thousand marc’, and loss of life ‘the grete and manyfolde mischieves and inconvenients, as in shedyng of Cristen mannes blode’.44 Then comes reference to ‘the kyng of moost blessed memorye, the kynges fader’ and his great victories, followed by the claim that towards the end of Henry V’s life he did not have the resources to sustain his hold on France, and that those around him suffered great ‘werynesse’ because of the effort which such an attempt entailed.45 Furthermore, Henry V himself ‘was so sadded of the werre and disposed in alle wises, to have entended to a paix to have be treated and made with hym that calleth hymn nowe kyng of Fraunce, thanne called the Dauphin, and thoo that held his partie, as it ne is not unknown to many that yet liven and were aboute hym, to which it liked him to open his entent in the saide mater.’46 Here the memory of Henry V was invoked to 176
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THE UNWARLIKE KING
support a policy of peace, not war, in striking contrast to other contemporary uses of him. That the council was at pains to emphasize Henry VI’s own agency in the matter of the duke’s release suggests that many did not believe the king was acting autonomously at all. The question of whether or not this document can be read as a reflection of Henry’s own convictions, or whether he was really just a mouthpiece for Beaufort’s strategy is a matter of debate.47 But whatever Henry’s personal opinion it is significant that here he was being presented as the advocate of peace, and as essentially questioning the wisdom of his predecessors’ bellicose policies. The critiques thus offered were certainly valid in some respects, and Henry V himself was always careful to establish that he went to war in order to end divisive injustice and achieve wholesome peace. But it was unwise to be seen to question the value of Edward III and Henry V’s achievements, given the reverence in which both were held.48 Gloucester was incensed by the release of Orléans and also, surely, by what he and many others would have held to be a highly mendacious portrayal of Henry V in the declaration.49 Furthermore Gloucester would not have approved of the appearance that the declaration as a whole gave to Henry’s kingship and was aware of the worrying messages this would convey about his maturity and masculine potential. If this statement was not a direct result of Henry’s personal inclination then it would arguably have been much more sensible for him to be presented as wishing for war, but being regrettably thwarted in this project by the weight of circumstance. Better for him to be seen reluctantly allowing his advisors to work for peace, rather than as arguing against the whole project of war. The fact that Orléans’ embassy to France subsequently achieved nothing worthwhile for England undermined the claims for the validity of the approach promoted by the declaration in any case, and further strengthened the case for armed action in the eyes of many.50 Peace was undoubtedly the sensible option; even if Henry VI had been passionately promoting a wholesale invasion of France his kingdom could not support the expense.51 Moreover, the political and dynastic divisions of which Henry V had been able to take advantage in forging his colonization of Normandy no longer applied. France under Charles VII posed a much more substantial threat than it had under Charles VI. But if there was to be peace it should have been a peace won by England, not a peace that happened because the king did not want to fight.52 Henry was presiding over the erosion of his father’s achievements, which only served to draw the contrast between them even more starkly. It may seem unfair to hold him personally responsible, given the circumstances, but his subjects could not be expected to view the situation objectively. They apparently believed that English interests and security were being compromised by suing for peace with the French.53 Moreover, there was an intrinsic connection between losses abroad and violent unrest at home, perceived at the time as well as in 177
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HENRY VI
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retrospect. England had been strikingly tranquil during the reign of Henry V because the prosecution of war in France gave the nobility a joint project to pursue under the aegis of their king, and an outlet for their military accomplishments and ambitions.54 Henry VI’s imprudent and wavering style of government gave rise to disorder. Resentment aroused by the self-serving corruption and injustice emanating from the court was further inflamed in the later 1440s by the return of bitter, disheartened soldiers and English colonists from Normandy. The extent to which English affairs in France had been mismanaged, especially by Suffolk (popularly believed to have sold Normandy back to the French), lay behind the timing of Cade’s Revolt in 1450, and the subsequent protests against the government which this inspired.55 The loss of French territory was seen as a national humiliation.56 It was also taken as an endemic indication of Henry’s poor kingship and lack of manliness. Thomas Kerver’s opinion, which he was accused of voicing frequently, that the dauphin Louis was ‘acting manfully’ in conquering Aquitaine and Gascony and that Henry would have held those lands ‘peacefully and quietly’ if he were ‘of like stuff’ is revealing in its identification of Henry’s subordinate, juvenile gender identity as the heart of a problem which affected his whole kingdom.57 Even if Kerver himself was being accused erroneously here, this was clearly believed to be the sort of dangerous criticism which someone could conceivably make about the king. And, as we have seen, it was taken extremely seriously by the government. A similar criticism of Henry was voiced by one William Parker in the late 1440s which drew a direct correlation between Henry’s failure to take a direct role in the fighting in France and the proliferation of ‘traytours and felons’ in England.58 Henry VI simply did not possess the forceful masculinity to embody the nation in the way that his father had done. So whereas Henry V’s victories were seen as evidence for his exceptional manhood and for the effeminate indolence of the French, now the same applied to the English. Worcester cited Biblical support for the sinful, unmanly state into which England had fallen. And Job in his booke seithe that nothing fallithe or risithe on the erthe without a cause, as who saiethe that none adversite fallithe not to us, but only for wikkidnesse of lyvyng and synne that reignithe on us; as pride, envye, singuler covetice, and sensualite of the bodie now a daies hathe most reigned over us to oure destruccion, we not havyng consideracion to the generalle profit and universalle wele of a comynalte.59 This sense of damage to England’s gender identity is something to which York also made reference in a letter to the citizens of Shrewsbury in February 1452: I suppose it is well known unto you, as well by experience as by common language said and reported throughout all Christendom, 178
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THE UNWARLIKE KING
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what laud, what worship, honour, and manhood was ascribed of all Nations unto the people of this Realm, whilst the Kingdom’s Sovereign Lord stood possessed of his Lordship in the realm of France, and Dutchy [sic] of Normandy; and what derogation, loss of merchandize [sic], lesion of honour, and villainy, is said and reported generally unto the English nation, for loss of the same.60 York was careful not to blame Henry directly, emphasizing his concern for the well-being of both king and realm. York instead attacked Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, who had, as lieutenant-general, overseen the surrender of Rouen and other English-held towns in Normandy in 1449, and who was now effectively Henry’s chief counsellor, much to York’s chagrin.61 But the implicit logic was that if Henry had been possessed of the correct qualities, Somerset would not be in control and the French territories would not have been lost. As it was part of a king’s job to set an example for his subjects to follow, the failure of his commanders and armies became a failure of his own manhood. The sense that Henry’s actions with respect to France were unmanly was further supported by the contemporary perception that he was unduly influenced by his French wife, Margaret of Anjou.62 Thus, however we account for Henry’s unwarlike demeanour the implications for the image of his masculinity were ruinous. In the case of Richard II a case can be made for his frustration at not being able to go to war in the early 1380s which suggests his understanding of the important chance this would give him to show his prowess ‘and thereby to assert manhood and his full estate’ as Fletcher puts it.63 There is no similar evidence of Henry being forced to restrain pugnacious urges against his will. On the other hand, there is evidence to show that Henry was not completely opposed to war. In April 1443 instructions from Henry were relayed to the duke of York, currently serving as lieutenant in Normandy. These announced a newly aggressive policy, under the command of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset, which was to attempt the conquest of lands between Gascony and Normandy, rather than defending existing English holdings.64 In stark contrast to the aversion for bloodshed expressed in 1440, here Henry states that Somerset shall travel ‘into þe grounde occupied by þennemyes and [þere] use moost cruel and mortel werre þat he can and may’. The explanation for this change of tactic is that ‘it is semed ful behoveful and necessarie þat þe maner [and] þe conduit of þe werre be chaunged’.65 However, as with the diplomatic scheme in 1440, this bellicose plan did not meet with success and Henry’s apparent shift from peace to war seems representative of his vacillating approach to policy making.66 It also complicates the attempt properly to understand his attitude to war and its relationship with his kingship. One is given the impression that Henry did not comprehend that he had to be seen to lead other men in order to confirm his authority as king and to reassure his subjects. If circumstances had been different, had it been 179
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HENRY VI
necessary to defend territory within the British Isles from sustained external attack in the 1440s, for example, Henry would almost certainly have been plunged into an active leadership and combat role nonetheless.67 As with government, so with warfare; Henry was accustomed to having other men acting on his behalf in France and thus perhaps it became second nature to delegate the role that he should have taken on personally. Certainly Henry could not be expected to command an army in person until he had reached his mid teens at least. But once he had passed this stage he could have taken matters into his own hands and announced his intention to lead one of the French campaigns, if he had been so inclined. The first time Henry’s subjects saw him dressed as a warrior and leading a fighting force was during Cade’s Rebellion in June 1450.68 Once again, a comparison with Richard II is instructive. Richard bravely rode to meet the rebels in 1381 face to face at Mile End, and his quick-thinking, rather charismatic reaction to the murder of Wat Tyler is held to have defused a potential bloodbath in which his own life could have been at risk.69 Henry, on the other hand, dithered.70 First he took a hard line, refusing to countenance the rebels’ demands and riding at the head of his army towards their camp on Blackheath on 18 June. Gregory’s chronicle describes it thus: ‘ … the kynge rode armyd at alle pecys from Syn John ys be-syde Clerkyn welle thoroughe London; and whythe hym the moste party of temporalle lordys of thys londe of Engelond in there a beste raye. Aftyr that they were every lorde whythe hys retenowe, to the nombyr of x Mlpersonys, redy as they alle shulde have gon to batayle in to any londe of Crystyn-dome.’71 The rebels withdrew and were pursued, but then it became apparent that some among the king’s forces sympathized with the rebels and demanded that certain members of the king’s household be removed, otherwise they would join the rebellion.72 Among others they named James Fiennes, Lord Saye, John Sutton, Lord Dudley and William Aiscough, bishop of Salisbury.73 Henry capitulated, had Saye arrested and began to retreat, first through London to Westminster, then further afield, finally fixing his residence at Kenilworth Castle. Meanwhile the rebels looted London and executed Saye, among others.74 The situation was defused through the agency of the archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the bishop of Winchester, who negotiated a general pardon with the rebels.75 Most of the rebel force then disbanded and went home, although not the leaders who refused the terms of the pardon and went on the run in Kent before being captured. The ringleader, Jack Cade, died of wounds he had sustained in the process and thus was not tried, although his body was still beheaded at Newgate.76 Although this marked the end of the ‘official’ rebellion the south east remained turbulent and periodically unstable for the next few years, partly due to the added ingredient of soldiers continuing to return from France. The grievances and complaints which had actuated the rebellion still remained. Henry’s inability to take control in a situation that demanded firm direction served to provide further 180
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THE UNWARLIKE KING
proof of the inherent shortcomings of his character and kingship; his conduct in the face of the uprising appeared both irresolute and cowardly.77 The first time that Henry experienced battle personally was on 22 May 1455 at the First Battle of St Albans, which is usually seen as the ‘official’ beginning of the Wars of the Roses.78 Henry had raised an army to counter the threat of York, who had raised an army of his own in the north. But Henry did not lead it himself, instead the duke of Buckingham was appointed constable (replacing Somerset, York’s arch enemy) and given the king’s full authority to act on his behalf. The two forces met at St Albans and there was an attempt at negotiation, but the king would not agree to York’s demand that Somerset be handed over to him and a ‘sore fyght’ subsequently broke out in the streets of the town, lasting several hours.79 The end result was the death of Somerset and a Yorkist victory. Henry took no direct part in the fighting but ‘stood vndre his baner’ in the marketplace, surrounded by his bodyguard, some of whom deserted him.80 Another account written for the duke of Burgundy noted that ‘matters became so critical that four of those who were of the king’s bodyguard were killed in his presence by arrows, and even the king was wounded in the shoulder by an arrow, but it only grazed the skin.’81 The injury to the king was almost certainly an accident; no-one wanted him dead, least of all York, and he certainly posed no personal threat to any of those fighting.82 Although York won the battle he presented himself to the king in the abbey church directly afterwards, kneeling before him and ‘protesting that he had not opposed him but had been against the traitors to his crown’.83 Henry pardoned York and his followers, and they returned to London together, apparently reconciled. So, in theory it was not a defeat for Henry himself. But there were ominous political ramifications from the blatant split within the nobility and from the strained relationship between his queen and York in particular. It must have been a shocking experience for Henry personally. He had seen his own forces cut down around him and defeated, had suffered a wound, and must have feared for his well-being, if not his life. This was hardly likely to make Henry any more disposed towards the adoption of a military bearing, especially given the possibility that he had not fully recovered from his illness. Certainly, York was re-established as Protector on 19 November.84 Henry occupied a highly unusual position for a king, being in the midst of a battle by accident rather than design, and yet only observing it. The effects of his illness may have played some part in his failure to get involved in the fighting. But given his total lack of experience he probably did not have much of an idea how to proceed, even if he had been inclined to do so. Although Henry was often in the vicinity of battles in the later 1450s and early 1460s he never took an active part in the fighting. At the Battle of Northampton on 10 July 1460 the king’s army faced the numerically superior forces commanded by Richard Neville, earl of Warwick and Edward, earl of March (the future Edward IV).85 The battle was fought in 181
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HENRY VI
torrential rain while Henry waited in a tent for the outcome and was taken prisoner without a struggle.86 That the king never fought himself is noted in the sources but never explicitly accounted for; at the Second Battle of St Albans on 17 February 1461 we are told that Henry ‘stoode and sawe his peple slayn on bothe sydes’.87 Again, he cuts a passive figure, waiting for the outcome of the battle to decide his fate. In this case his own forces won the field and it was they who found him after the battle (sitting under a tree laughing and singing according to a Milanese report) and reunited him with Margaret and their son.88 This impression of the king’s inanity does suggest that by the late 1450s Henry’s illness had had a more substantial effect on his faculties, which would provide a practical explanation for him not fighting. But people at the time were aware that he had shown little sign of a propensity for combat and military leadership during the 1440s and early 1450s when his health was not in question. It meant that Henry was not seen to exert himself personally in the defence of his crown and this role fell instead on his wife with damaging implications for perceptions of their gender, of which their enemies made propagandist use. However, Henry’s unwarlike demeanour and lack of military accomplishment were clearly not felt to be irreparable at the time. The years 1451–52 were a period of activity which has been seen by some as the point at which Henry finally appeared to heed sensible guidance and showed signs of growing into his kingship. As we shall see there are indications from this period that Henry intended to take a personal role in defending what remained of his territory in France, perhaps even augmenting it, and Parliament responded enthusiastically to the possibility.89 In retrospect such hopes seem rather forlorn, but clearly there was felt at the time to be a genuine possibility that Henry VI would finally march on France. Henry’s failure to become a warrior leader evidently had no single cause but was due to circumstances, in combination with an apparent disinclination to adopt the qualities which this would entail, if not actually an outright aversion to them. As with his failure to emerge as a dominant figure in the political sphere, this is suggestive of his character, and crucial for perceptions of his gender. It has been deemed significant that in 1440, a year which offered favourable circumstances for Henry to properly announce his maturity and personal rule by marching on France, he occupied himself instead with the foundation of Eton College. Moreover, some of the funds which went towards this project were revenues from the duchy of Lancaster which Bedford had intended to be used to provide additional manpower in France.90 We have seen that the foundation charter of Eton, dated 14 October 1440, claimed explicitly to mark the onset of Henry’s personal rule.91 This could be read as an indication that Henry was marking his proper arrival on the political stage by announcing a different style of kingship, which placed greater emphasis on its more peaceful and intellectual aspects rather than on warfare.92 Wolffe argues for the significance of the foundations to an 182
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THE UNWARLIKE KING
understanding of Henry’s character: ‘That he should choose this means to symbolize his assumption of power, rather than some martial exploit, sets the tone of his personal rule.’93 Watts takes a different approach to the significance of the foundation of Eton and King’s. He argues that these should be seen not necessarily as Henry’s personal initiative, but were perhaps a project set in motion by the council, with the possible aim of providing alternative means of presenting Henry as being like his father (in the absence of any other resemblance between the two).94 It was very much a collective effort, involving leading secular and religious members of the king’s household which may indicate the development of a familia which would act on behalf of the king.95 The foundations are generally held to have been Henry’s idea but that does not preclude them having been viewed by others as a useful tactic for creating a homosocial hierarchy with Henry at its apex. For as Watts notes: ‘[t]he satisfying experience of working together under royal headship was exactly what royal military enterprise characteristically achieved in the martial culture of the nobility.’96 Henry’s foundations of both Eton and King’s College Cambridge are usually regarded as evidence of his distinctive interest in education and religion, and he apparently regarded King Alfred (848/9–899) as a model in this. Indeed Griffiths contends that his admiration for Alfred ‘reflects Henry’s view of himself ’.97 At just the time that Henry was putting plans in place for his foundations in March 1442, Henry’s secretary, Thomas Bekyngton, petitioned the pope on behalf of the king to request that canonization proceedings be initiated for Alfred.98 Although Alfred was well established as a model of ideal Christian kingship by this period, this was the first time that an attempt had been made to have him officially recognized as a saint, and a case can be made for Henry’s personal initiative in the matter.99 Alfred was a warrior king whose greatest achievement was to save the kingdom of Wessex from Viking invasion while most of the rest of England had fallen. Every aspect of his kingship and rule was directed towards maintaining the defences of Wessex in both physical and metaphorical terms, thus religion and education were brought into the service of his kingdom’s security as a means of ensuring national morality and divine support.100 However, by the fifteenth century there was less emphasis placed on Alfred as a general, and far more on his erudition and the excellence of his law-making (eventually culminating in him being seen as the founder of the Common Law).101 The epithet applied most frequently to him was ‘the wise’ and this period also saw the birth of a tenacious element of Alfred’s posthumous myth: the belief that he had played a role in the foundation of the University of Oxford.102 It seems that this version of kingship attracted Henry VI. It was one with which he would also have been very familiar from the example of Edward the Confessor, who, as well as canonized saint, was also admired as a sage law-maker in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England.103 An anonymous Latin verse life of Edward, yet another improving 183
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HENRY VI
text revolving around ideal kingship, was dedicated to Henry VI in the 1440s.104 Edward was often paired with another canonized king-saint, Henry’s ancestor Louis IX of France, in propaganda surrounding the dual monarchy. For example, in the marzipan ‘soteltes’ made for the coronation banquet in 1432 Edward and Louis were shown either side of Henry, with a stanza by Lydgate which described them as ‘twoo kynges righte perfit and right good’ and expressed the hope that Henry would ‘hem resemble in knyghthod & vertue’.105 Louis became king at the age of twelve in 1226 following the death of his father Louis VIII while on crusade against the Cathars. During his minority Louis’ mother Queen Blanche ruled as regent and his personal rule began in the mid 1230s, although his mother continued to play a significant role in government after this.106 Crusading became the defining element of Louis’ reign and William Chester Jordan suggests that part of Louis’ motive in taking the crusader vow in 1244 was that, despite being thirty, married and a father, he was still very much under the control of his mother.107 Jean de Joinville’s famous account of Louis’ life tells of Blanche’s efforts to keep the king and his wife Margaret of Provence separate ‘except in the evening when he went to bed with her’, so the royal couple resorted to clandestine conversations in a spiral staircase while servants stood guard in case the queen mother appeared.108 Going on crusade was thus, as Jordan puts it, ‘part of a broader “commitment” to the integrity of [Louis’] own selfhood’ and, one might add, his own manhood.109 Louis’ actions and experiences in Egypt between 1248 and 1254 and the moral, penitential quality of his rule when he returned, underpinned posthumous understandings of him as a saint. Louis died in Tunis while on his second crusade in 1270 and was almost immediately claimed as a saint by his son and successor Philip III, achieving canonization in 1297. Louis was very much a warrior king. However, hagiographic accounts of him do not recount his experiences on crusade in terms of his actual participation in battle and pay far more attention to his exemplary kingship.110 Indeed, Louis’ canonization was explicitly attributed by Boniface VIII to his excellent rule.111 This emphasis is reflected in Capgrave’s presentation of Louis as an example to Henry in the Book of Illustrious Henries.112 Henry’s own psalter depicts the young king being presented to the Virgin and child by St Louis, which may also have done something to encourage Henry to identify with him.113 Suggesting that the tenor of Henry’s kingship may have been directly influenced by these saintly examples is not to argue that he was inherently holy himself, or unduly influenced by his chaplains.114 Henry may also have been attracted by the fact that these saints embodied a different type of kingly manhood, which placed much greater emphasis on piety, wisdom and learning than on martial exploits. If Henry was attempting to follow their example this could have been a more or less self-conscious rejection of the model embodied by his father; a rebellion 184
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THE UNWARLIKE KING
against the endless reiteration of Henry V’s qualities and exploits and the insistence that he reproduce these. Griffiths suggests that it was a mistake to have surrounded Henry with ‘ageing distinguished soldiers too young in life’ and finds it ‘hardly surprising that Henry VI should develop no martial instincts whatever’ as a result.115 But it is difficult to imagine any other option for Henry’s upbringing, which was entirely conventional, after all. In virtually all other cases this had achieved the desired result in producing kings who understood that war was an intrinsic part of their role. Worcester also held Louis IX up as a model to Henry explaining how Louis counselled his son not to go to war against Christian people: And the blissid king of Fraunce seint Lowes exhortid and comaunded in his testament writen of his owne hand, that he made the tyme of his passing of this worlde the year of Crist Ml.cclxx to his sonne Philip that reigned after hym, that he shulde kepe hym welle, to meove no werre ayenst no christen man, but if he had grevously done ayenst him. And if he seke waies of peace, of grace and mercie, thou oughtest pardon hym, and take soche amendis of hym as God may be pleasid.116 However, Worcester continued with the following caveat:
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But as for this blessid kingis counceile, it is notorily and openly knowen thoroughe alle Cristen Royaumes that oure adverse party hathe meoved [and] excited werre and batailes bothe by lond and see ayenst this noble Royaume bethout any justice [or] title, and bethout waies of pease shewed; and as forto defende them assailours uppon youre true title may be bethout note of tiranye, to put yow in youre devoire to conquere youre rightfulle enheritaunce, without that a bettir moyene be had.117 The implication is that imitating king saints was not a mistake per se, unless it led Henry to give undue prominence to certain aspects of good rule over others, which is evidently the impression which Worcester and others had of his conduct. It was admirable for a king to prefer intellectual and religious interests, but only if he had also shown that he was willing and able to be martial and commanding when necessary. Reason and wisdom were fundamental masculine qualities but were partly deemed so for their function as a check on more forceful and aggressive instincts. In Henry’s case an emphasis on non-violent pursuits could all too easily become an indication of deficiency in gendered terms, leading to the conclusion that his incomplete manhood was to blame for English failures in France. Moreover, this meant he appeared utterly unable to embody the requisite qualities of hegemonic masculinity necessary to render his nobility subservient, and content to be 185
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HENRY VI
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so. There was little honour or benefit to be gained from complicity with such a feeble version of manhood. York finally made explicit his claim to the throne in 1460, sweeping into London on 10 October at the head of his troops, preceded by ‘trompeters and claryners’ and his retinue bore ‘baners with the hole armys of Inglonde with owte any dyversyte’, and ‘commaundyd hys swerde to ben borne uppe ryghte be-fore hym’.118 This presented a very clear statement that York considered himself to be king and in terms which emphasized that he could provide the conventional qualities of martial dominance which Henry lacked. But although York had powerful supporters among the magnates, he had miscalculated the extent to which the lords and Commons would be prepared to endorse his claim, despite his own popularity and all the manifest problems with Henry’s rule. Eventually a compromise was reached which resembled the terms of the Treaty of Troyes in 1421 whereby Henry would remain king but after his death would be succeeded by York and his sons.119 Parliament agreed this, as did Henry himself, in a public ceremony at St Paul’s on 31 October. However, Margaret and her allies, as well as a number of leading northern magnates, did not accept Prince Edward’s disinheritance.120 The matter could now only be resolved on the field of battle. After York had presented his claim to Parliament on 16 October the lords gave Henry the opportunity to provide them with some reason to oppose it, on the grounds of his knowledge of chronicles, but he told them to go and look for the evidence themselves.121 Had Henry resisted the duke and presented a compelling figurehead his supporters could have confidently coalesced around him and denied York’s claim. Such a stand on Henry’s part would not have been without precedent. Before the Battle of Ludford Bridge on 12 October 1459, the Yorkists spread rumours that the king had died, in order to encourage their troops to take the field. According to the account made in Parliament in Henry’s presence, the rumours were dispelled after the king himself appeared on the field and addressed his own men: Neverthelesse after exortacion to all the lordes, knyghtes and nobley in youre host, made by youre owne mouth in so witty, so knyghtly, so manly, in so comfortable wise, with so pryncely apporte and assured maner, of which the lordes and the people toke such joye and comfort that all their desire was oonly to hast to fulfill youre corageous knyghtly desire … 122 This account of the courageous, manly Henry presents a stark contrast to the pathetic image of him with which we are familiar from these years. The wider petition from which it comes was an attainder presenting a comprehensive refutation of York’s claim to be acting in Henry’s interests, which helps to explain why it depicts Henry as a strong, active leader.123 But even if Henry did not actually make a particularly witty and assured speech, his 186
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THE UNWARLIKE KING
appearance on the field, dressed in armour and on horseback, gave some impersonation of knighthood and manliness at least. And it certainly did have an impact on events, especially as he was at the head of superior forces. It both boosted the morale of his own troops and led to significant defections from the Yorkist side, in particular Andrew Trollope and the Calais garrison that he commanded.124 Simply having the king on the field of battle, apparently ready to fight, was highly significant. It was one thing to fight Henry’s representatives; this could be justified as fighting those who were misleading him, and as an attempt to ‘rescue’ him.125 But it was another thing to fight against the king himself. This begs the ultimately unresolvable question as to why Henry did not attempt a similar impersonation of military leadership more often. In October 1460 the lords were looking for direction and initiative from the king, and if he had given some appearance of steadfastness, of ‘pryncely apporte and assured maner’ to them, events might have turned out rather differently. It is surely significant that in 1459 Henry was with Margaret and being guided by her, but in 1460 he was alone, and essentially York’s prisoner. Certainly Henry’s supporters believed that he had agreed to York becoming his heir because he was compelled to do so. Gregory’s Chronicle says that Henry ‘for fere of dethe grauntyd hym [t]e crowne, for a man that hathe by lytylle wytte wylle sone be a feryd of dethe’, and it is perhaps significant that Henry reportedly visited Westminster Abbey at this time to choose his burial place.126 But Gregory’s Chronicle continues ‘yet I truste and bee-leve there was no man that wolde doo hym bodely harme’ and it is hard to imagine that York could or would have gone very far beyond intimidation with Henry. The king obviously continued to enjoy support and there was equivocation and wrangling over York’s ‘right’ to be king. But intimidation was apparently all it took to gain Henry’s acquiescence to York’s demands and this left him looking weak and timorous. Whatever his own perceptions and motivations the impression that Henry gave both to allies and enemies was that he simply lacked the strength and thus the manhood to exert himself in this crucial situation. He had neither the mental or physical resolve to fight for his honour, his throne or his son’s right to succeed. This cannot have been entirely surprising to anyone given that he had never shown evidence of the capacity to fight for anything. That Henry was willing to give up Edward’s rights was probably seen by some as confirmation of Yorkist propaganda claiming that Edward was not his son at all. In the next chapter we shall consider Henry’s marriage and perceptions of his attitude to sex for what they reveal about understandings of his masculinity, both during his lifetime, and subsequently.
Notes 1 Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 64–82 (esp. p. 67).
187
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HENRY VI
2 Griffiths, pp. 80–81. This occurred as a response to rivalries at court and was a means of confirming the young king’s nominal authority. 3 Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), pp. 181–210. 4 The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 242. 5 Orme, Childhood to Chivalry, pp. 182–84. 6 Griffiths, p. 53. 7 Ibid., for the quotation, other details from Orme, Childhood to Chivalry, p. 184. 8 Orme, Childhood to Chivalry, p. 184. 9 Deborah Youngs, The Life Cycle in Western Europe c. 1300–c. 1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 106, quotes Herlihy on the dangers of a ‘diminished masculine influence’. 10 John Lydgate’s Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund and the Extra Miracles of St Edmund, (eds) Anthony Bale and A.S.G. Edwards (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009), p. 74, ll. 1415–16, 1422–25. 11 Ibid., pp. 92–108, ll. 2052–88 for the life of Fremund. 12 British Library MS Harley 2278 available online [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_2278, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]; Edmund is on f. 50 and Fremund is on f. 86 v., which is a larger illumination. 13 Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund, pp. 74–75, ll. 1432–77. 14 Ibid., pp. 106–7, ll. 2605–18. Oswy was blinded by the blood spurting from Fremund’s neck, and instantly repented his act, begging for mercy which the decapitated head granted, after which the body carried the head to Fremund’s burial place. 15 Karen A. Winstead, John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 131. 16 English Life, p. 7; TLF, pp. 2–3. 17 Jean-Philippe Genet (ed.), Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), pp. 78–83. 18 Political, Religious and Love Poems, (ed.) F.J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society original series, 15 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1886), pp. 12–14. 19 Lesley A. Coote, ‘A letter from Babylon: Henry VI and the Sultan of Syria’, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 14 (2002), 17–24; 18–19, 22 for her contention that the letter was not satirical (as per Furnivall’s identification of it) but probably came from Henry’s own household. 20 Ibid., p. 22. 21 Watts, p. 157. 22 Griffiths, pp. 217–28; John W. McKenna, ‘Henry VI of England and the dual monarchy: aspects of royal political propaganda, 1422–32’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965), 145–62. 23 John Lydgate, ‘Soteltes at the coronation banquet of Henry VI’, in Mummings and Entertainments, (ed.) Claire Sponsler (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010) available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/scjlscfrm.htm, accessed 2 Feb. 2013], ll. 9–16. 24 For summaries of the brothers’ virtues, John Capgrave’s Book of the Illustrious Henries, (trans.) F.C. Hungeston (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1858), pp. 116–17; William Worcester, The Boke of Noblesse, (ed.) John Gough Nichols (originally published 1860; this edition New York: Burt Franklin, 1972), pp. 44–46. 25 Jenny Stratford, ‘John, duke of Bedford (1389–1435)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14844, accessed 30 Jan. 2013]; see also the adulatory account of Bedford’s princely virtues and personal courage presented by
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26 27
28
29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
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41 42 43 44 45 46 47
48 49 50 51 52
the Commons on 24 November 1433, PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/ report.aspx?compid=116537, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. Wolffe saw Bedford’s early death as having had serious ramifications for the subsequent shape of Henry’s kingship, p. 79. G. L. Harriss, ‘Humphrey , duke of Gloucester (1390–1447)’, ODNB, online edn, May 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14155, accessed 30 Jan. 2013]. Both Harriss and Wolffe (p. 132) suggest that he had been somewhat overshadowed by his older brothers and felt resentful as a result. Book of the Illustrious Henries, p. 117; Susanne Saygin, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390– 1447) and the Italian Humanists (Leiden, Boston, Cologne: Brill, 2002); Alessandra Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004). Saygin, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, pp. 75–80. Griffiths, pp. 223–25; Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, (ed.) Russell Hope Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 78–89 for examples. Wolffe, pp. 17, 131–32, and Harriss, ‘Humphrey, duke of Gloucester’. For the epitaph Historical Poems, pp. 181–83; Frank Millard, ‘An analysis of the “Epitaphium eiusdem Ducis Gloucestrie”’ in Linda Clark (ed.), Authority and Subversion: The Fifteenth Century 3 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 117–36. Helen Nicholson, Medieval Warfare (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 15–21. Isabel Davis, Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 84–85. Griffiths, p. 241 for the evidence for Henry’s height, p. 250 for his enjoyment of hunting. See above, p. 147. Griffiths, pp. 443–81; Wolffe, pp. 146–68. R. A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI (1421–71)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12953, accessed 28 Jan. 2013]; Griffiths, p. 443. Griffiths, pp. 443–54. Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France, vol. 2, part 2, (ed.) J. Stevenson (London: Rolls Series, 1864), p. 451. Ibid., p. 452. Ibid., p. 435. Ibid., pp. 452–53. Ibid., p. 454. Ibid., pp. 454–55. Ibid., p. 455. Griffiths, p. 452 sees the release of Orléans and the declaration as the product of Henry’s ‘deeply felt convictions in the search for peace’, but Watts, p. 188 denies that it should be read as indicative of Henry’s personal commitment to peace, arguing instead that it was designed to look like his opinion to enable the activities of his councillors. See for example Worcester’s identification of Edward III and Henry V as the embodiment of Roman military virtues which had enabled their successes, Boke of Noblesse, p. 49. For Gloucester’s lengthy protest against Orléans’ release, which directs much of its ire against Beaufort, see Letters and Papers, pp. 440–51. Griffiths, p. 459. Wolffe, p. 69. W.M. Ormrod, ‘The domestic response to the Hundred Years War’ in Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994), pp. 83–101; p. 96, on the problem of resolving the best course of action between ‘a ruinous war and a shameful peace’.
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53 Wolffe, p. 134 argued that the conduct of war lay at heart of Henry’s problems rather than domestic feuds which, while not accepted by other more recent commentators, does reflect how many would have viewed events at the time. 54 See above, p. 92, 120–21. 55 E.g. English Chronicle, p. 70. 56 Felicity Riddy argues that Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur (begun in the early 1450s) can be read as the expression of a perceived humiliating failure of Englishness in the face of the loss of overseas empire and subsequent civil war, ‘Contextualising Le Morte Darthur: empire and civil war’ in A Companion to Malory, (eds) Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), pp. 55–74. 57 See above, p. 162. 58 Quoted by Christopher Fletcher, ‘Manhood, kingship and the public in late medieval England’, Edad Media Revista de Historia 13 (2012), 123–42 (p. 134). Fletcher points out that Parker said these words to a certain Richard Spencer (who had reported them) as they were on their way to arrest a felon, which event evidently inspired the remark about Henry. 59 Worcester, Boke of Noblesse, p. 52. 60 Original Letters Illustrative of English History vol. 1, (ed.) Henry Ellis (London: Harding, Triphook and Lepard, 1874), p. 12; this is a copy of the original Middle English letter which has since disappeared, see Griffiths, p. 709, n. 132. The modernized version in EHD, p. 269 omits ‘honour and manhood’. 61 Colin Richmond, ‘Beaufort, Edmund, first duke of Somerset (c.1406–55)’, ODNB, online edn, October 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1855, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. 62 See below, p. 197. 63 Christopher Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics 1377–99 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 123. 64 Wolffe, p. 162. 65 PCC, V, p. 260. 66 Wolffe, pp. 162–68. Somerset died in disgrace after this disastrous campaign, in what Griffiths terms ‘strange circumstances’, p. 661, n. 199. He may have killed himself. 67 See below for the argument that Cade’s rebellion performed this function for Henry, pp. 214–19. 68 Griffiths, pp. 250–51. 69 Chronia Maiora, pp. 129–30, which describes Richard ‘inspired by an ability unexpected in one so young and fired with courage’. 70 For a detailed discussion of the course of events, I.M.W. Harvey, Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Griffiths, pp. 610–65. 71 Gregory’s Chronicle [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45558, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 72 Suffolk was by now dead. He became the scapegoat for the catastrophes of the 1440s and was tried on charges of treason in March 1450, banished for five years but summarily beheaded on the ship taking him into exile, Wolffe, pp. 223–27; Historical Poems, pp. 186–89 for verse accounts of Suffolk’s arrest and death. 73 Griffiths, p. 613. 74 Gregory’s Chronicle [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45558, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 75 Maurer, pp. 69–74 for the aftermath of the rebellion and Margaret’s involvement in the pardons, also discussed below, p. 215. 76 I.M.W. Harvey, ‘Cade, John (d. 1450)’, ODNB, online edn, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4292, accessed 1 Feb. 2013].
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77 Griffiths, p. 611 notes that Henry originally intended to meet the rebels in person, but was advised against it, so he was not completely spineless in fact, but his conduct appeared ignominious. 78 Christine Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 135 on the battle as a watershed moment not just as the first armed encounter, but because ‘[i]t marked the point when the fact, openly apparent since 1450, that whoever controlled the king ruled England became absolutely explicit.’ C.A.J. Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St Albans’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 33 (1960), 1–72, provides a comprehensive discussion of the sources for the battle. For the context see also Griffiths, pp. 741–46; Wolffe, pp. 289–312. 79 English Chronicle, pp. 72–73; for the text of a letter which York sent to the king, and Henry’s reply, see the account of the battle contained in John Vale’s book, Margaret Kekewich (ed.), The Politics of Fifteenth Century England: John Vale’s Book (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), pp. 190–93. 80 English Chronicle, p. 73. 81 EHD, p. 277; English Chronicle, p. 73 for the king being ‘hurte in the necke with an arowe’. 82 Wolffe, p. 294 points out that Henry’s death would not have suited York because it would have meant the succession of Prince Edward as king and the ascendancy of Margaret of Anjou. Instead York wanted to be paramount among the nobility and serve as Henry’s chief councillor. 83 EHD, p. 277. 84 Wolffe, p. 294 argues that the experience may have set off a relapse, although Maurer, p. 121 contends that in the absence of firm evidence that Henry was seriously ill the state of his health was probably more of an excuse for York to take formal control again. 85 Griffiths, pp. 862–63. 86 English Chronicle, pp. 90–91. 87 Ibid., p. 98. 88 For the Milanese report which dates from 9 March 1461, CSPM [https://www.british-history. ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=92248, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. 89 See below, pp. 214–19. 90 Wolffe, p. 77. 91 Quoted above, p. 156; Griffiths, pp. 242–48 for an account of Henry’s foundations. 92 As also argued by Griffiths, p. 242. 93 Wolffe, p. 145. 94 Watts, pp. 167–69. 95 Ibid., p. 171. 96 Ibid. 97 Griffiths, p. 242. 98 Nicholas Rogers, ‘Henry VI and the Proposed Canonisation of King Alfred’ in Jenny Stratford (ed.), The Lancastrian Court: Proceedings of the 2001 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2003), pp. 211–20. 99 Ibid., pp. 215–16 for this contention. Certainly there is no trace of a popular cult to Alfred in this period. 100 Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, ed. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983). 101 Simon Keynes, ‘The cult of King Alfred the Great’, Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999), 225–356 (233–35). 102 Ibid., 235–37. 103 Ibid., 227, 229, 235, 237.
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104 Lives of Edward the Confessor, (ed. and trans.) H.R. Luard (London: Rolls Series, 1858), 361–77. Henry is addressed at the opening and closing of the text (361, ll. 13–16, 377, ll. 529–32). 105 Lydgate, ‘Soteltes at the coronation banquet of Henry VI’, l. 1, l. 8. 106 Jacques le Goff, Saint Louis, (trans.) Gareth Evan Gollrad (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009) for a detailed study of Louis as man, king and saint. 107 William Chester Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 3. 108 Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, (trans.) Caroline Smith (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008), pp. 296–97. Margaret, perhaps not surprisingly given these circumstances, accompanied Louis on crusade. 109 Jordan, Louis IX, pp. 3–4. 110 Joinville describes Louis’ military exploits but his text was not well known until the post-medieval period, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2008), p. 182, n. 5. 111 Ibid., pp. 48–66. This was partly because Boniface was using Louis’ example to criticize Philip IV. 112 Book of the Illustrious Henries, p. 150. 113 The psalter is now London, British Library, Cotton MS Domitian A. xvii and is available online [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_domitian_a_xvii, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. The illumination showing Henry and Louis is on f. 50 r. The manuscript was made for a French prince (the royal youth depicted on f. 50 r. originally wore the arms of France alone) but found its way to England, possibly with Catherine de Valois. The French arms were quartered with those of England, thus essentially transforming him into Henry VI. See Scott McKendrick, John Lowden and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), p. 396. 114 Griffiths, p. 235 for the influence of chaplains. 115 Griffiths, p. 250. 116 Boke of Noblesse, p. 9. 117 Ibid. 118 Gregory’s Chronicle [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45559, accessed 4 Feb. 2013]. For events leading up to this Griffiths, pp. 854–69. 119 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116550 for the statement of York’s claim, the ensuing debate and eventual agreement, accessed 4 Feb. 2013]. 120 Griffiths, pp. 869–70. 121 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116550, accessed 4 Feb. 2013]. 122 PROME 22 November 1459 [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid= 116549, accessed 4 Feb. 2013]. 123 As pointed out in the introduction to the roll, ibid. 124 Wolffe, p. 319; Wolffe notes that the incident is not entirely unbelievable because it testifies to Henry’s ‘capacity for physical endurance’, which he also displayed while on the run in the 1460s. 125 This is what Warwick and March claimed when they took Henry captive after the Battle of Northampton, English Chronicle, p. 91. 126 Maurer, pp. 184–85.
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MA R R I A G E A N D C H AS TITY
Despite the concerns aroused by Henry’s apparent inability to exercise proper, independent control of government, and his lack of inclination for warfare (with all that this implied about his character and gender), he could yet have provided some reassuring evidence of unequivocal manhood through the medium of marriage and fatherhood. Laynesmith observes that Margaret of Anjou’s arrival as queen in 1445 rejuvenated the English court, thus working in complementary parallel with the waning of conciliar government and the re-establishment of a traditional form of monarchical rule focused on Henry’s household.1 This transfer of power was essentially complete by the time Margaret married Henry but it was ideologically significant that Henry’s assumption of personal rule was seen to happen at the same time as his marriage, given its recognized status as a crucial rite of passage to adulthood and adult manhood.2 In theory a married man was one who had left behind the unreliability and recklessness of youth and was now possessed of the necessary rational sobriety to be in a position of authority over others.3 Until relatively recently assessments of Margaret of Anjou largely constituted an uninterrogated reiteration of Yorkist propaganda. Influenced too by Shakespeare’s ‘She-Wolf ’, Margaret’s career has traditionally been interpreted in terms of a simplistic understanding of her unnatural, unfeminine character. She has often taken the lion’s share of blame for the descent into civil war, as witness Wolffe’s caustic characterization of her as ‘the rash despotic queen’ who ‘ruined the Lancastrian cause’.4 In addition the idea that Margaret was the puppet master directing Henry’s actions by the later 1450s becomes the inevitable outcome both of her brazen aggression and of his retiring pliancy. But Maurer’s study of Margaret demonstrates that, far from acting at the dictates of a congenital gender defect, or to satisfy an ambitious lust for power and vengeance, Margaret was reacting to circumstances dictated by the nature of her husband’s character and kingship.5 At the heart of any reappraisal of Margaret lies Henry’s breakdown, and the birth of her son only months later, which both had a profound effect on the subsequent shape and style of her queenship. Prior to 1453 there is nothing 193
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HENRY VI
to suggest that she would have been anything other than a conventional queen consort, had she not been forced to play a more active role to safeguard the status of her husband and son.6 Although the king and queen were unique figures, contemporary understandings of generic correct conduct for a man and woman clearly informed opinion of them at the time, both negative and positive. The nature of a royal marriage was felt to have a direct bearing on the well-being of the kingdom, not simply in terms of ensuring the succession, but because of the ways in which it both reflected and buttressed normative social arrangements between husbands and wives.7 Because Henry could not control (or by implication satisfy) his wife, and allowed her to control him, he ultimately proved himself to be wholly unfit to govern a kingdom, according to his enemies. But in 1445 there was every chance that Henry’s marriage would counteract the more problematic aspects of his character which had emerged in the 1430s and earlier 1440s. Margaret had the potential both to persuade and enable him to become more manly. That she was not able to do so in the end does not mean that this was an impossible undertaking, or that it was her fault. It was commonplace to arrange royal marriages when one or other party (or both) was very young, although the actual wedding could not be confirmed until canonical age of consent had been reached (twelve for girls, fourteen for boys).8 Usually kings and future kings were married in their mid to late teens but the first indications that a queen for Henry was being seriously sought do not appear until the 1440s, when Henry was in his very early twenties. The council had been approached as early as 1430 by a delegation from Aragon and Navarre which hoped to arrange Henry’s marriage to a Spanish princess, but the response came that a wife could not be chosen on Henry’s behalf and the same answer was given when the prospect of a Habsburg match emerged in 1438 and a Portuguese one in the early 1440s.9 Given the desirability of Henry fathering a son sooner rather than later it seems surprising that his marriage was not arranged earlier. This may reflect a belief that Henry was not ready for marriage in his teens, whether physically or emotionally (or both), although there is no direct evidence indicating concern about Henry’s development. The general uncertainty surrounding Henry’s maturity and autonomy may have made his councillors reluctant to let him marry until he had shown clearer evidence of approaching adulthood. Although, if so, this presented something of a conundrum, because holding him back from marriage also held him back from the opportunity to be propelled into manhood. 1442 saw the first serious negotiations for a bride that involved Henry himself. This was partly dictated by the situation in France, specifically the French threat in Gascony which made an alliance with John IV, Count of Armagnac a sensible option, but it may also suggest that the council had been waiting for Henry to take a personal interest in the matter before entertaining possible candidates.10 Thus Henry sent representatives to 194
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MARRIAGE AND CHASTITY
Aquitaine on his behalf and bearing his instructions in letters. The king was given the choice between all three of the count’s daughters, so to help him make up his mind he instructed his representatives to arrange for likenesses of the girls to be made ‘in their kirtles simple, and their faces, like as you see their stature and their beauty and colour of skin and their countenances, with all manner of features’. These paintings were to be brought as quickly as possible to the king so that he could ‘appoint and sign which he likes’ and send word back accordingly.11 Trevisa stated that it was important for a wife to be ‘faire and wel ischape’ as this would improve the appearance of a couple’s children, which was particularly to be desired in a king’s offspring.12 He added that ‘fairnesse of a wif i[s] not oonlich good for children, but is also iordeyned for to voyde fornycacioun’; with the intimation that a king would be less likely to have a roving eye if married to a beautiful wife.13 A post-medieval account of Margaret’s life claims that Henry had a similar portrait painted of her but there is no contemporary evidence of this.14 However, it is likely that Henry was just as interested in Margaret’s appearance as he had been in the count’s daughters’ and there is some further indication of this. On 24 October 1458 a Milanese diplomat, Raffaelo de Negra, wrote a report for Bianca Maria Visconti, Duchess of Milan, which described ‘what an Englishman told me about the magnificence of the Queen of England and how she was brought to England’.15 The Englishman told him of how, when Margaret landed in England, Henry was eager to see her and so he and Suffolk both dressed as squires and visited her on the pretext of delivering a letter from the king. ‘While the queen read the letter the king took stock of her, saying that a woman may be seen very well when she reads a letter, and the queen never found out it was the king because she was so engrossed in reading the letter, and she never looked at the king in his squire’s dress, who remained on his knees all the time.’ Only after Henry had left did Suffolk reveal his true identity to the queen, who was ‘vexed’ that she had not known who the squire really was and had kept him on his knees. The Englishman relating the story was clearly a supporter of Margaret, describing her as ‘a most handsome woman’ as well as ‘wise and charitable’.16 There is no account of this incident from 1445 itself but Retha M. Warnicke argues that it fits within an established tradition whereby kings and princes disguised themselves in order to gain a secret preview of a future bride, in selfconsciously romantic fashion.17 A similar account relates to Margaret’s own grandparents Yolande of Aragon and Louis II, king of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem. Louis disguised himself as a simple knight and joined the crowd that welcomed her to the castle at Montpellier on the way to their wedding, managing to kiss her hand in the process.18 The incident may therefore have some veracity, especially given the evidence of Henry’s earlier interest in the appearance of potential brides.19 Maurer states: ‘any woman who became Henry’s queen would be faced with a burden of expectation that in both its specifics and its urgency went 195
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somewhat beyond the usual.’20 It was a long time since there had been a queen consort or even any conspicuous women at the heart of the court. Catherine de Valois’ service in this capacity was transitory. Although she was involved in her son’s early upbringing and accompanied him at various public appearances in the 1420s, she had no significant political role, even informally, and died on 3 January 1437.21 Placing a woman at the heart of English government in 1445 was effectively to restore a part of kingship that had been missing for decades: queenship. But to many at the time, who had no or little experience of a queen, the introduction of Margaret would have felt novel and perhaps even unsettling, hence E.F. Jacob’s characterization of her arrival as ‘energizing while slightly scarifying, the sticky and perplexed court’.22 Laynesmith argues persuasively that the office of queenship in this period was not simply perceived in terms of motherhood, but encompassed a wider range of symbolic meanings which contributed to the legitimization and proper exercise of her husband’s sovereignty.23 But when Margaret arrived a great many people must have believed that her chief responsibility was simply to get pregnant quickly and produce a prince. There was a pressing need to resolve the succession. The swift production of an heir would have delighted Henry’s subjects not just on political grounds, but also as tangible evidence of his maturity and virility. Another important hope attendant on the marriage was that it would result in peace with France on favourable terms for England. This was expressed in the pageants that welcomed fifteen-year-old Margaret to London in late May 1445, which outlined the anticipated qualities she would embody as queen.24 At the south end of London Bridge, in Southwark, Margaret was greeted by the figures of ‘Plente’ and ‘Pees’.25 Subsequent pageants likened Margaret both to her namesake, St Margaret of Antioch, and to the Virgin Mary, as types of female intercession, in order that ‘Desired pees betwixt Englande and Fraunce’ may be achieved ‘by mene of Margarete’.26 At Leadenhall Margaret was greeted by ‘Dame Grace’ who described herself as ‘Goddes Vicarie Generalle’ and enjoined upon her the four virtues of truth, mercy, justice and peace.27 Laynesmith argues that this was to present Margaret in relation to the king as something akin to an assistant judge, an unusual depiction for a queen, and also notes the ‘almost messianic tone’ reached by the language of the later pageants.28 She suggests that the ‘surprisingly powerful’ model of queenship presented here may reflect concerns about Henry’s passivity and ‘the consequent hope that Margaret would prove a constructive influence, driving him to a more active kingship’.29 This is in striking contrast to the more usual expectation that a queen would serve to draw out the ‘human aspects’ of her husband, such as mercy, domesticity and friendship.30 The rationale behind this was that the queen could temper the essential raw strength of her husband, but Henry apparently did not require this sort of ‘softening’. Instead the hope must
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have been that marriage would render Henry more rugged and virile, whether or not Margaret was actively encouraged to try and make him so. Marriage provided Henry with a much needed opportunity to place himself at the apex of a patriarchal hierarchy, with wife, children and servants subservient to him. Trevisa expressed this as the three types of rule which a king (and man) must exercise within his household to make it perfect: ‘coniugale’ (wedlock), ‘paternal’ (fatherhood) and ‘dominatiuum’ (lordship).31 But the marriage failed to fulfil this brief. Henry did not give the appearance of any greater independence or self-determination than he had before. Moreover, in hindsight the moment at which Henry should very clearly have become a man served rather to emasculate him because it was seen to signal the advent of Margaret’s comprehensive domination of his person and policies. This was a process which was retrospectively traced to within a year of their marriage. Like his father, Henry married a French princess. Henry V had married the daughter of the king of France, dictating terms at Troyes as triumphant conqueror. However, by the time of Henry VI’s marriage (negotiations had begun in early 1444) England’s position and bargaining power were significantly diminished.32 Margaret was the niece of Charles VII, and then only by marriage (Charles was married to her paternal aunt Marie). The match between Henry and Margaret sealed a truce in the fighting, which was to England’s advantage, but it was only for a fixed term of less than two years.33 Plus it did nothing to solve the basic issues of Henry’s claim to the French throne and the status of his French territories. Moreover, Margaret brought only a small dowry of 20,000 francs and was not even her father’s heir. All this affected perceptions of Margaret from the beginning, especially as some thought that a marriage alliance with France was unwise to start with. The scepticism with which many apparently viewed the benefits of the marriage was seen to be justified by events at the end of the year, when Henry VI promised Charles VII that he would surrender Maine to Margaret’s father René.34 Modern commentators see this either as Henry’s own initiative (in keeping with perceptions of him as peace-loving) or as a policy to which all the leading members of government had agreed.35 Despite the fact that Margaret had actually played no significant role in the offer to surrender Maine, she came later to be held responsible for it and, by extension, for the loss of Normandy.36 This perception is observable in the 1450s and became a key plank of the Yorkist case against her; not only had the marriage been responsible for England’s humiliating defeat but also for the subsequent disorder in England. Henry’s willingness to surrender Maine was seen, by then, as early evidence of the domineering influence she was believed to exercise over him by the late 1450s and easily read as such given perceptions of Henry’s biddable nature. Margaret’s role thus retrospectively took on significance far beyond its original impact. But this would very
197
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likely not have been held against her had she delivered the fervently desired heir quickly. It took eight and a half years from the marriage until the birth of Prince Edward on 13 October 1453 and there is no evidence that the queen was pregnant at any point before this. There was no reason at the time of their marriage to think that they would not be able to have children and no direct evidence to explain this to later historians either. It may well be that Henry and Margaret themselves had no idea why they remained childless for so long. They certainly seem to have spent a great deal of time together and this has been seen as evidence for affection between them.37 Tellingly, in January 1453 Margaret made a splendid gift to the shrine of the Holy House at Walsingham of a gold plaque encrusted with precious stones, depicting an angel holding a cross.38 This shrine of the Virgin had a particular association with women and motherhood.39 Given that Edward was born in October of that year it seems unlikely that Margaret knew she was pregnant (indeed, she may not quite have been pregnant at this point). So either she suspected that she might be and was giving thanks, or else this gift was designed to gain the Virgin’s favour to grant a pregnancy. This suggests that Margaret herself believed divine aid was needed to enable her to conceive, for whatever reason. Once her pregnancy was confirmed she visited Walsingham in person, probably having pledged such a visit as part of her supplication.40 Margaret must then have prayed to the Virgin that her baby would be safely delivered, healthy, and a boy! Henry was thrilled when he discovered that Margaret was pregnant, and gave her a special jewel worth £200 to mark the occasion.41 If it had not been for the anomalous circumstances of Henry being the only remaining legitimate grandchild of Henry IV the delay in conception would have been less of an issue.42 At the time of Henry’s marriage his heir presumptive was Gloucester, an ageing man with no legitimate children, divorced from the wife whose disgrace had only served to highlight the fragility of the Lancastrian dynasty. York was already regarded by many as the man with the next best claim to the throne after Gloucester, although he did not aspire to occupy it for several years yet.43 Indeed, York was probably pleased by Henry’s marriage because it would produce a clear heir to unify support among the nobles, others of whom (in particular John Beaufort, John Holland and Humphrey Stafford) had claims that could potentially rival his.44 That the succession remained unresolved for years only heightened these rivalries. In May 1451 Thomas Young (one of York’s attorneys) presented a petition to the Commons, which he probably assumed they would support.45 He proposed that, in the absence of a Prince of Wales, York be acknowledged as Henry’s heir presumptive, which was political dynamite. Henry responded by dissolving Parliament and Young was locked up in the Tower. In addition to the serious political implications, this event was probably perceived as an insult to the reproductive capacities of both king and queen. Generally more emphasis has been placed on the insult to 198
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Margaret, but it was as much an attack on Henry’s manhood, because it was publicly voicing the possibility that he would never father an heir (even if Margaret was held responsible for this).46 The fact that York himself had fathered a number of children (including several sons) must have given further telling emphasis to Henry’s own childlessness. On the other hand it is worth noting that it took York and his wife Cecily Neville ten years to produce their first child, so he knew better than most that a lengthy delay did not preclude eventual issue. There were many biological and environmental factors which could affect fertility, not to mention an element of chance. However, medieval understandings of reproduction generally held the female to be responsible when there were problems with conception or carrying babies to term.47 It was commonplace for medical texts to conflate infertility as a general issue with specifically female reproductive complaints within a single chapter.48 So this made the lack of an heir squarely Margaret’s fault in the eyes of many, who had no more idea than we do what the true cause was. Evidence for this is provided by another case of seditious speech, dating from 1448. A felon from the Isle of Thanet being held in gaol at Canterbury claimed that a neighbour had spoken the following words:
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Oure Quene was none abyl to be Quene of Inglond, but and he were a pere of or a lord of this ream … he would be on of thaym that schuld helpe to putte her a doun, for because that sche bereth no child, and because that we have no pryns in this land.49 Whether or not the accusation was true (the felon may have invented it to get his neighbour into trouble), these words evidently represent wider popular opinion about the queen, because they were taken seriously by the authorities.50 It appears that people were becoming impatient waiting for an heir and blamed Margaret for the delay. The neighbour was a farm labourer and this speech indicates a popular understanding of queenship defined entirely by her ‘brood-mare’ status.51 That Margaret had not produced a prince therefore meant that she was not a queen. But this was not always seen as her fault in fact. There is also evidence that some drew connections of cause and effect between the idea of Henry as immature and his failure to father a child. In an indictment of January 1447 another felon, this time in Westminster gaol, accused a London draper, John Page, of having spoken critically of the king a few months earlier. Page claimed that Henry was ruled by the duke of Suffolk and the Bishop of Salisbury to such an extent ‘that hys rull is nowetz’.52 Moreover, he claimed that when the king wold have hys dysporte with our sovrayn lady the queen … then the said Bisshop of Salisbury and other mo that wer abowte our sayd 199
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sovrayn lord the kyng counselyd hym that he schuld not come nye her the wyche is cause that schee is not consewyd and so the lond is desavid of a prince.53
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The Bishop of Salisbury was William Aiscough, who was the king’s confessor and a member of the royal council. He had performed the marriage between Henry and Margaret on 22 April 1445 and it is not credible that he or Suffolk would actually have wanted to prevent Henry from fathering children.54 In part this reported speech is therefore simply an expression of the great unpopularity of both Suffolk and Aiscough.55 But its connotations also derive from the widespread perception that Henry was pliant and his actions determined by others. This is underlined by the rest of the accusation, in which the draper added some more commonplace criticisms of Henry: that he looked like a child and was feeble-minded, and that this was why he had lost his father’s conquests.56 So the root of the problem, the reason why there was no prince, is identified as Henry’s lack of manliness. This lack is not understood in sexual terms though; indeed, the whole point is that Henry wants to have sex with Margaret, but is advised not to by Suffolk and Aiscough. But perhaps the implication is this: what sort of man would allow himself to be dissuaded from having sex with his wife? One who is not capable of asserting his will over others, thus not a man at all.57 Margaret is therefore implicitly absolved from blame here. Essentially both cases of seditious speech are testament to contemporaries trying to make sense of why the royal couple had not produced an heir, and the different explanations that could be proffered to account for this. There are also indications that some may have believed that Henry was reluctant to have sex for religious reasons. As we have seen, Capgrave’s portrait of Henry in his Book of the Illustrious Henries can be read as a commentary on the disquiet to which Henry’s performance of kingship was giving rise in the later 1440s.58 Unsurprisingly Capgrave expressed the hope that the marriage would be fruitful: And I pray the Heavenly King that He will so protect them with His Own right hand, that their love may never be dissolved, and that such fruit of the womb may be granted unto them as the Psalmist speaks of when he says: – ‘Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thy house, thy children like the olive-branches round about thy table.’59 Significantly, Capgrave stated directly after this prayer: ‘[n]ow I have thought it well in the present place to introduce a few short notes on the dignity of marriage in praise of that Sacrament, especially intended for the perusal of those who praise a single life to such a degree that they seem as it were to condemn matrimonial alliances.’60 Capgrave went on to explain 200
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why marriage is ‘a good thing’, indeed ‘a sacred thing’, emphasizing that a husband and wife are joined together ‘both spiritually and corporeally’: ‘[f]or the mutual consent of the married persons signifies the spiritual union which is betwixt Christ and His Church, and which is effected by love. But the union of the sexes signifies that which is according to the dictates of nature.’61 Two avowed virgin kings (Edmund of East Anglia and Edward the Confessor) had been held up as models to the young king, so Capgrave perhaps feared that Henry had taken their example too literally.62 Capgrave also noted that Henry had great affection for William Waynflete, whom he appointed as provost of Eton in 1442, ‘not so much on account of his wholesome knowledge as of his celibate life’.63 Capgrave’s encomium of marriage reads like an attempt to convince someone who had religious and moral qualms about sex that it is both natural, and a form of licit religious behaviour when practised within the confines of marriage. Moreover, sex is presented as an obligation inherent to the office of kingship because the welfare of Henry’s realm was as dependent upon his ability to father a son, as it was upon the other factors which Capgrave highlights (such as naval strength). The idea that Henry was inclined towards chastity has often been seen as a manifestation of his intensely religious and moralistic character. Thus it forms part of the evidence for what Griffiths terms Henry’s ‘prudish sensitivity’, which he argues is also revealed by an incident at Bath in 1449, when Henry was appalled to see men and women bathing naked together in the curative waters of the spa.64 But this aspect of Henry’s identity does not automatically imply some form of neurosis, or unmanliness.65 We have already seen part of what Da Monte reported of the teenaged Henry in 1437. Further to this he stated: [Henry] avoided the sight and conversation of women, affirming these to be the work of the devil and quoting from the Gospel, ‘He who casts his eyes on a woman so as to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart’. Those who knew him intimately said that he had preserved his virginity of mind and body to this present time, and that he was firmly resolved to have intercourse with no woman unless within the bonds of matrimony.66 This could be viewed as further evidence that Henry was sexually timorous, but this was not how Da Monte himself apparently understood the young king’s demeanour.67 Da Monte presented Henry as an admirable young man with the moral strength to withstand courtly temptations and adopt a demeanour of humility, modesty and abstinence. Henry is situated within the established discourses of both ideal kingship and lay male piety, which share an emphasis on virility derived from self-control.68 Henry’s youth makes his demeanour more impressive, for he was at just the age when his passions of all sorts were deemed to be at their most unruly, and yet he was 201
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able to master them. He displayed an awareness of the potential dangers of sex and chose not to indulge himself until he could do so safely (in both moral and physiological terms).69 Da Monte’s account is therefore not simple proof of Henry’s inherent ‘otherworldliness’ or inevitable unfitness for rule due to his religiosity.70 It was likely intended to provide just the opposite. Another way of interpreting the Henry it presents is as a rather earnest teenager doing his best to adopt something of the correct bearing of a king for the benefit of his courtly audience.71 Henry V’s unimpeachable self-control was gaining wider currency in this period as part of the narrative of his conversion, so perhaps Henry VI even saw this performance of chastity as one way in which he could genuinely imitate his father. Chastity was also a vital aspect of the claims for Henry’s sanctity which Blacman made in his posthumous account of the king. Virginity or chastity was a more significant part of representations of male sanctity than has often been recognized.72 So, as with Da Monte, Blacman’s account is not straightforward evidence for Henry’s actual attitudes or conduct, but it can be used to speculate on these and how they were viewed at the time. Blacman provides an indication that not everyone viewed Henry’s chastity favourably:
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Hence it happened once, that at Christmas time a certain great lord brought before him a dance or show of young ladies with bared bosoms who were to dance in that guise before the king, perhaps to prove him, or to entice his youthful mind. But the king was not blind to it, nor unaware of the devilish wile, and spurned the delusion, and very angrily averted his eyes, turned his back upon them, and went out to his chamber, saying: ‘Fy, fy, for shame, forsothe ye be to blame’.73 I quote M.R. James’ translation here but the original Latin is more explicit, using a term which identifies the ‘young ladies’ as prostitutes and recounting that they stripped off their remaining clothes as they danced before the king.74 The sexual temptation of a holy man is also a hagiographic trope. Blacman uses it as part of the evidence for Henry’s sanctity, showing that Henry passed the test with flying colours in the manner of St Benedict, or St Bernard of Clairvaux. But that does not mean the episode is completely invented, and Da Monte’s account suggests that Henry really would have reacted like this to such a display. So Blacman may also record a perception that the young Henry’s apparent disinclination towards sex was suspect. The very insistence which both hagiographic and didactic texts placed on chastity as fundamental to the ideal masculinity they constructed is indicative of the contested nature of the relationship between manliness and sex. Mixed messages about this emerge from different contexts. Vernacular pastoral and devotional literature emphasized the sinfulness of lechery 202
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while acknowledging that not everyone shared this opinion, castigating the eagerness with which many men advertised their sexual conquests but articulating this point of view at the same time. One such text, Dives and Pauper, complains that such men were inverting the proper order by rendering marital chastity socially embarrassing: And Ȝif ony man be so hardy to seyn þat he is chast & trewe to his wif & it be knowyn þat he be swiche, he is aschamyd to come amongis men þat ben nout lyk hym in manerys, for þei schul iapyn hym & scoryn hym & seyn þat he is no man, for manys schrewydnesse is now so gret þat þer is no man holdyn a man but he be ouyrcomyn with lecherie, and he þat ouyrcomyth lecherye & kepit hym chast he is letyn no man.75 Contemporary sermons give the impression of young men being sinfully proud of their sexual exploits: for many men will pompe and boste of here synne and of here ewill dedis; and also of prevy synne þei be not ashamed to make opon slaundur … Also þer ben oþur men þat may haue helpe to turne hem from here synnes, but þei sey þat þei may not for Ȝounge age; but þei sey when þat þei be old, þan þei will leue here synne.76 Another pastoral text, Handlyng Synne, while reprimanding promiscuous men, also gives the pragmatic instruction (derived from St Paul) that if a man is not chaste, he should at least keep quiet about it: ‘Telle hyt þe prest & to no mo,/ For ouþer telling ys boþe synne & wo.’77 Another sermon identified old men as a particular problem: when age suffreþ hem no lenger to [do] þe dedus of vnclennes, woll þei þan synge and make bost at þer own lewdness in lechery, Ȝe! and tell more þer-of at þe tauerne þan euer he told oþur þenkeþ to tell to is confessour, dayes of is liff. And by þis euell ensampull of old men, Ȝonge men spare not for no drede of God noþur þei leue not for no shame of þe world, to renne to here lechery with a like desire as a bere renneþ to ete hony.78
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Ȝit
The unnamed great lord’s attempt to entice the young Henry with strippers reflects these understandings of youthful manliness as entailing the indulgence of sexual urges, not the suppression of them, whatever mirrors for princes claimed about the effects of sex. If this episode does preserve a reality in which some attempted to persuade Henry to be a more customarily wild youth perhaps it was a response to the sober morality of the performance which Da Monte witnessed. It may testify to the contemporary perception 203
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that a young man should enjoy himself before conforming to mature manly type, in order to ‘get it out of his system’, as Henry V was supposed to have done. The proverb ‘Ȝong seynt, eld deuyl’ had wide currency at this time, to judge by the frequency with which pastoral literature sought to counteract it: ‘It is a sinful prouerbe, to drawyn men to synee from vertue, from God to the fend’ as Pauper observed.79 It is conceivable that some about Henry (particularly Gloucester) would have preferred him to show a bit more of the young devil in his own conduct and to see him move from rebellious to normative manhood as his father had done.80 This would have been reassuring in providing a definitive transition to maturity which had not clearly emerged from other aspects of his performance as either king or man. However, as Henry did not have any youthful misconduct to eschew, his chastity did not appear to be the result of suppressing lust but merely endemic to him and therefore not a manly accomplishment. For some Henry’s lack of vigour was diagnostic of an imbalance of humours which rendered him unavoidably cold, passive and effeminate. Jonathan Hughes has explored in detail the similarities between Henry’s character and conduct and the archetypal phlegmatic man.81 Ormond’s version of the Secreta Secretorum describes the phlegmatic man thus:
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The fleumatyke by kynde he sholde be slowe, sadde, ful stille, and Slowe of answere: febill of body, lyghtly falle in palsey; he shalbe grete and fatte, he shalle haue a febill stomake, febil dygestion, and good delyueraunce. And as touchynge maneres he shal be piteuouse, chaste, and lytill desyre company of women.82 Hughes notes that even the date of his birth rendered Henry ‘vulnerable to the influence of the moon’ and thus ‘Henry was destined to have a feminine, watery, changeable character’, making him the opposite of his father, who embodied the classic choleric man, born under the influence of Mars.83 Henry’s disproportionate humours could be seen not just as the product of an unfortunate birth date, but as an inherited condition. This was understood by some as having been bequeathed to Henry by the sinful depravity of his predecessors, in particular the leprous Henry IV and the pox-ridden John of Gaunt. Thomas Gascoigne, writing in the 1450s, provides the most stridently moralistic interpretation of their ailments as a punishment for vice.84 Gascoigne’s work was a compilation of materials to be used in sermons, which affects its tone, and his opinion of the Lancastrians was tainted by his thwarted ecclesiastic ambitions.85 But Carole Rawcliffe shows that this interpretation of the sinfulness of the usurping Lancastrian dynasty, vested in Henry VI’s problematic character, was seen more widely as part of the explanation for the kingdom’s parlous state in the 1450s.86 Henry’s breakdown in 1453 could thus be interpreted as the result of a crisis in his humours; the catastrophic swamping of any residual masculine elements of 204
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heat and dryness by a flood of feminine liquid cold. Whether this was understood in strictly medical or more moral terms, his resulting torpor became the natural consequence of characteristics that had been observed previously, and given rise for concern. Indeed, on these grounds Rawcliffe questions the notion that Henry would ever have been seen as entirely healthy prior to 1453.87 Similarly Hughes argues that even before his breakdown there is evidence to suggest that both physicians and alchemists at court offered a variety of antidotes for Henry’s imbalanced humours (including diet, exercise and medicine) and tried to persuade the king to adopt these.88 He also contends that the Commons’ 1450 attempt to have John Somerset removed as Henry’s physician reveals a more popular understanding of the connection between the state of the realm and Henry’s medical condition.89 As with the attempts described above to encourage Henry to adopt martial pursuits, this demonstrates that medical understandings of his unmanliness did hold out hope of redress. His surplus of feminine humours could be trumped by the masculine if he was properly advised and followed the correct regime of treatment. Gloucester, whose efforts to render Henry more manly we have already explored, had an interest in alchemy and its role in maintaining good health, so would certainly have been aware of these interpretations of his nephew’s failings and of their potential remedy too.90 In some quarters this must have entailed a suspicion that Henry was actually impotent. This would have connected logically to perceptions of his phlegmatic condition as one of its characteristics (as noted above) was a lack of interest in women. Others may have linked it to the suspicion that he preferred to follow a life of pious chastity and interpreted this as a tactic to disguise physical defect. In a poem attacking those who speak ill of others Lydgate claimed:
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And Ȝif so be that of perfitnesse Thow haste a-vowed to lyue in chastite, Than wille folks of thy person expresse Thow art ympotent tengendre yn thi degree.91 There is no direct evidence of Henry’s childlessness being explicitly attributed to his inability to attain an erection. But Neal notes that: ‘[s]tatus as a true husband did depend, in part, on sexual performance, and not just because of the importance of heirs.’92 He explores the literary and legal evidence for marital sexuality which indicates that sexual virility was part of the ‘measure of manliness’ in later medieval England.93 The conceptual and experiential context which Neal describes is one against which Henry’s childlessness could have signified a failure of his sexual performance. The very emphasis placed on women’s problems in discussions of infertility is not simply a reflection of medical views, but also a construction which derives from perceptions of the inferiority of female bodies.94 The man’s role in 205
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conception was understood as the dominant and more onerous one, and therefore entailed greater capacity for problems and failure, yet problems of male fertility were rarely discussed in medical texts.95 This relates to a wider phenomenon which Ronald Finucane has traced in his study of pilgrimage and miracles, whereby high status men in particular were reluctant to acknowledge that they suffered from debilitating illness in general (let alone ones involving their genitals), because it would compromise their manliness and put them on a level both with lower status men, and women.96 The fact that it was commonplace to displace male reproductive failings onto the woman is in itself indicative of the extent to which manliness was actually seen to be vested in the properly functioning male body. Impotence was grounds for annulling a marriage, but female infertility was not. In a reverse of the emphasis in medical texts (and miracle narratives) in a canon legal context it was all about the failure of male sexual performance.97 This could lead to a court-ordered test of the husband’s potency, generally conducted by women (often prostitutes) but sometimes by men.98 There was no single, simplistic connection between sexual potency and masculinity, but it was certainly one aspect of the public establishment and recognition of adult manhood and its related social standing. Arguably it was particularly important for high status men whose lives were so public, and upon whose potency rested the future security of their domains. Further expression of the gendered ramifications of the failure to conceive, for both husband and wife, is found in another source which achieved wide circulation in later medieval England: the life of St Anne. Anne was established in apocryphal texts as the mother of the Virgin Mary and, as one of the few female saints who has motherhood as her chief attribute, was identified as a special patron of fertility and childbirth.99 Anne and her husband Joachim, a virtuous and well-off couple, had been married for twenty years but remained childless, much to their sorrow. Joachim suffered public humiliation as a result, for when he arrived at the Temple to make an offering on a feast day he was turned away because he was childless. The version of the life of St Anne written in the 1440s by Bokenham underlines the ways in which a man who had not fathered a child could be perceived as not being a real man. Joachim says: I wante the argumentes of a man; & whan men be rekynd I am lefth behynde; For no manner issue may I han, Neytheyr son ne dowghter lyke me in kynde.100 Joachim’s childlessness not only led to him being refused participation in an important ceremony that marked out manhood publicly but also resulted in him losing his social identity entirely as he retreated to the wilderness in shame. He was only persuaded to return when an angel reassured him that 206
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his wife would bear a child. This qualified him to resume his position in the town. Bokenham’s account was dedicated to Katherine Denston and her husband John, who had one child, a daughter named Anne, but wanted to have a son and heir.101 It is worth noting that many of the noble and gentry patrons to whom Bokenham dedicated his female saints’ lives (and other works) were connected to York; the Denstons were among his retainers.102 Bokenham’s life of Mary Magdalene was written at the request of York’s sister Isabel Bourchier, Countess Eu.103 The life of St Anne draws connections between gender, sexuality, honour and status as embodied in the complementary relationship between husband and wife which would have been immediately recognizable to these readers. The same connections informed the rituals surrounding the ceremony of Purification or Churching, which further highlights the extent to which the social presence of masculinity was bolstered by procreation. Women were at the centre of this ritual as it marked the wife’s re-introduction into the community of the Church.104 But despite the female focus of Churching Becky R. Lee has argued for the ways in which it was directed by male interests and functioned as a public assertion of paternity, status and wealth.105 This was particularly true of a Churching held after the birth of an heir: fathers often marked the occasion by holding lavish feasts and distributing presents to certain of the guests, explicitly in order that they would testify in future to the birthday and age of the heir (so that inheritance should happen smoothly).106 The wife (finely dressed) and her fecundity were at the heart of the ceremony, but it was also an important opportunity for her husband to advertise and augment his social standing, by reinforcing ties and hierarchical networks with his male peers. Or at least, with those whom he had chosen to invite; the guest list was significant in itself.107 The production of an heir thus served as proof of his good lordship because he provided for his dependants not just in material terms, but by siring their future lord. The ceremony revolving around wife and heir also advertised the lord’s virility in sexual terms, not least because the end of the ceremony marked his wife’s return both into the Church, and into his bed.108 Royal Churching ceremonies were often spectacular, as witness Gabriel Tetzel’s account of Elizabeth Woodville’s first Churching as queen.109 However, when Henry VI’s long anticipated son Prince Edward was finally born in October 1453, the circumstances of Henry’s mental incapacity meant that there were none of the customary lavish celebrations which would usually mark the arrival of an heir. Thus there was no opportunity for a public celebration of Henry’s potency and lordship. Neal observes that ‘[b]eing known, openly acknowledged, as a married man enhanced a masculine gender identity’.110 But marriage did not perform this function for Henry in the short term and in the longer term it became part of the ‘proof ’ that he did not possess mature manhood at all, 207
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because he could not control his wife. Henry’s gender was not simply measured in relation to perceptions of his sexual activity, his attitudes towards sex, or his fertility. But personal and political circumstances in combination with life-cycle could make navigating the dividing line between not enough sexual virility and too much a difficult balancing act for individual kings. Henry VI’s childlessness was therefore significant not just in terms of the succession, but because it could be connected to the other visible deficiencies of his character and conduct which combined to present a cumulative impression of his unmanliness. Henry may have sired a son (eventually), but he was always rather an equivocal father, partly because he seems to have had very little involvement in Prince Edward’s upbringing. Moreover, within only a few years of Edward’s birth rumours were circulating that Henry was not his father at all. These rumours have usually been considered for what they tell us about perceptions of Margaret, but they have implications for perceptions of Henry too. They may well have been rendered more believable for some by a belief that Henry had always ‘wanted the arguments of a man’ (to adopt Joachim’s phrase). In order to understand the substance and import of these rumours, and their influence on understandings of both Henry and Margaret’s gender identities, it is necessary to consider the political circumstances in which they were made. These comprise Henry’s breakdown in 1453 and the constitutional measures taken to handle his incapacity. But before we consider the impact of Henry’s breakdown it is significant that the years immediately preceding it were the highpoint of Henry’s rule and the one time in his life when he came closest to displaying the manly characteristics expected of him. This problematizes characterization of his earlier life as laying the groundwork for an unavoidably disastrous reign and of his manhood as being always wanting.
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Notes 1 Laynesmith, p. 221 (drawing on Watts, pp. 140–95). 2 Deborah Youngs, The Life Cycle in Western Europe c. 1300–c. 1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 131–43, 153–57; Neal on marriage as a marker of ‘true mature manhood’, p. 148. 3 See above, pp. 7–9. 4 Wolffe, p. 302, see also p. 345. Laynesmith, pp. 10–15; Maurer, pp. 1–4. 5 Maurer, passim. 6 Diana Dunn, ‘Margaret of Anjou, queen consort of Henry VI: a reassessment of her role 1445–53’, in Rowena E. Archer (ed.), Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), pp. 94–107. 7 Laynesmith, p. 77. 8 Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), p. 7. 9 Wolffe, p. 174. 10 Griffiths, pp. 459–73 for England’s foreign policy in the early 1440s.
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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31
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33 34 35
36 37 38
EHD, pp. 256–57. The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 189. Ibid. B.M. Cron, ‘The “Champchevrier portrait”: a cautionary tale’, The Richardian 12/154 (2001), 321–27. For this and what follows CSPM [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?com pid=92245, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. True to his profession de Negra assured the Duchess that Margaret was also ‘somewhat dark and not so beautiful as your serenity’ and also that ‘your serenity has the reputation of being equally wise and more charitable’, ibid. Retha M. Warnicke, ‘Henry VIII’s greeting of Anne of Cleves and early modern court protocol’, Albion 28 (1996), 565–85 (580–81). Ibid., 579. The timing of this story’s relation is significant, see below, p. 237. Maurer, p. 17. Griffiths, pp. 60–63; Joan of Navarre played no political role in Henry’s reign either and died on 18 July 1437. E.F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century 1399–1485 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), p. 480. Laynesmith, p. 210 notes that the lack of a queen mother, who could have provided a ‘politically neutral mentor’, may have played a part in Margaret’s ‘unfortunate later career’. Laynesmith, pp. 72–130. G. Kipling, ‘The London pageants for Margaret of Anjou: a medieval script restored’, Medieval English Theatre 4 (1981), 5–27; Maurer, pp. 19–22; Laynesmith, pp. 82–86. Kipling, ‘London pageants’, p. 19, ll. 1–16. Ibid., p. 21, ll. 75–76. Maurer, pp. 20–21 for more detailed discussion of the theme of peace in the pageants; on p. 22 takes issue with Griffiths describing them as merely ‘a gigantic display of propaganda to stir the citizenry’ (p. 488) and contends that they could have been responding to public opinion as well as trying to shape it. Kipling, ‘London pageants’, p. 20, ll. 33–56. Laynesmith, pp. 84–85. Ibid., pp. 86, 84. Ibid., pp. 34–35. The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 175; On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholmæus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum, ed. M.C. Seymour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 307–20 for the same tripartite division of an adult man’s domestic authority. Griffiths, pp. 482–90 for negotiations surrounding the marriage and its subsequent celebration. Diana E. S. Dunn, ‘Margaret (1430–82)’, ODNB, online edn, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18049, accessed 1 Feb. 2013] for the terms of the marriage treaty. Maurer, pp. 33–38 for discussion of the letters exchanged between Charles, Margaret and Henry relating to this promise and the argument that Margaret positioned herself as a conventional queenly enabler. Wolffe, p. 198 presents it as Henry’s own decision; Griffiths, p. 495 sees it as an expression of the king’s ‘personal responsibility’ but implicitly sees Margaret’s influence as playing a role. But Watts, p. 225 argues that it was a government policy, not Henry’s. Laynesmith, p. 43; Brut, pp. 511–12. Maurer, p. 40; Griffiths, p. 257. Maurer p. 43; Laynesmith, p. 111.
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39 Carole Hill, ‘St Anne and her Walsingham daughter’ in Dominic James and Gary Walles (eds), Walsingham in Literature and Culture from the Middle Ages to Modernity (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 99–112. 40 Maurer, p. 43. 41 Ibid. 42 Henry’s only legitimate first cousin was Rupert (b. 1409), son of his aunt Blanche, and her husband Ludwig (see above p. 79), but Rupert died unmarried and childless in 1426. 43 See above p. 62, n. 55 for York’s claim. 44 Griffiths, p. 675 on the significance of all three being made dukes in 1443–44, of Somerset, Exeter and Buckingham. Beaufort and Stafford were great-grandsons of Edward III via John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock respectively; Holland was the son of Richard II’s maternal half-brother (also John Holland) and Henry IV’s sister Elizabeth. 45 Maurer, p. 89 for this and what follows. It is likely that Young was acting with York’s knowledge and approval. The incident is recorded in two contemporary chronicles, but there is no surviving copy of Young’s bill, or reference to it in the parliamentary records, see the discussion in PROME ‘Introduction 1450’ [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/ report.aspx?compid=116546, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. 46 Maurer, p. 42 emphasizes the insult to Margaret and the pressure on her to conceive; Laynesmith, p. 134 sees it as an insult to both. 47 Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 228–58. 48 Ibid., p. 238. 49 Quoted by Laynesmith, p. 131. 50 Cf. Maurer, p. 42. 51 Laynesmith, p. 131. 52 Quoted by Christopher Fletcher, ‘Manhood, kingship and the public in late medieval England’, Edad Media Revista de Historia 13 (2012), 123–42 (134). 53 Quoted by Laynesmith, p. 133; also discussed by Maurer, p. 42; Wolffe, p. 17; Griffiths, p. 256. 54 Griffiths, p. 256. Unless perhaps they had reason to think that Henry was not ready to consummate the marriage, but there is no other evidence that this was the case. 55 Later in the year Aiscough was among those whom popular report held responsible for the death of Gloucester. The hatred felt by many towards him led eventually to his seizure by a mob in Wiltshire in June 1450 and his violent death at their hands, which is described in rather shocked tones by the English Chronicle, p. 67. 56 Fletcher, ‘Manhood’, p. 135. I have also drawn on the summary given by Wolffe, p. 17. These comments are paralleled in seditious speech discussed earlier, above, pp. 161–62. 57 As also noted by Fletcher, ‘Manhood’, p. 134. 58 See above, pp. 163–64. 59 John Capgrave’s Book of the Illustrious Henries, trans. F.C. Hungeston (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1858), pp. 156–57. 60 Ibid., p. 157. 61 Ibid, p. 158. 62 As also noted by Karen A. Winstead, John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), pp. 144–45, 156–57. 63 Book of the Illustrious Henries, p. 154. 64 Griffiths, pp. 249–50; Similarly Alison Hanham refers to Henry’s ‘wimpish attitudes’, ‘Henry VI and his miracles’, Ricardian 12 (2000), 638–52 (638); see also Lovatt’s comment, note 67 below.
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65 Cf. Maurer, p. 40. Medieval understandings of the relationship between sexuality and manhood were more complex than these characterizations of Henry’s attitudes allow. 66 Quoted by Griffiths, p. 235. 67 Roger Lovatt uses this account (alongside the Bath incident and Blacman’s account) as evidence for Henry’s ‘extreme prudishness’: ‘A collector of apocryphal anecdotes: John Blacman revisited’, in A.J. Pollard (ed.), Property and Politics: Essays in later Medieval English History (Gloucester: A. Sutton, 1984), pp. 172–97 (p. 186). 68 Discussed at greater length in Katherine J. Lewis, ‘“Imitate, too, this king in virtue, who could have done ill, and did it not”: lay sanctity and the rewriting of Henry VI’s manliness’ in P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 126–42. 69 Henry’s interest in the appearance of prospective brides (above, pp. 194–95) is often noted as indicating a ‘normal’/’healthy’ heterosexuality, to set against the evidence for a preoccupation with chastity, e.g. Maurer, p. 40. 70 This approach to Henry’s sanctity was discussed above, pp. 57–58; see also John W. McKenna, ‘Piety and propaganda: the cult of Henry VI’ in B. Rowland (ed.), Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of R.H. Robbins (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 72–88 (esp. pp. 73, 78, 79). 71 Griffiths, p. 235 sees the account as indicating ‘an adolescent quality’ to Henry’s morality, ‘the reflection of stern teaching rather than inner conviction or mature experience’. 72 Katherine J. Lewis, ‘Male saints and devotional masculinity in late medieval England’, Gender & History 24 (2012), 112–33 (119–22). 73 John Blacman, Henry the Sixth: A Reprint of John Blacman’s Memoir, (ed. and trans.) M.R. James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919), p. 30. 74 Ibid., p. 8 for the Latin original of this passage (the ‘young ladies’ were ‘mulierculae’, one of the terms used in classical Latin to signify a prostitute). Lewis, ‘Imitate too this king in virtue’, pp. 137–39 for further discussion. 75 Dives and Pauper, vol. 1, part 2, (ed.) Priscilla Heath Barnum, Early English Text Society original series, 280 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 72. It dates from the early fifteenth century. The character of Pauper, who speaks these words, cites St Augustine as his source. 76 Middle English Sermons edited from British Museum MS. Royal 18 B. xxiii, (ed.) Woodburn O. Ross, Early English Text Society original series, 209 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 159. 77 Handlyng Synne: Robert Mannyng of Brunne, (ed.) Idelle Sullens (Binghampton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983), p. 209, ll. 8320–22. 78 Middle English Sermons, p. 236. 79 Dives and Pauper, vol. 1, part 1, (ed.) Priscilla Heath Barnum, Early English Text Society original series, 275 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 128; J.A. Burrow, ‘“Young saint, old devil”: reflections on a medieval proverb’, The Review of English Studies new series 30 (1979), 384 –96. 80 Above, pp. 84 –91. 81 Jonathan Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002), pp. 47–76; see also his ‘Alchemy and the exploration of late medieval sexuality’, in Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans and Sarah Salih (eds), Medieval Virginities (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), pp. 140–66 (pp. 152–61). 82 Secreta Secretorum, p. 220. 83 Hughes, Arthurian Myths, p. 47, p. 50. 84 Thomas Gascoigne, Loci e Libro Veritatem, (ed.) J.E.T. Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881), p. 137 for John of Gaunt displaying his suppurating genitals to Richard II on his death bed as a warning of the wages of sexual sin; p. 225 for Henry IV struck down by
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85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95
96 97 98 99
100 101 102
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103 104
105
leprosy at exactly the moment Archbishop Scrope was beheaded. This reflects perceptions of the two men’s ailments, not their actuality. Griffiths, p. 577. Carole Rawcliffe, ‘The insanity of Henry VI’, The Historian 50 (1996), 8–12 (9–10); also Hughes, Arthurian Myths, pp. 64–66. Rawcliffe, ‘Insanity of Henry VI’, p. 11. Hughes, Arthurian Myths, p. 54. Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 54. The Minor Poems of John Lydgate: Part 2. Secular Poems, (ed.) Henry Noble MacCracken, Early English Text Society original series, 192 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 840, ll. 36–39. Neal, p. 140. See also Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), which takes sexual honour as its focus, pp. 9–10 and passim. Neal, pp. 123–86 for extended discussion of the male body, masculinity and sexuality, pp. 140–50 for husbandly sexuality specifically. Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, pp. 251–57. Ibid., pp. 229, 240. There is no equivalent body of andrological texts to compare with the volume of gynaecological material: The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, (ed. and trans.) Monica H. Green (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2001). Ronald Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (orig. pub. 1977, this edition New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 147–51. Neal, pp. 141–50. Bronach Kane, ‘Impotence and virginity in the late medieval ecclesiastical court of York’, Borthwick Paper 114 (2008). Gail McMurray Gibson, ‘Saint Anne and the religion of childbed: some East Anglian texts and talismans’, in Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn (eds), Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens, GA and London: University of Georgia Press, 1990), pp. 95–110; Hill, ‘St Anne and her Walsingham daughter’. Legendys of Hooly Wummen by Osbern Bokenham, (ed.) Mary S. Serjeantson, Early English Text Society original series, 206 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 50, ll. 1833–36. Ibid., pp. 57–58, ll. 2092–95 for Bokenham’s closing prayer to St Anne which requests a son for the Denstons (who never had a son in fact). Simon Horobin, ‘Politics, patronage and piety in the work of Osbern Bokenham’, Speculum 82 (2007), 932–49; 934–35 for a useful summary of recent scholarship which has interpreted Bokenham’s writings as designed to promote York’s interests. Legendys of Hooly Wummen, pp. 136–40, ll. 4982–5111 for Bokenham’s account of the conversation during which Isabel commissioned him to write the life. Gail McMurray Gibson, ‘Blessing from sun and moon: churching as women’s theater’ in Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace (eds), Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 139–54 for interpretation of churching as a rare ‘women’s ceremony’, in which they could even take on quasi-clerical status. Laynesmith draws on Gibson’s work for her own analysis of the ceremony, pp. 115–19. Becky R. Lee, ‘Men’s recollections of a women’s rite: medieval English men’s recollections regarding the rite of the purification of women after childbirth’, Gender & History 14 (2002), 224–41; the emphasis on male interests in Lee’s reading does not preclude women’s involvement, though, indeed she notes that they would have recognized the utility of using the ceremony in this way, 233–34.
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106 107 108 109 110
Ibid., 230–31. Ibid., 232. Ibid., 236. Laynesmith, pp. 117–18. Neal, p. 148.
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RECOVERY AND BREAKDOWN
Cade’s rebellion was a great shock for Henry and his government. Dissatisfaction with Henry’s kingship had been increasingly expressed in the 1440s and the events of June and early July 1450 revealed the sheer extent of disappointment and bitterness felt about him and his rule. The rebellion demonstrated that this percolated down well beyond the levels of the aristocracy and gentry to encompass a disparate group of men and women, unified in protest against the unjust, inefficient and self-interested reality of government on a local level.1 The losses in France also played a crucial role, and the causes of internal and external problems were both seen to be the result of Henry’s weak persona.2 Cade and his immediate coterie were careful not to blame Henry personally however. Cade’s manifesto, as recorded in his proclamation, draws heavily on established rhetoric in holding the ‘fals traytours’ advising Henry as responsible for the troubles besetting both Henry’s kingship and the nation more widely.3 The demand for Henry to rid himself of their noxious influence was frequently made alongside a call for him to consult more suitable advisors drawn from the high nobility and especially York.4 The uprising thus presented itself as loyal towards the king and acting in his interests. The demands also expressed the view that Henry could improve his rule immeasurably with proper guidance. These were conventional justifications in such circumstances, also observable in 1381.5 But the widespread sense of Henry as immature and easily led would have given extra weight to the idea that a change of counsellors could actually transform government. Whether or not people believed that Henry was capable of fundamentally altering his own performance of kingship is another matter. The rebellion also revealed popular admiration for York, to whom Cade claimed a relationship by adopting the surname Mortimer (the Mortimers were among York’s ancestors). This was apparently a tactic to gain public support on the back of York’s popularity.6 While there was no suggestion that York should replace Henry, he was widely regarded as heir presumptive and as the man most likely to be able to reshape Henry’s kingship more appropriately, thus improving the quality of government overall.7 One poem 214
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warning the king that he must take action against the traitors surrounding him concludes with explicit reference to the relationship between selfmastery and authority: ‘O king, if king you are, rule yourself or you will be a king without substance/ You have a title without substance unless you rule rightly.’8 This poem reveals the gendered dimensions of Henry’s manifest failure to establish authority over those around him, and to regulate their activities. Whether or not Henry ever heard this specific poem, it articulated an understanding of him which was evidently commonplace and a vital part of what sparked off the revolt. Cade’s rebellion showed Henry just how unpopular he had become, and perhaps he realized that this was because he was deemed wholly inadequate as a ruler. Although Henry did not stand firm during the rebellion itself, its occurrence and aftermath presaged a change in the form and appearance of his rule. One explanation for this is that Henry resolved to adopt more masterful qualities, both as a matter of political expediency and in order to enhance his kingship.9 Or, it may be that the inspiration came from his councillors, especially Somerset and the new Chancellor John Kemp.10 The early 1450s also witnessed a refurbishment of Henry’s manhood. Maurer notes the importance here of Margaret’s involvement in pardoning some of the rebels.11 Margaret’s conventional role as intercessor served to enhance Henry’s kingship in traditional masculine terms. It depicted him as the dominating and decisive force in the process of pardoning the rebels, even though he was not actually present in person. Indeed, Henry’s absence was probably one of the reasons why it was especially important for Margaret to adopt this role; she could convey an image of ideal kingship through her own conduct, even without him. The suppression of Cade’s rebellion did not mark the end of public protest against the government and Henry. It remained an ongoing problem in the early 1450s and one which needed to be extirpated.12 The attempt in late 1451 to have York officially recognized as Henry’s heir would have seemed all the more worrying in this context.13 It is no coincidence that in the wake of the rebellion Henry began to travel more widely around his kingdom for the first time, partly in order to deal with the continuing fall-out of unrest. During the summer of 1451 the cases of those accused of insurrection were going through the courts in the home counties.14 Henry personally presided over a number of these in concert with his judges, thus building on the version of himself which Margaret’s actions had started to create in the immediate aftermath of the revolt. He did the same, more extensively, the following year, travelling into the West Country as far as Exeter, up to Ludlow and then back through the Midlands to London. In the autumn of 1452 Henry set off again to the counties just north of London.15 On 2 July 1453, at the prorogation of Parliament, it was announced by Kemp that the king was about to embark on another judicial tour: 215
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to travel to various parts of the realm to the intention and end that maintenance, extortion, oppression, riots and other misdeeds accustomed in his realm of England for so long a time might be destroyed and the doers or perpetrators of the same be punished and corrected according to their demerits, and so the aforesaid commons, when they returned home, might report the order of the aforesaid lord king …16 The role which Henry took in the suppression and punishment both of unrest and of corrupt bureaucrats in the localities signalled to his subjects that he was answering their concerns, and involving himself personally in the maintenance of justice and order, as a king should. He was uncompromising in his punishment of the rebels, having men hanged, drawn and quartered, ‘for hyr rysyng, and for hyr talkyng a gayne the kyng, havynge more favyr unto the Duke of Yorke thenne unto the kynge’.17 A ‘harvyste of hedys’ was sent back to be displayed on London Bridge.18 In the spring of 1451 Henry had also responded to another concern by assenting to the Commons’ demands for resumption in order to claw back the wildly extravagant flood of grants which he had made.19 There is also evidence that the events of 1450–52 rendered Henry more bellicose, in appearance at least. In early 1452 news arrived that Charles VII was marching to besiege Calais and an English expedition was organized to defend it. Commissioners were appointed to raise funds to pay for it and their instructions explicitly stated that Henry would go to Calais at the head of an army to seek Charles VII and prevent him gaining Calais as a launch pad for the invasion of England.20 At the same time two of Henry’s lords in Calais were ordered to requisition all the ships and have them brought to Sandwich ‘for our crossing into our kingdom of France which, God willing, we are disposed and determined to undertake with the greatest possible diligence and expedition’.21 Later, on 14 March, Henry further expressed his determination to ‘goo over in oure owne persone and also lette the leying of any siege by water to oure saide towne of Calais and the bringing thidre of the saide ordinaunce, but also ordaine men for to lande whenne and where it shalbe thought available to us and ours and moost harmefull to oure said adversaries’.22 Henry also sent a detailed list of requirements for the expedition to Lord Clifford, who was assembling a fleet.23 This certainly gives the impression that Henry intended to have a hands-on role. Griffiths sees this as ‘simply a propagandist announcement’ both to ensure English support and to discourage the French.24 But part of the objective may also have been to respond to the concerns about Henry’s kingship and manhood voiced during Cade’s rebellion by having him make a visible assertion of English strength against the French. There was undoubtedly a combination of factors at work, and it was probably the inconducive circumstances in England as much as anything which prevented Henry from actually leading the campaign in the end.25 216
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RECOVERY AND BREAKDOWN
Moreover, the threat of York had been effectively neutralized. The situation following Cade’s rebellion appeared to be one from which York would make significant political capital. However, this did not transpire and York’s failed attempt to have himself recognized as heir to the throne in 1451 revealed the extent to which he had overestimated the levels of support which he enjoyed. He then publicly stated his opposition to the court, especially Somerset (while carefully emphasizing his loyalty to Henry). York justified this by presenting himself (in three bills of complaint addressed to the king in September 1450) as actuated only by his concern for the realm and its subjects and seeking for reform in government.26 Thus, implicitly, he represented true lordship which was not to be found elsewhere. In February 1452 York marched on London at the head of an armed force, with the intention of deposing Somerset and replacing him (both as chief councillor and potential heir).27 Henry refused York entry to London so York took his army to Dartford, where it became apparent that most of the nobles were not prepared to support him, so he entered into negotiations with Henry. York assumed that Somerset would be imprisoned and charged for the misgovernance which had led to the loss of Normandy, but Somerset remained securely in power. York had been duped and was then humiliated, held under virtual house arrest and compelled to take an oath in St Paul’s pledging never again to rebel against Henry.28 This incident was indicative not just of York’s political isolation, but also of Henry’s ascendancy, now that he was offering a more convincing version of rulership. Had it not been for Henry’s breakdown York might never have recovered a governmental position of any significance.29 As a result of all this in March 1453 Parliament acknowledged an increased confidence in Henry.30 This was also a response to English forces having met with success in Gascony.31 So supportive were they that on 28 March the Commons granted him tonnage and poundage and other subsidies for life, ‘for the defence of this your seid realm, and in especiall for the saufgarde and kepyng of the see’.32 This had been bestowed on Henry V in November 1415 in recognition of his victory at Agincourt.33 In addition Henry VI was granted provision to raise 20,000 archers, to serve for six months ‘for the defence of his realm of England’ and these were almost certainly intended to constitute the lion’s share of an expedition to France. In fact Henry postponed taking up this grant and instead more resources were placed at his disposal by Parliament to bolster the recent achievements in Gascony. But it was stated that the grant would be only postponed ‘onlesse that his excellence wold take uppon hym the labour in his most royal persone with the seid.xiij.m. men archiers, or elles that grete, urgent and evident causes, touchyng the wele of his royal persone or this his realm, required the contrarie’.34 So Parliament gained the impression that Henry might yet take on the qualities of his father, and responded enthusiastically. A comparable response is provided by Worcester’s Boke of Noblesse which was 217
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originally addressed to Henry at around the same time. In it Worcester exhorts the king to renew attacks on France.35 The possibility that Henry was finally going to lead an army to France reflects perceptions of his newly robust and commanding position. However, if Henry was serious about doing so the twin disasters of the Battle of Castillon on July 17 followed by his breakdown soon after prevented him from putting any projected campaign into action.36 The years 1451–53 thus saw a marked recovery in the condition and power of royal government.37 Fundamental to this development is the appearance of Henry as a strong, active, even imposing king who had adopted a more temperate and thoughtful approach to politics, and was attentive to the needs and wishes of his subjects. Henry further shored up his personal position in later 1452 by creating earls of his half brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor, giving them the titles of Richmond and Pembroke, respectively, which had previously been held by Bedford and Gloucester.38 Next, Edmund was married to Margaret Beaufort, a rich prize, as she was sole heir to her father, John, duke of Somerset and also a direct descendant of Edward III. It may be that Henry gave some thought to nominating Edmund as his heir, on the grounds of Margaret’s lineage, but at the very least this marriage served to strengthen Henry’s immediate family.39 At around the same time Margaret of Anjou’s pregnancy would have become apparent, thus providing the icing on the cake of Henry’s ascendant virility.40 The servant who brought the news of Margaret’s pregnancy to Henry was rewarded with an annuity of £40 by the delighted king.41 It may well be that Henry was already aware of her condition, and that this was a performance designed to make the matter publicly known, which would have been especially important given public impatience for an heir.42 Even if Henry had not genuinely become more autonomous in this period, it is still significant that he appeared to be a mature self-possessed ruler. He apparently heeded sensible advice without surrendering his prerogative to others and was prepared to defend English territory abroad too. This was what his subjects had craved since the death of his father. The experience of the rebellion may have functioned in the same fashion for Henry VI as Henry V’s experiences in Wales as a teenager.43 I have suggested that as Henry VI never knew any opposition to his rule in his earlier years this may explain why he did not understand the importance of being the right sort of king. However, Cade’s rebellion was a watershed moment which required that Henry prove he did not just wear the crown, he was qualified to do so. It seemed as though Henry had finally left his problematic youth behind and grown into a man. If Henry had been experimenting with a different version of kingship earlier in his reign (as suggested previously) he seems to have left it behind at this stage, or been persuaded to do so. It is impossible to resist speculating that Henry’s kingship and gender could have changed their complexion to an even greater extent and his reputation been preserved quite 218
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RECOVERY AND BREAKDOWN
differently had it not been for the terrible accident of his breakdown. The fact of Henry’s incapacity for well over a year and the resultant circumstances made civil war and his eventual deposition inevitable. And the fact that Henry was deposed made inevitable the understanding of him as inherently unmanly. Henry was taken ill suddenly while staying in the royal hunting lodge at Clarendon in early August 1453. There is no first-hand record of the onset of his illness, so we are reliant on accounts made a few years later and do not even know the precise date on which it happened. But he clearly suffered some catastrophic mental and physical collapse, possibly in the middle of the night.44 It may be significant that Henry received the terrible news of the loss of Castillon (England’s last foothold in Gascony) shortly before he was taken ill. Some have drawn a direct correlation between the two events and suggested that it may have triggered psychosis in Henry, as he had to face the realization that he had overseen the total disintegration of his glorious predecessors’ famous achievements.45 But whatever the cause Henry was rendered immobile and unresponsive by this illness; he could not feed himself, walk unaided, or communicate his feelings and wishes. He showed no apparent awareness of anything that was going on around him. The birth of his son in October should have been a triumphant moment but instead was rendered tragic by Henry’s failure to acknowledge the prince.46 When Henry did come to his senses he was overjoyed to meet his son and there is no reason to think that he had any doubts about Edward’s paternity.47 Doctors were assigned to try and cure Henry and prescribed a range of treatments, including various medicines and diets, laxatives, ointments, poultices, baths and bleeding.48 As we have seen, Henry’s illness came to be understood by some at the time as a phlegmatic crisis and increasingly attempts to counter this derived from alchemical methods, especially following what may have been a second breakdown in late 1455.49 But to no avail. The question of exactly what happened to Henry and why is not much clearer to modern commentators than it was to his doctors.50 Schizophrenia has been a popular explanation (particularly the catatonic form), given weight by the likelihood that this explains the psychotic episodes experienced by Henry’s own grandfather Charles VI from August 1392 onwards.51 Whatever it was Henry remained in his liminal state for a year and a half and although he did apparently recover in early 1455 this episode seems to have had an irreversible effect on his faculties. His ability to exercise authority was evidently seriously impaired. While he was not necessarily a complete puppet in the hands of others from this point onwards, it is generally agreed that after 1453–54 he no longer possessed the required intellectual or rational strength to rule effectively, or to give more than occasional attention to his duties.52 Serious illness of this sort would have had an unmanning effect on Henry even if he had previously been 219
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HENRY VI
uniformly masterful.53 But the king’s health was seen as a reflection of the health of the entire nation, which made it even more significant and worrying.54 The nature of the surviving evidence for the later 1450s means that accurate assessment of events and personalities as they appeared at the time is particularly tricky.55 Opinion as to Henry’s state post-1453 (including his gender) is partly dependent on what one makes of his condition beforehand. Notwithstanding the evidence that Henry was becoming more manly immediately prior to his breakdown, many saw a seamless correlation between Henry’s condition after 1453 and his previous conduct and persona.56 For some at the time this made sense in humoral terms, as we have seen; Henry’s breakdown was the inevitable product of an inherently phlegmatic character which had finally overwhelmed him, leaving him in a state of premature senility, denuded of vigour and heat.57 Certainly the understanding of Henry as passive and pliant, his actions dictated by others in the later 1450s, was no propagandist invention (although the readings placed on Margaret’s attempted antidote to Henry’s inertness certainly were). It is also of a part with the concerns voiced about his rule in the 1440s, especially his immaturity, his lack of statecraft and the subsidiary position he appeared to occupy in government, being incapable of directing affairs himself. The confusion surrounding the point at which Henry actually achieved manhood in political or personal terms, and the suspicion that he might never have done so, took on enhanced significance in the wake of his breakdown. Even the more sympathetic account of Henry’s fall penned by John Vale after the king’s death in 1471 identified the king’s passivity as key to his fate and depicted him as the victim of his power-hungry councillors.58 Therefore Henry’s illness could convincingly be portrayed as merely enhancing his latent character flaws (however these were accounted for exactly). The struggles between those who sought to direct the polity on his behalf from 1454 onwards could be seen as having their direct precursor in the rivalry between Gloucester and Beaufort earlier in his reign. Henry’s illness had crucial ramifications for the shape of the polity, for in the wake of its initial onset England faced an unprecedented situation in which the reigning king was utterly incapable of governing. Margaret was pregnant, but there was still no heir (or guarantee of one), and Henry had no close male relatives of substance to step into the breach. This opened up politics to competition among those who sought to occupy the apex of government on Henry’s behalf. In the case of Charles VI his first episode of psychosis was short-lived and he recovered after only a few days. Thus he was able to arrange contingency plans for the rule of France should he be struck down again (as he frequently was). Charles appointed a coregency with his wife Isabeau of Bavaria as a key figure.59 But Henry VI was in no fit state to appoint anyone to rule in his stead, or even to assent to any arrangements, which made the lack of an obvious candidate even more problematic. The 220
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RECOVERY AND BREAKDOWN
birth of Prince Edward, while resolving the issue of the succession at least, made finding a solution all the more pressing, because if Henry did not recover, or died, someone would need to take charge of the realm during Edward’s minority. For many York was the obvious choice, on the grounds of his status and royal ancestry. But his right to take on the role did not go uncontested, especially by Somerset, so the process was dragged out for some months over the winter of 1453–54. In January 1454 Margaret showed her hand, issuing a bill of five articles, the first of which announced ‘that she desireth to have the hole reule of this land’, with successive articles requesting the power to appoint key governmental officials (Chancellor, Treasurer, Privy Seal), as well as sheriffs and bishops. She also wished to have sufficient resources granted for the upkeep of the king, the prince and herself.60 From Margaret’s perspective as a French princess this must have seemed the logical solution. Despite the rhetoric of the Salic law which barred women from taking the throne or passing on their claim to sons, there were many examples of French women successfully taking on influential political and constitutional roles.61 Margaret’s own grandmother Yolande of Aragon acted as regent for her son in Anjou, a role also performed by Margaret’s mother Isabelle, who even led her husband’s forces while he was imprisoned.62 It was recognized that a queen’s role as wife and mother entailed active intervention on the behalf of male relatives if their position, or that of the dynasty more widely, was under threat. This was part of a wider phenomenon whereby high-status women would regularly ‘stand in’ for husbands or other male family members if they were absent or temporarily unable to direct their affairs through illness or injury. Christine de Pisan’s 1405 work Le Livre du trésor de la cité des dames (The Book of the Treasure of the City of Ladies) advised her (female) readers that in the absence of her husband a lady will take on the responsibility for managing his estate, which may include defending it against attack, so must ensure that she is in full command of the necessary knowledge and accomplishments to perform this role.63 De Pisan herself had to take on the role of breadwinner for her family (children, mother and niece), following the early death of her husband when she was twenty-five. She described these events in autobiographical passages included in Le livre de la mutacion de la fortune (The Book of the Mutation of Fortune), completed in 1403.64 De Pisan recounted that these tragic events led to her transformation ‘from woman to man’: ‘I am still a man and I have been for a total of more than thirteen full years, but it would please me much more to be a woman … but since Fortune has transformed me so that I shall never again be lodged in a woman’s body, I shall remain a man.’65 De Pisan advised other women acting in the place of husbands that they ‘ought to have the heart of a man’.66 This formulation by de Pisan is testament to a more performative understanding of gender which allowed that, despite the inherent inferiority of women to men, women could rise above their natural 221
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disadvantages in certain circumstances. Expressing this in terms of the adoption of ‘manly’ qualities was commonplace as a means of making sense of women’s ability to take on such roles, and in this context was an indication of approval.67 The relationship between de Pisan’s experiences and her profession is a reminder that the evolution of a more conspicuous role for queens in France was also the result of particular personalities and unusual circumstances.68 It did not reflect a belief that women should be more formally involved in politics as a matter of course. Yet female regents did have a unique advantage: one of the reasons Charles VI gave Isabeau such a prominent role in his own coregency was because, unlike his male relatives, she did not pose a threat to his rule, or to the accession of his son.69 Margaret’s bid for the regency in England has often been seen as revealing of her ambitious determination to rule, and thus as a cause of tension.70 But the preceding discussion underlines that Margaret drew on established conventions, the basic theory of which would not have been unfamiliar to the English polity.71 Moreover, Maurer makes a convincing case for Margaret’s proposal having been, in fact, a response to political tension.72 As well as being rivals with allied followings, both York and Somerset had a claim to the throne. Thus the consequences of having either one in overall authority had the potential to be divisive, whereas Margaret’s claim to authority derived from her status as mother of the heir.73 Indeed, she may well have been moved to act because Henry had not publicly acknowledged her son, which threatened to undermine both Edward’s position and hers.74 Margaret sought to safeguard Henry and Edward’s interests by offering a solution that transcended political rivalries and would unify support behind a nonaligned yet legitimate leadership.75 This position built on the established notion of queen as peaceweaver and mediator and as queen Margaret could represent royal power convincingly, but her bid to do so could also be represented in negative terms. Margaret’s proposal was novel, in an English context, but it was probably not dismissed out of hand, partly because there was no overwhelming clamour in favour of York taking on the role. But, in the end, York was indeed appointed ‘protector and defender of the realm of England during the king’s pleasure’ on 27 March and Henry was represented as having been involved in the process of ordaining York to this position.76 It was announced in Parliament that the king, deciding on account of his infirmity that attending personally to the business of government would be ‘too tiring for his person and hinder his speedy recovery of health’, and ‘having full confidence in the industry and circumspection of his dearest kinsman Richard, duke of York’ wished the duke to oversee the realm on his behalf.77 In truth Henry had no idea what was going on during his mental absence, and those present would have been well aware of this, but he needed to be portrayed as actively involved in order to authorize the appointment. While it is not true to say that Margaret lost out to York simply because she was a woman, arguably she did fail to be appointed as stand-in ruler 222
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because she was not a man. York’s appointment resurrected the position created for Gloucester in the 1420s, down to the terms used to describe it:
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the seid duke shall be chief of the kynges counsaill, and devysed therfor to the seid duke a name different from other counsaillours, nought the name of tutour, lieutenaunt, governour, nor of regent, nor noo name that shall emporte auctorite of governaunce of the lande; but the seid name of protectour and defensour, the whiche emporteth a personell duete of entendaunce to the actuell defence of this land, aswell ayenst thenemyes outward, if case require, as ayenst rebelles inward, if eny happe to be, that God forbede, duryng the kynges pleaser, and so that it be not prejudice to my lord prince … 78 Although York was willing to take it on, he was careful to stress that he was ‘unwurthy’ of the role and took it on out of obedience alone.79 Given his status and the fact that he was not everyone’s choice, it was important for him to emphasize that he was not acting out of ambition, but for the good of the kingdom.80 Parliament’s objective was to establish that York was not in a position of paramount authority, as would be implied by some of the rejected terms. Instead he was chief councillor and his most important responsibility was for the protection and defence of the realm against both internal and external enemies. When York was reappointed protector in November 1455 it may have been because Henry had had another breakdown.81 But, even if he had not, it was almost certainly a response to the perception that Henry was incapable of providing strong, effective government, and that this was having a deleterious effect on the state of the country.82 On 15 November the Commons expressed this in terms of their fears about the ‘mony grete and grevous riottes done in the west contrey, where som men ben robbed and som slayn, and mony grevously hurte and injuried’ and the need for there to be appointed ‘a persone to whom the people of this lande may have recours to sue to for remedy of their injuries’ who would also ‘mowe entende to the proteccion and defence of this lande’.83 They needed a leader who would bring the unrest under control, which was necessary, ‘for but if the said riottes and inconveniences were resisted, it shuld be the cause of the losse of that londe, and if that lond were lost, it myght be cause of the subversion of all this lande’. Their desired candidate was York, on account of his ‘grete noblenesse, sadnesse and wysdome’ and ‘the sad governaunce and polletique rule had in this lande, the tyme that he was last protectour and defensour of the land’. On 18 November Henry appointed York to ‘check the outrages, rebellions, murders and riots which are attempted and committed every day in various parts of the kingdom, and for the defence of the public good of the same realm and of his peace, and also for the preservation of the tranquillity of his subjects’.84 223
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This is significant because while Margaret could, conceivably, have occupied the broader role of regent, the more narrowly defined office of ‘protectour and defensour’, put into place in 1454 and again in 1455, automatically excluded her.85 Only a man could fulfil such an explicitly military position which required him to attend to ‘the actuell defence of this land’. It was, as Maurer states, ‘gender-exclusive in conception’, as was York’s position as chief counsellor, because the council was always made up entirely of men.86 This may be why York’s supporters made the necessity for strong military leadership central to their demands for a protector in 1455, precisely because they knew Margaret could not, in her own person, provide this. Moreover, whereas Isabeau was empowered to act with the assent of her husband (although not without some opposition) Henry was not capable of appointing Margaret to represent him (even if he had wanted to). Henry was not capable of appointing York either, despite the pretence that he had, but that was less of a problem because, unlike Margaret, York could draw authority in his own right both from his gender and his status.87 York, as a nobleman, could be trusted to use his will and initiative to act in the best interests of Henry, and of England. If Henry remained incapacitated for years it was stipulated that Prince Edward would assume the role of protector and defender when he reached ‘the age of discretion’, if he was willing to do so.88 The expression of these arrangements in the same terms as those of 1422 made a great deal of sense in practical terms: ‘accordyng to an acte made in the tendre age of the kyng our soveraine lord, that they in semblable case of necessite, be compelled and coarted so to chose and name a protectour and defendour’.89 But despite the attempt to represent Henry as actively involved, members of political society (and beyond) were well aware that this was as much a fiction as it had been in 1422. The restoration of an identical type of protector served to return Henry to the position of dependent child. He was once again nominally the font of all authority yet unable to exercise it himself. Therefore Henry’s breakdown was a disaster for him, and for his family, because it served to emasculate him not purely in physical and mental terms, but constitutionally as well. Although Henry recovered in early 1455 he was again returned to a position of political minority in November 1455, as described above. Significantly, this time it was stated that the protectorate could only be ended by Henry with the advice of the lords.90 This had not been stipulated in 1454 and may well be evidence of Henry’s declining faculties, indicating that his waning ability to take a decisive, autonomous role in affairs was becoming ever more apparent.91 It is also reminiscent of the 1430s when the councillors told Henry that he was not quite ready to take decisions on his own. The similarity between Henry’s youth and current circumstances must have made it all the easier for many to think of him as never having attained adult manhood at all. This came to be part of the justification for his eventual deposition by Edward IV, who, while only in his late teens, was already more of a man than Henry had ever been. 224
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Notes 1 Alexander L. Kaufman, The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 23 and passim. 2 See for example the poem written in about 1449 and entitled by Wright ‘On the popular discontent at the disasters in France’, Thomas Wright (ed.), Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, vol. 2 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1859), pp. 221–23. 3 Gregory’s Chronicle [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=58664, accessed 31 January 2013]. 4 Ibid. 5 In 1381 rebels expressed their loyalty to the king and attacked those around him (both directly and indirectly) whom they held responsible for bad government and unfair taxation. See R.B. Dobson (ed.), The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (second edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1983) for primary source accounts, especially those recounting actions in London, pp. 155–211. 6 I.M.W. Harvey, ‘Cade, John (d. 1450)’, ODNB, online edn, [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/4292, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. 7 Griffiths, p. 686. 8 Wright, Political Poems and Songs, pp. 229–31. The poem is in Middle English, except these last two lines in Latin, Maurer’s translation and discussed by her, p. 69. 9 Griffiths (pp. 698–700) and Wolffe (pp. 248, 262–66) both view the changed style of Henry’s kingship as owing something to his own initiative. 10 Watts highlights the centrality of Somerset to the re-establishment of effective government in this period, pp. 282–98 and describes his ‘use of the royal person’ to achieve this (p. 293), which leaves Henry as essentially passive. 11 Maurer, pp. 71–74 for further discussion of Margaret’s involvement. 12 Griffiths, pp. 641–49. 13 See above, p. 198. 14 Wolffe, p. 248. 15 See Wolffe, pp. 369–70; Griffiths, pp. 697–98. 16 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116547, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. 17 Gregory’s Chronicle [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45559, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. 18 Ibid. 19 Griffiths, pp. 387–90; Wolffe, p. 246 for this as ‘a real concession to public opinion’. 20 This incident is discussed by Wolffe, pp. 256–57; Griffiths, p. 528. 21 Quoted by Wolffe, p. 257. 22 PPC, VI p. 120. 23 Ibid., pp. 119–25. 24 Griffiths, p. 528. 25 There were further uprisings in Kent and the Welsh marches in April and May 1452, Wolffe, pp. 258–59. 26 For the texts of these and Henry’s answers Margaret Kekewich (ed.), The Politics of Fifteenth Century England: John Vale’s Book (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), pp. 185–90; Watts, pp. 271–73. 27 These were the circumstances in which he issued the letter from Shrewsbury quoted above, pp. 178–79. For a more detailed account of events Griffiths, pp. 693–97. 28 For the text of the oath see Kekewich, Politics of Fifteenth Century England, pp. 193–94. 29 Arguably had York handled the early 1450s more astutely and without alienating most of the nobility, events would have gone very differently, Griffiths, pp. 699–700; John Watts, ‘Richard of York, third duke of York (1411–60)’, ODNB, online edn, May 2011
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30
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[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23503, accessed 1 Feb. 2013] describes York as reckless and a ‘colourless bungler’. This enthusiastic Parliament was dominated by Henry’s supporters and included very few of York’s, which helps to explain its attitude to Henry (Griffiths, p. 699; Wolffe, pp. 263–66), but its support for Henry may also indicate an acknowledgement that he was finally starting to rule properly. Wolffe, pp. 262–63. PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116547, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116521, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116547, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. William Worcester, The Boke of Noblesse, ed. John Gough Nichols (originally published 1860; this edition New York: Burt Franklin, 1972), p. 5; this work was later redirected at Ed. IV in the early 1470s during his own preparations for war with France (see note following). This battle has retrospectively been identified as the end of the Hundred Years War and while these were not the terms in which it was understood at the time, it did mark the last moment at which England owned any territory in France apart from Calais. Also, it was to be over twenty years before English armies marched into France again (under Edward IV in 1475), Charles Ross, Edward IV (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 205–38. Griffiths, p. 699 on Parliament at Reading May 1453 as ‘the zenith of the king’s political recovery after the crises of 1450–52’. Griffiths, p. 358. As suggested by Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 38. Wolffe, p. 267 for Henry as having suddenly become ‘altogether a more virile person’ by the early summer of 1453. Griffiths, p. 719. Laynesmith, p. 135. See above, pp. 67–68. Wolffe, p. 271; Griffiths, pp. 715–18. Wolffe, p. 270. James Gardiner (ed.), The Paston Letters vol. 2 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1904), pp. 295–96. Griffiths notes the suggestion that Henry’s breakdown was caused by the discovery that Margaret was pregnant by someone else but dismisses it, p. 719. PPC, VI, pp. 166–67 for the full list of treatments authorized by the council. Jonathan Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002), pp. 48–64. Carole Rawcliffe, ‘The insanity of Henry VI’, The Historian 50 (1996), 8–12; Wendy J. Turner, ‘A cure for the king means the health of the country: the mental and physical health of Henry VI’ in Wendy J. Turner (ed.), Madness in Medieval Law and Custom (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 177–96. Tracy Adams, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), p. 13 for the 1392 incident, and pp. 13–37 for the political ramifications. Griffiths, pp. 717–18, 775–76; Wolffe, pp. 301–3; Watts, p. 323, n. 270 questions whether it would have made much difference even if Henry had recovered his health fully after 1453.
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53 See for example David Green’s discussion of the Black Prince’s illness and the range of possible contemporary interpretations of its nature and significance, ‘Masculinity and medicine: Thomas Walsingham and the death of the Black Prince’, Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 34–51. 54 Hughes, Arthurian Myths, p. 48 states that Henry ‘became an incarnation of the maimed Fisher King of the Grail legends’. 55 See e.g. Watts, p. 331 on the problem of understanding the later 1450s. 56 This is true both of contemporary commentators and those writing more recently. 57 See above, pp. 204–5. 58 Kekewich, Politics of Fifteenth Century England, pp. 178–80. 59 Adams, Isabeau, pp. 92–102. 60 Paston Letters 2, p. 297. There is no other surviving evidence of Margaret’s bid to be regent and John Stodeley (the author of this letter) did not know the contents of the fifth article; Maurer, pp. 95–111. 61 Craig Taylor, ‘The Salic Law, French queenship, and the defense of women in the late Middle Ages’, French Historical Studies 29 (2006), 543–64. The question of whether or not a woman could transmit a claim to the English throne was current in mid fifteenthcentury England because York’s claim passed through Philippa, only child of Edward III’s second son Lionel. On behalf of the Lancastrians John Fortescue argued strongly that the claim could not pass through a woman, but following Edward IV’s resumption of the throne in 1471 he was forced to rescind this opinion publicly and state that it could. See M.L. Kekewich, ‘“Thou shalt be under the power of the man”: Sir John Fortescue and the Yorkist Succession’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 42 (1998), 188–230. 62 Maurer, p. 23; André Poulet, ‘Capetian women and the regency: the genesis of a vocation’ in John Carmi Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1994), pp. 93–116. 63 Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies or The Book of the Three Virtues, (trans.) Sarah Lawson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), pp. 128–33. For discussion of women’s active involvement in warfare see James E. Gilbert, ‘A Medieval “Rosie the Riveter”? Women in France and southern England during the Hundred Years War’ in L.J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (eds), The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 333–64. 64 For translated extracts The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, (trans.) Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Keven Brownlee, (ed.) Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (New York and London: W.M. Norton & Co., 1997), pp. 88–108; pp. 104–7 for the death of her husband. Copies of this work were presented to Charles VI, as well as the dukes of Burgundy and Berry. 65 Ibid., pp. 104, 107. 66 Treasure of the City of Ladies, p. 129. 67 The same notion informed understandings of virginity or chastity as the means by which women could take on spiritual manhood; Sandra Lowerre, ‘To rise beyond their sex: female cross-dressing saints in Caxton’s Vitas Patrum’ in Thomas Honegger (ed.), Riddles, Knights and Cross-dressing Saints (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 55–94. 68 Laynesmith, pp. 157–59. 69 Although in the event Isabeau’s conspicuous role at the Treaty of Troyes played an important role in the ‘black reputation’ which has been constructed around her, because she abandoned her son’s claim in favour of Henry V; Adams, Isabeau, pp. 196–214. 70 E.g. Watts, p. 326, n. 278 judges that Margaret’s proposals indicate that she was ambitious to wield power. 71 An English queen had never formally been appointed as stand-in for a king, but it was not uncommon for them to act in place of an absent king, see Lisa Benz St John, Three
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89 90 91
Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 133–63 for fourteenth-century examples. Maurer, p. 196; Laynesmith, p. 161 sees Margaret as trying to avoid civil war. Maurer, pp. 100–1; Laynesmith, ibid. Griffiths, p. 722. Maurer, pp. 100–1; Laynesmith, p. 161. PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116547, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. Griffiths, pp. 725–38 for the circumstances of York’s election and his actions as protector. Ibid. Ibid.; Griffiths, pp. 725–26 notes York’s position was effectively a combination of Gloucester, Bedford and Beaufort. PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116547, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. Griffiths, p. 725 for York’s awareness that some may have believed he was trying to challenge the succession and wanting to dispel this. It is not entirely clear whether Henry was taken ill again or not, see above, p. 181. Griffiths, pp. 746–57 for York’s second protectorate. For this and what follows PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx? compid=116548, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. Those clamouring for York’s reinstatement were his own supporters but reflected wider concerns about the state of the kingdom and the perception that York had the right qualities to rule effectively. As in 1454 it was noted that Edward would take over when he came of age, should the protectorate last that long. Wolffe, p. 302 for the suggestion that Henry may have seen wisdom of York fulfilling this role given the state of his own health. Maurer, pp. 108–10. Ibid., p. 110. Ibid., p. 109, see also Laynesmith, p. 179 for queens being part of the king’s public body and this compromising their ability to represent him. PROME, 27 March 1454 [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116547, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. Ibid. As in 1454 it could also be ended by the majority of Edward. R. A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI (1421–71)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12953, accessed 28 Jan. 2013].
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MARGARET O F A NJOU, PRINCE E D W A R D A N D A S UBSTITU TE KINGSHIP
Henry officially resumed personal government on 25 February 1454, discharging York from his duty with the advice of the lords, and ordering him to make no further intervention in government of his own initiative, although he was still chief councillor and lieutenant.1 But this was not the result of a regeneration of Henry’s abilities, nor did it mark a point at which he became more active in government. Henry’s passivity and inadequacies as a king in these years are a matter of fact, not simply of propaganda.2 A vital consequence of all this for understanding Henry’s masculinity is that 1456 marks the point at which Margaret came to the political fore, impelled into an active role both by her husband’s inertness, and by the threat of York.3 On 9 February 1456 a letter written by John Bocking to Sir John Fastolf stated: ‘The Quene is a grete and strong labourid woman, for she spareth noo peyne to sue hire things to an intent and conclusion to hir power.’4 Thomas Gascoigne accused Margaret and her noble supporters of having actively undermined York’s position and claimed that this was why the duke had given up the position of protector.5 Margaret was partly ‘labouring’ to ensure that further resumption, being demanded by Parliament, did not denude her of vital income and estates.6 In the aftermath of York’s resignation as protector Margaret emerged as the leader of a group opposed to him, focused on the royal family and household. Thus Margaret became the last of a succession of individuals who attempted to direct Henry’s kingship along appropriate lines. Of them all she was the one who had the most complete control over his person and actions, which was partly a result of his condition, but also of their relationship.7 The royal court spent most of the later 1450s away from London, especially in the Midlands.8 Margaret took Prince Edward on a tour of his patrimony, including Chester, in the summer of 1456, and in August Henry joined his family at Coventry. The Midlands formed a significant part of Margaret’s dower estates and the political implications of these moves are clear: the creation of an alternative power base from which to rule England.9 The change in certain governmental personnel towards the end of 1456 was also significant, 229
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HENRY VI
especially the elevation of Margaret’s own chancellor Lawrence Booth, to Keeper of the Privy Seal, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury’s appointment to the treasury and the creation of William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester and Henry’s confessor, as chancellor.10 These appointments were brought about by Margaret in order to ensure that the chief offices were occupied by men whom she could trust, but they were carefully presented as being Henry’s own initiative.11 Margaret was not able to take a direct role in wielding power, so she made use of informal channels of influence and patronage to gain access to the mechanisms and instruments of government (such as the privy seal).12 This approach was also part of an attempt to restore some appearance of action and authority to Henry’s kingship, not only to enable Margaret’s greater involvement in politics, but for its own sake too. Margaret also employed her position as Prince Edward’s mother to good effect. A formal council was appointed in January 1457 to manage the young prince’s affairs and ensure his upbringing in a manner fitting for the heir to the throne. Unsurprisingly all of the men appointed to serve on it had long-term connections with both Henry and Margaret.13 In theory Prince Edward was the source of all decisions taken by the council, but in practice it was acting on behalf of the three-year-old. The patent establishing it noted that the councillors needed to gain ‘the approval and agreement of our best-beloved consort the queen’ which is suggestive of the position she had come to occupy as unofficial chief councillor.14 Margaret also made use of her son’s patrimony and its resources to shore up support for Henry by consolidating a rich territorial unit encompassing both her dower estates and Edward’s hereditary lands.15 This suggests Margaret’s awareness that her husband’s polity had deteriorated beyond the point of no return and that the best solution was to create a new one, with her son at the centre.16 Contemporary sources reveal the extent to which Margaret’s dominance over Henry and her active involvement in politics became publicly apparent in this period, despite the attempt to portray Henry as initiator of the variousmeasures taken to manage government. In common with other queens Margaret drew on her status as both wife and mother to legitimize her active political role. It was vital to establish that she was not trying to rule in her own right but on behalf of her husband and, increasingly, her son. Margaret’s right to take action in the interests of Prince Edward was accepted by those who acknowledged that it was part of her duty as queen to safeguard the succession, even if that meant adopting a more political role.17 This acceptance is not directly recounted in the narrative sources, but that is unsurprising given their retrospective, Yorkist bent; they do not simply describe Margaret’s political activities in the late 1450s, but also pass moral judgement on them. Indeed, the very fact that Margaret had to employ what Maurer describes as ‘“veiling” language’ and an ‘enabling mask’ to represent her measures indicates an awareness that her escalating political visibility rendered her and Henry vulnerable to criticism.18 230
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In fact, attitudes and political allegiances in this period were not simply the product of conviction as to whether or not it was right that a queen should intervene in politics. The lines between ‘Yorkist’ and ‘Lancastrian’ were not fixed and immobile, and men would change sides for reasons of self-interest and personal advancement, not primarily because they had changed their opinion about the claims and conduct of Margaret (and Henry) or York.19 It was inevitable that established gender ideology would be used to demonize Margaret’s actions and her example was circulated by Yorkist sympathizers to ‘prove’ that female rule could only ever result in the ruin of a nation. Criticism of Margaret’s gender identity was inherently a criticism of Henry’s too.20 Evidence for this is provided by another case of seditious speech against a certain Robert Burnet dating from November 1457, which derives its substance from a perception of the inverted nature of Henry and Margaret’s relationship.21 Burnet claimed that Margaret was raising troops to fight overseas, while Henry spent most of his time asleep. Burnet, in common with similar cases from the 1440s, also blamed Henry for the loss of France and wished that the king had been killed at the Battle of St Albans in 1455. This piece of gossip articulates the perception that the pair had swapped genders, with Margaret usurping the active role of a warrior leader and Henry passive and uninvolved. The implication is that this ‘division of labour’ reveals their true natures and that whereas Henry is not entirely in control of his actions (being asleep too often) Margaret’s conduct is wilful and implicitly more at fault. A similar attitude is observable in the Brut chronicle account (written after 1461) which stated: ‘For it is here to be noted þat euery lord in Englond at þis tyme durst nat disobey þe Quene, for she rewled pesibly al þat was done About þe Kyng, which was A gode, simple, & Innocent man … ’22 This paints Henry as innocent victim to his aggressive wife’s ambitions. Pope Pius II (who died in 1464) wrote of Henry VI as ‘a man more timorous than a woman, utterly devoid of wit or spirit, who had left everything in his wife’s hands’.23 The ‘classic’ account of Margaret’s activities in this period is provided by an English chronicle describing the events of 1459: In this same tyme, þe reame of Englonde was oute of all good gouernaunce, as it had be meny days before, for the kyng was simple and lad by couetous counseyll, and owed more then he was worthe … The queen with suche as were of her affynyte rewled the reame as her liked, gaderyng ryches innumerable.24 This further highlights the contrast between Henry’s hopeless passivity and Margaret’s rapacious, immoral activity. It also demonstrates a perception that Margaret was essentially governing England on Henry’s behalf, and the author, writing soon after Edward IV’s accession, sought to make propagandist capital out of this.25 He was at pains to demonstrate that she and her 231
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affinity had ruled in such a dreadful, self-interested and essentially tyrannical fashion, that she had undermined the basis of Henry’s kingship by impoverishing the crown and alienating his subjects.26 The depiction of Margaret as a tyrant would have made sense in ideological terms because of the association between tyranny and effeminacy; Margaret’s effeminacy here derived not from her status as a woman, but from the quality of her rule.27 When Henry was finally deposed, following Edward IV’s victory at the bloody Battle of Towton on 29 March 1461, the attainders issued in Parliament against Henry and Margaret on 4 November present Margaret as the archetypal tyrant, in charge of brutal, unruly troops: commyng from the north parties of youre seid reame, destroiyng and spoilyng the same in their commyng, neyther sparyng Godds chirch, the violacion therof, ne his ministres of the same; ravysshyng and defoulyng religiouse wymmen, maydens, wydowes and mennes wyfes; shedyng in maner of tyrannye innocent blode; entendyng to the fynall and extreme destruction and subversion of youre seid reame, apperyng experiently by their cruell violence … 28 Gregory’s chronicle characterized Lancastrian troops at the Battle of Blore Heath on 23 September 1459 as ‘the Quenys galentys’ and described the subsequent depraved behaviour of Henry’s troops at Ludlow thus:
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The mysrewle of the kyngys galentys at Ludlowe, whenn they hadde drokyn i-nowe of wyne that was in tavernys and in othyr placys, they fulle ungoodely smote owte the heddys of the pypys and hoggys hedys of wyne, that men wente wete-schode in wyne, and thenn they robbyd the towne, and bare a-waye beddynge, clothe, and othyr stuffe, and defoulyd many wymmen.29 Given that the ‘gallant’ was a well-established foppish type in contemporary literature, who aped strength and chivalry, but possessed none, this served to emphasize the inherent unmanliness of the Lancastrians and the immorality of their cause.30 The image of Margaret’s rule as perverted and motivated primarily by lust was given added significance by the English Chronicle’s further claim that ‘The queen was defamed and desclaundered that he that was called prince was nat hire sone but a bastard goten in avoutry.’31 This sexual slander against Margaret derives its force from longstanding perceptions of the intrinsic link between civil war, succession crises and an adulterous queen.32 Trevisa stated that all men should ideally be married to temperate wives but went on to observe: ‘it is most semlich þat kynge and princes haue suche wifes, for of intemporatnesse of here wyues may come more harme þan of intemporatnesse of oþere menne wyues.’33 Depicting Margaret as adulteress 232
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revealed the extent to which she flouted ideal feminine virtues of demure passivity and subordination to male authority, as well as basic sexual purity.34 Rumours about Prince Edward’s legitimacy started to emerge in 1456, at exactly the time when Margaret began her more visible direction of government, and apparently became more widespread after the Yorkist victory at Northampton in July 1460 when she had the upper hand.35 Part of the object was to deprive Prince Edward of his claim to the throne, leaving York as the natural heir. But the Yorkists also claimed that Margaret’s adultery was ongoing. According to Pius II in 1460 Warwick told Francesco Coppini (papal legate to England): Our king is a dolt and a fool who is ruled instead of ruling. The royal power is in the hands of his wife and those who defile the King’s chamber. Because I could not endure this state of things and desired another form of government I was banished from the King’s presence.36 On 17 March 1461 the Milanese ambassador in France Prospero di Camulio reported that:
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They say here that the Queen of England, after the king had abdicated in favour of his son, gave the king poison. At least he has known how to die, if he did not know what to do else. It is said that the queen will unite with the Duke of Somerset. However these are rumours in which I do not repose much confidence.37 Camulio may not have placed much faith in the rumours, but they were clearly circulating widely. Thus as well as disqualifying Prince Edward the rumours aimed to destabilize Margaret’s rule and diminish the threat she posed to York by stripping her of support. There was a conventional feminine basis to Margaret’s political position as wife and mother, but in standing in for the king Margaret perforce adopted manly qualities of leadership and management. This was conventional for a female royal in such circumstances, so it was vital for the Yorkists to demonstrate that Margaret was incapable of being manly and ruling properly because, like any tyrant (or indeed any non-man), she could not master her lust. But although Margaret was the primary butt of this gendered vilification the real target was the king himself. It took years for York and his supporters to shift from claiming that Henry needed to be removed from the evil influence of his wife and others to the contention that Henry should actually be removed from the throne. It was safer and easier to establish the queen as scapegoat for her husband’s failings, bearing the brunt of diatribes that ostensibly focused on her shocking or disgraceful behaviour but which actually highlighted her husband’s flaws in gendered terms. Margaret’s 233
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HENRY VI
increasingly active role was direct evidence that Henry was incapable of controlling either her body or her actions.38 One of the benchmarks of adult masculinity was the ability to exercise authority over one’s wife and household.39 As the inferior half of humankind women needed to be directed by men, but would inevitably seek to countermand male authority by employing characteristically feminine weapons. A younger woman would draw on her sinful allurements to persuade a man to let her have her will, and an older woman would nag him unceasingly until she achieved the same end.40 These ideas inform screeds of writing on the dangers of women, but also reveal the extent to which fears of the malevolent influence of women were as much fears about the inability of men to refuse them, and what it said about their manhood if they surrendered to a woman’s direction. Thus a king was supposed to consider carefully which matters were appropriate to discuss with his queen and to ensure, as one mirror put it, ‘ne that in such thing he be governed aftire hir at som tyme, but he shulde alle days reserve unto him self the lordship and souereyntee, or ellys many perilles may betide’.41 Notwithstanding the accepted status of queens as intercessors, if the king conceded lordship and sovereignty to the queen, he also conceded the essence of his natural superiority as a man. In theory the fault thus lay more with him than with her, because he should have the strength of will and rational capacity to resist either feminine wiles or foolish counsel. This idea informed some versions of the account of the Fall, such as the play of Adam and Eve driven from the Garden of Eden which formed part of the York Cycle of Mystery Plays. Traditionally Eve bore a much greater share of the blame, because she had listened to Satan and then encouraged Adam to eat the apple. But in the York play Eve points out: ‘sythen that woman witteles ware,/ Mans maistrie shulde haue bene more/ Agayns þe gilte.’42 Logically the man, as inherently superior to the woman, could not blame his moral and intellectual inferior for failings that had, by definition, to be his own fault.43 If a man was in a subordinate position to a woman it indicated an imperfect manhood, and this lies at the heart of the tirades against Margaret’s active government, with their emphasis on Henry as simple and easily led by her. This was part of a wider campaign to prove that Henry’s lack of manliness rendered him unfit for government, and was given further weight by the accusations of adultery made against Margaret. The flip side of Margaret as a belligerent nymphomaniac was Henry as pliant and impotent. The idea that Margaret had foisted a bastard on him, and continued to seek sexual gratification in the beds of other men, must have seemed believable to some for it to have any value as propaganda.44 Depending on perspective the explanation for this could have taken various forms; perhaps originating in the length of time it had taken Prince Edward to be conceived, mixed up with perceptions that Henry was immature and suspicions that he was not disposed towards sex (whether temperamentally or morally). Such attitudes 234
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would have been compounded by the breakdown which had so palpably denuded Henry of vigour. Another significance of Margaret’s alleged adultery was that it rendered Henry a cuckold. This was not stated explicitly in any of the surviving propaganda but the ‘fact’ that Henry could not control his wife (which was part of the discourse of cuckoldry) was often highlighted. The widespread currency of cuckolds as a type in contemporary literature makes it conceivable that this was the register in which some placed Henry. The cuckold was a well-established figure of ridicule and humiliation whose wife’s infidelity was both the cause and result of his failings as a man. The rather farcical portrayal of Joseph in many contemporary mystery plays provides a good example of the type, and the discourse surrounding it.45 Hearing that Mary was pregnant, and knowing that he could not be the father, Joseph assumed that he had been cuckolded. In the Coventry version he laments:
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Alas, alas! my name is shent. All men may me now dyspyse And seyn ‘Olde cokwold, thi bow is bent Newly now, after the Frensche gyse.’46 Joseph considered reporting Mary to ‘the busshop’ in the knowledge that she would be stoned. But then the miraculous nature of the conception was revealed to him by an angel and he acknowledged his mistake before happily marrying Mary.47 Joseph was regularly portrayed as being much older than Mary and this lent extra credence to the idea of him as cuckold.48 The tendency for young women married to old men to seek satisfaction with young men was a literary truism explored most famously in Chaucer’s ‘The Merchant’s Tale’, with its account of the marriage between January and May, and May’s adultery with the attractive young squire Damyan.49 The nineyear age gap between Henry and Margaret was probably not significant per se, but the effects of Henry’s illness and the implication that he had become functionally senile may have helped make sense of Margaret’s betrayal.50 Another inference drawn from a cuckolded man was that he had been tricked by his deceitful wife, when a real man should have the mental capacity to discern her subterfuge and deal with it. If a man was known (or suspected) to be a cuckold it was damaging to his public gender identity not just in sexual terms, but because the inability to prevent his wife from wandering betrayed a lack of natural authority. Given the perception that a wife was part of a man’s ‘property’ this suggested that he was not able to govern his other affairs and resources properly either.51 An adulterous wife would not instantly destroy an individual’s manhood in the eyes of others, but this does suggest the common currency of sexual slander as a means of damaging a man’s public reputation, especially if he held office of some sort. 235
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Shannon McSheffrey notes that the evidence of London church courts indicates that the insult ‘cuckold’ ‘reflected at least as much on the wife’s refusal of proper governance as on the husband’s inability to rule’.52 Indeed, another way in which the perception of Henry as betrayed husband may have been viewed was with sympathy, which would certainly chime well with the propagandist emphasis on Henry as guileless and innocent. On 27 March 1461 di Camulio reported from the French court the rumour that Henry had in the past remarked that Prince Edward ‘must be the son of the Holy Spirit’ (perhaps a reference to the point at which Henry was first aware of the child after coming to his senses).53 Camulio did not actually believe this story himself, any more than he had believed the one about Margaret and Somerset, saying ‘these may be only the words of common fanatics, such as they have at present in that island’. But, again, its circulation is significant, Laynesmith noting that it ‘played upon the king’s pious reputation to subvert it into one of unworldly naivety’.54 By implication it was not Henry’s fault that he was married to a contemptible harridan, but it did necessitate his removal as king, nonetheless, because he was not able to master her. In whatever way Margaret’s adultery and its connotations for Henry were understood (and there was undoubtedly a variety of opinions on the matter) it reflected badly on his manhood and kingship. A poem dating to 1464 has the narrator overhearing Henry VI lamenting the fate which had seen him ousted from his throne and identifying his subservience to Margaret as the cause: Sum tyme lordis of thys lond sette me at gret pris, Swiche a prynse in this rem was þer neuer non; I weddyd a wyf at my devyse, That was the cause of all my mon.
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Thyll her intente syd I neuer naye; Ther-for I morne & no thynge am mery.55 Representing Henry as hen-pecked and betrayed by Margaret was an obvious tactic for explaining the failure of his kingship.56 There are traces of a Lancastrian response to the Yorkist propaganda about Margaret’s adultery and Prince Edward’s illegitimacy. In the parliament held at Coventry in December 1459 sixty-six peers swore an oath of allegiance to Henry VI, which included pledging loyalty to Margaret and also ‘to the wele, suerte and honour of the persone of the right high and myghty Prynce Edward, my right redouted lord the prynce youre first begoten sonne, and of the right high and noble estate of the same’.57 Edward is twice referred to as Henry’s ‘first begoten sonne’ and in default of his succession the lords promised to support ‘eny other succession of youre body lawefully commyng’ which served to record an official rebuttal of the Yorkist claims that Henry was not Edward’s father (and also the perception that he was not capable of 236
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MARGARET OF ANJOU AND PRINCE EDWARD
fathering any other children).58 Earlier we saw that Raffaelo de Negra had written a report in October 1458 including the romantic story of Henry’s disguised meeting with Margaret in 1445.59 This story had been told to him by an unnamed Englishman who was clearly a supporter of Margaret. Perhaps its circulation (or even its creation) was designed to counter the rumours about Edward’s legitimacy by presenting Henry as a man who habitually looked at women to judge their appearance, having settled on a particular technique to see them to best advantage: ‘a woman may be seen over well when she reads a letter’.60 This looks like an attempt to present Henry as a more virile individual, or at least as having once been a more virile individual. But the fact that in October 1460 Henry was prepared to give up Prince Edward’s claim to the throne in favour of York, and without a fight, would have lent weight to the propagandist contentions about Edward’s fatherhood in providing ‘evidence’ that Henry agreed that the prince was not entitled to succeed him. It was in Yorkist interests to draw direct lines of cause and effect between Henry and Margaret’s personalities, gender identities and the terrible state of the country. However, although most of the sources detailing her activities were written by those who did not approve of her rule, it is possible to read between the lines to gain a more nuanced sense of why she acted as she did, and why many would have felt that her actions were justified.61 This allows us to avoid simply replicating the Yorkist claim that Margaret’s conduct was an inevitable product of her ‘nature’ and also suggests the extent to which Henry’s gender, rather than hers, was the real problem. It also indicates that Margaret had a more insightful understanding of the correct performance of kingship and the role of masculinity within this than her husband did. The attainder against Margaret is reminiscent of the strident, terrified hysteria with which objections to female authority were expressed in antifeminist literature.62 But, as already discussed, such concerns about women were evidently not shared by all, given that in practice they sometimes did occupy positions of considerable power. As well as often being the sensible choice to take on such political roles, in individual cases it is clear that they were given these responsibilities (and able to perform them well) because they were capable, and this had been recognized by the men in whose hands formal power lay.63 These attitudes must have informed the role Margaret undertook at the heart of Henry’s government in this period, otherwise she would never have been able to adopt it in the first place, no matter how ‘ambitious’ she was. The very fact that Margaret was criticized in such vituperative terms is in itself indicative of the levels of support that she enjoyed. If her behaviour really had been so self-evidently appalling then there would have been no need to denigrate it. In a comparable situation Adams contends that Burgundian propaganda which sought to destroy Isabeau of Bavaria’s reputation while she stood in for Charles VI ‘must be considered as evidence for her popularity rather than the contrary’.64 By the same token Yorkist attacks 237
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HENRY VI
on Margaret can also be taken as an indication that she was highly regarded by some, and that she posed a substantial threat to their interests as a result.65 The Yorkist claim that Margaret ‘rewled the reame as her lyked’ with its implication that she ruled because she wanted to, would not have been agreed by those who recognized that Henry’s passivity and York’s developing challenge had forced her into a more active role. When Gascoigne wrote in about 1456 that ‘nearly all the realm’s affairs were done according to [Margaret’s] will, for better or worse’ he noted that ‘she did many things in England, as is believed, after her husband … fell into manifold foolishness’.66 Given that Gascoigne was no supporter of the queen his admission that she had been compelled to take on a more active role because of Henry’s incapacity is particularly significant. Henry could not provide the necessary manly qualities, so someone else had to take them on in his stead. This brings us back to the central issue of the hole in the polity left by Henry’s incapacity. Margaret inherited essentially the same problem that had faced others close to Henry before: how to make him more active and dominant or, more realistically by the late 1450s, how to make him appear so. It seems that Margaret felt Henry was not equal to the task of presenting a convincing impression of strong rule on his own and Laynesmith argues for her role in creating a ‘compromise ideology’ of kingship as a solution to the problem. This was expressed in the pageant which greeted Margaret and Henry when they made a triumphal entry to Coventry in September 1456.67 This was probably intended to mark the city out as their new capital, given its position at the heart of Margaret’s estates. The pageant focused throughout on Margaret and her son, in terms which celebrate kingship, not queenship, including speeches from Edward the Confessor, the four cardinal virtues and the nine worthies.68 The end result was to present kingship as being vested not solely in Henry’s person, but instead in the family unit of Henry, Margaret and Edward. As Laynesmith puts it: ‘the anointed one, the governing adult and the heir in whom so much hope was placed’.69 Margaret was laying claim not to being king herself, but to the legitimate exercise of sovereignty.70 This symbolism chimes precisely with the other efforts Margaret made to emphasize that she had adopted an active, masculine position in politics as a conduit, exercising power on behalf of husband and son. The fact of the pageant itself and Margaret’s strong position in the Midlands also indicate that there was support for these tactics. It was soon after the pageant that arrangements were put in place for the establishment of Prince Edward’s household.71 Henry’s presence at the pageant maintained the appearance that Margaret’s power was enabled by the king, and that he was therefore still actually the dominant figure.72 This contention may not have seemed entirely convincing even to Henry’s supporters, hence the much greater visibility of Prince Edward than of his father within the pageant. Edward was explicitly identified as the future 238
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embodiment of all the dominant, martial qualities which his subjects craved. The prophet Isaiah announced:
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Like as mankynde was gladdid by the birght of Jhesus, So shall þis empire ioy the birthe of your bodye; The knyghtly curage of prince Edward all men shall ioy to see.73 Julius Caesar, having introduced himself as ‘souerayn of knyghthode/And emperour of mortall men, most high & myghty’, predicted that Edward ‘Shall succede me yn worship, I wyll it be so;/all the landis olyve shall obey hym vn-to’.74 The implication seems clear: if Margaret was allowed to govern on Edward’s behalf, once he reached maturity they would get the king that they had been waiting for since Henry V’s death. The letter from the Sultan of Syria originally addressed to Henry VI in the 1430s survives in later versions addressed to Prince Edward instead, and was probably intended to serve the same purpose.75 The presentation of Edward as having inherited his grandfather’s qualities (and bypassed his father’s) evidently informed his upbringing, in which Margaret had a more substantial role than was usual for a queen at this time. This was partly because of Henry’s condition, but also because of her need for Edward to authorize her role.76 The sooner Edward could be presented as embodying the requisite virtues of the ideal king the better, as this would allow Margaret to retreat to a conventional queenly role and end all the anxiety revolving around the direction of the kingdom. It is unlikely that Margaret or her supporters wanted Edward to replace Henry (as the Yorkists claimed) but they must have intended that the prince would be the actual ruler, once he was old enough and properly qualified for the role.77 This was certainly envisaged by Parliament when making arrangements for a protector in 1454 and again in 1455.78 Even at this early stage York and the other lords must have felt that although they were nominally ruling on behalf of Henry they were actually holding the fort for Prince Edward.79 The prince’s entrance on to the political scene came at around the age of seven and the significance of this stage of Edward’s life-cycle having been reached was not lost on contemporaries. In the spring of 1460 Edward’s elderly nurse retired with the stated explanation that he ‘was now so grown as to be committed to the rules and teachings of men wise and strenuous … rather than to stay further under the keeping and governance of women’.80 This was conventional stuff, but given added import by the political circumstances. Slander about Edward’s legitimacy recurred at just this time, intended to undercut his embarkation upon the path towards adult manhood by questioning his claim to the throne altogether (and denigrating Margaret into the bargain).81 In October 1460 Edward was formally disinherited but this was far from universally accepted and many still recognized him as the rightful heir.82 Edward’s status as a suitable candidate for rule is clearly 239
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evinced in a letter which he sent in December 1460 to the city of London (or rather was sent on his behalf, but in his own voice).83 In it Edward condemned York as a ‘fals traitour that ceasith not his said malice but utterly entendith the destruccion of my lord and of my lady and the disherityng of us’, attacking the duke’s claims to be acting ‘for the wele of this my lords reaulme and the seurete and welfare of his subgettes of the same’ as self-interested dissimulation and the cause of bloodshed.84 Edward also asserted his incontrovertible right to the throne: ‘we, rightfully and lynialy borne bidiscent of the blood roiall tenherite the premynence of this realme’. The prince announced that he would free his father from captivity, but reassured his audience that, contrary to York’s rumour-mongering, he would ensure that his forces did not harm the city:
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ye nor noon of you shalbe robbed, despoiled nor wronged by any personne that shall at that tyme come with us or any other undir us. And yif any wolde presume so to do bethe certayn he shalbe so largely punished therefore that other shall take exemple by him. Here Edward was presented as a military leader, one who would observe the correct conventions of warfare and who had sufficient authority to ensure the good conduct of his troops or at least to punish them if they transgressed. As well as calling to mind Henry V this was perhaps intended as a response to representations of the tyrannical conduct of Margaret and her troops which the Yorkists propagated.85 It may seem incongruous to present a seven-year-old in these terms, but as Laynesmith notes: ‘A child who might become a great warrior was apparently a more valuable rallying point than an adult who clearly never would be.’86 Demonstrating that Edward exemplified the qualities which his father so disastrously lacked was evidently an important part of Margaret’s efforts to gain support for her cause. Edward would have received the customary training in warfare for a prince, but we have already seen that this did not engender a pugnacious character in Henry VI. It is therefore significant that, unlike his father, Edward was exposed to the battlefield at a young age, accompanying his mother after their victory at the Second Battle of St Albans on 17 February 1461. It was vital for Edward to be at her side to authorize her activities, but she must also have seen the wisdom of inuring her son to battle at an early stage, to ensure that the correct foundations for his manhood were being forged.87 After Margaret’s troops had won the field the king, queen and prince were reunited. Judgement needed to be passed on Yorkist captives and ‘[t]he Prynce was jugge ys owne sylfe’ passing the death sentence on Lord Bonville and Thomas Kyriell.88 That night Henry knighted his son, who wore a lavish, eye-catching outfit: ‘a payre of bregant yerys i-coveryd with purpylle velvyt i-bete with golde-smythe ys worke’. Prince Edward himself then knighted many other men. The significance of 240
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MARGARET OF ANJOU AND PRINCE EDWARD
these acts is clear, as Maurer notes; they ‘serve to illustrate and in some sense symbolise the return to a masculine order based on male authority.’89 They also attempted to counter the impression that Lancastrian masculine order was actually based on female authority: Margaret. In ordering the execution of the prisoners the prince was carrying out his mother’s wishes, but not only as a matter of practicality (she could not pass sentence herself). It was also an important opportunity to show the prince’s involvement in another signal kingly act: the provision of justice, which here involved the punishment of treachery. Henry VI would doubtless have pardoned them all given half the chance, but his son was shown to be of appropriately sterner stuff, even at a young age. So, like his grandfather, but unlike his father, Edward’s right to rule had to be defended on the battlefield (albeit not by him in person until the very end of his life). He would inevitably have perceived the vital correlation between military ability and successful kingship as a result. Following the death of York at the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December 1460 Prince Edward’s chief opponent was York’s eldest son, Edward, earl of March, soon to become Edward IV. Edward of March had the advantage over Prince Edward that he could offer an immediate return to traditional, adult kingship.90 March also presented a more formidable rival for Prince Edward than York because he was young and therefore not immured in the factional wrangling which had besmirched his father’s reputation.91 Like Henry V he offered a fresh start of which many Lancastrians were grateful to take advantage.92 That Edward IV attained and then held the throne throughout the 1460s in large part due to his own accomplishments as a general must have put more of a premium on the need for the exiled Prince Edward to hone his military skills.93 A report describing Prince Edward in exile reveals the development of his markedly bellicose proclivities. On 14 February 1467 Giovanni Pietro Panicharolla, the Milanese ambassador in France, reported of Prince Edward: ‘This boy, though only thirteen years of age, already talks of nothing but of cutting off heads or making war, as if he had everything in his hands or was the god of battle or the peaceful occupant of that throne.’94 In the late 1460s Sir John Fortescue, living in exile with Prince Edward and serving as his tutor, wrote for him a didactic text, the De Laudibus Legum Angliae (In Praise of the Laws of England).95 It is unique in form, constituting not a catalogue of ideal kingly qualities (although these are discussed inter alia), but instead an admiring description of the English legal system. It opens with the circumstances which had driven Margaret and Edward into exile and then describes Edward thus: The Prince, as soon as he became grown up, gave himself over entirely to martial exercises; and, seated on fierce and half-tamed steeds urged on by his spurs, he often delighted in striking and assailing the young companions attending him, sometimes with a 241
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lance, sometimes with a sword, sometimes with other weapons, in a warlike manner and in accordance with the rules of military discipline. Observing this, a certain aged knight, chancellor of the said King of England, who was also in exile there as a result of the same disaster, thus addressed the prince. ‘I do indeed rejoice, most fair Prince, at your noble disposition, perceiving as I do with how much eagerness you embrace military exercises, which are fitting for you to take delight in, not merely because you are a knight but all the more because you are going to be king.’96 It was vital for Prince Edward to display a warrior’s demeanour, but his devotion to martial pursuits could also indicate a certain rashness and dangerous immaturity.97 Thus the aged knight continues:
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‘For the office of a king is to fight the battles of his people and to judge them rightfully’, as you may clearly learn in I Kings, chapter viii. For that reason, I wish that I observed you to be devoted to the study of laws with the same zeal as you are to that of arms, since, as battles are determined by arms, so judgements are by laws.98 It appears that Fortescue was concerned about the overtly aggressive quality of Prince Edward’s maturation and addressed him in these terms to ensure that he developed a proper balance of manly characteristics.99 A further attempt to convey a rounded portrait of the prince’s qualifications to rule is provided by the Active Policy of a Prince written for Prince Edward by George Ashby (Margaret’s clerk of the signet), in 1470–71.100 Edward’s dislocation from the English political context in which he should have been receiving a practical education in statecraft gave a heightened significance to these works. These circumstances made it all the more important that he be shown as informed and receptive to appropriate advice. Moreover, if Edward were to return to England and become king, issues of justice would be extremely pressing, in particular the question of how to deal with those who had deposed his father. Potential subjects would have needed reassurance that Edward could approach these issues in a measured and temperate way, and would not just cut everyone’s heads off in revenge, as appeared to be his preference. In late 1470 or early 1471 Fortescue also wrote a document purportedly from Prince Edward to Warwick, containing various articles to be passed on by Warwick to Henry VI. The intention was that those of the articles ‘as may be thought expediente for the good publique of the reaume, mowbe practised and put in ure’.101 This served the same purpose in representing Prince Edward as possessed of the full gamut of qualities required in a good lord. It was all the more important to demonstrate that Prince Edward visibly embodied the qualities of hegemonic masculinity because he was being 242
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MARGARET OF ANJOU AND PRINCE EDWARD
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raised by his mother.102 Margaret must have been mindful of the detrimental gendered connotations that this offered to their opponents. On her marriage Margaret was presented with a manuscript by John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, who had escorted her to England. It contains a French translation of the De Regimine Principum alongside a variety of chivalric materials including accounts of Alexander and Charlemagne, and a copy of Christine de Pisan’s translation of Vegetius, Les fais d’armes et de chevalerie (The Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry).103 The book comprises a comprehensive guide to ideal kingship and may have been intended to provide Margaret with material for the education of future sons. We have no proof that she read it, but the care taken over the education of Prince Edward in exile suggests a familiarity with the discourse. Margaret was not a king, but she had to defend the kingship of her husband and in so doing displayed a much better understanding of the crucial relationship between kingship and manhood than Henry apparently possessed. Pius II claimed that, when Margaret sought aid from Louis XI, she identified her husband’s inverted gender as being at the heart of their problems, telling Louis: ‘My husband, who ought to have been born a woman, fell into [York and Warwick’s] power and in a parliament called at London they confirmed him in his kingdom so long as he lives but declared my son disinherited and me an enemy of the kingdom.’104 Margaret further explained that ‘I rescued my husband from the enemy and won over a greater part of the kingdom’, which again underlines her active as opposed to Henry’s passive nature.105 Louis agreed to support Margaret, lending her 10,000 troops, whom Margaret addressed. She reassured them that they would not face Englishmen of the quality of those who had defeated their forebears as England was no longer ‘a nation of hardy stock and fierce courage’, instead the French ‘will encounter timorous and inexperienced troops, if indeed they dare to await you at all and do not flee even before they see your standards.’106 Margaret further judged that so cowardly had the English become that they would not offer battle at all, but promise the captains that if they do: ‘I will fight in the forefront. I will be the first to receive their weapons. I will be the first to charge their advancing columns – and without fear. I know the English character. I have often broken their battle line. I have mowed down ranks far more stubborn than theirs are now. You who once followed a peasant girl [Joan of Arc] now follow a queen. It is a righteous cause for which you are preparing to fight. You will bring back in triumph the richest prizes. But if by any chance the battle should go against us, I will never flee from a field where my army has fallen. I will either conquer or be conquered with you. It cannot go ill with me, for if I fall in a righteous cause, God will avenge me. Either here or in another world I shall reign. This resolution I who am a woman have summoned up for 243
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HENRY VI
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myself. You who are men hardened to the vicissitudes of war, will surely arm yourselves with no weaker will.’ Her speech was received with loud applause. All marvelled at such boldness in a woman, at a man’s courage in a woman’s breast, and at her reasonable arguments. They said that the spirit of the Maid, who had raised Charles to the throne, was renewed in the Queen. Everyone was of good hope. It seemed disgraceful for men to be less daring than a woman. All enlisted willingly and full of confidence set off for Scotland.107 Pius’ account of Margaret’s speeches does not constitute an accurate record of her words, but reveals his perception of her character which, by implication, would have been recognized and shared by his readers.108 This passage is clearly informed not only by the knowledge that women could take on manly qualities when circumstances required, but by the understanding that this could have a useful invigorating effect on men.109 It reflects a perception of Margaret striving to fulfil the manly role which her husband could not perform as a means of rescuing his crown, which certainly does owe something to her actual conduct. By the time of Henry VI’s readeption on 30 October 1470 Prince Edward was seventeen and in late 1470 was married to Anne Neville, daughter of Warwick. This arrangement had been made earlier in the year and sealed the alliance between Margaret and Warwick which led to Henry’s restoration.110 Margaret was very reluctant to marry her son to the daughter of her erstwhile enemy but eventually agreed, at the behest of Louis XI. As well as ensuring Warwick’s support, Margaret probably also saw the wisdom of her son being married for other reasons. Henry VI was in a pitiable state on his release from prison, apparently once again unaware of what was going on around him, and completely unable to garner the support of his subjects when he was paraded before them. One account of this is particularly striking.111 It describes the archbishop of York (George Neville, Warwick’s brother) leading Henry by the hand throughout and the king’s sword being carried before him by Lord Zouche, identified as ‘an old & Inpotent man’. The author states that the procession ‘was more lyker a play then the shewyng of a prynce to wynne mennys hertys, ffor by this mean he lost many & wan noon or Rygth ffew’, not least because of the sad detail that Henry always appeared in the same long blue velvet gown ‘as thowth he had noo moo to chaunge wt’. Mary-Rose McLaren notes: ‘Henry is not presented as a king, but as a poor, humbled man’, although arguably here Henry is barely a man at all.112 Writing of Henry’s appearance at this time the Burgundian chronicler Georges Chastellain (who died in 1475) stated that the king had become ‘a stuffed wool sack lifted by its ears, a shadow on the wall, bandied about as in a game of blind-man’s buff … submissive and mute, like a crowned calf ’.113 By this assessment Henry was apparently not even human any more. 244
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MARGARET OF ANJOU AND PRINCE EDWARD
Having Prince Edward married and ideally a father as soon as possible would have helped mitigate his father’s wretched appearance by holding out the promise of a young, virile king.114 Certainly Prince Edward demonstrated that he had the right stuff to be king by fighting to defend his inheritance. Edward and Margaret landed in Weymouth with their army on 14 April 1471, the very day that Warwick was killed fighting Edward IV at the Battle of Barnet. Prince Edward marched to meet his rival. They fought at Tewkesbury on 4 May, with Prince Edward commanding part of his forces (following advice from two more experienced men fighting at his side, both of whom died in the battle).115 Edward IV won the day and Prince Edward lost his life, although it is not clear whether he died in battle, or during the rout afterwards, when the remaining Lancastrians fled towards the town. Certainly it suited Yorkist purposes to afford Prince Edward a less than glorious end, especially one which suggested cowardice. Warkworth’s chronicle has him calling on George, duke of Clarence for mercy (Clarence was married to Anne Neville’s sister Isabel) but to no avail.116 By the early sixteenth century it was claimed that the prince had been taken prisoner by Edward IV and questioned as to his intention in returning to England. His reply caused the king to strike him on the face with his gauntlet and the prince was killed on the spot.117 Succeeding versions of the story serve to render Edward less honourable and therefore less manly.118 If Prince Edward had not died in battle and had inherited the throne instead, the reputation of his parents would have been preserved rather differently. We would have seen Margaret lauded for her bravery, resourcefulness and tenacity, and portrayed as a woman forced, reluctantly, to act against her feminine nature in order to safeguard the throne for husband and son. Notwithstanding the criticisms of her enemies, arguably there is enough evidence to suggest that Margaret was capable of exercising lordship properly; her attempt to do so failed not because the very idea was inherently flawed, but because her cause was lost.119 If it had been won Margaret could have passed the reins of government on to Prince Edward and retreated into a traditional feminine role.120 The rehabilitation of Henry’s manliness would have presented more of a challenge for his son, but the ways in which Henry’s cult was able to recast him both as a good king and as an exemplar of holy masculinity offer clues as to the tactics Edward could have followed. The late medieval rood screen at Barton Turf shows Henry alongside other king saints: Edward the Confessor, Edmund of East Anglia and Olaf. Moreover, Henry is frequently paired with Edmund in East Anglian art.121 Representing Henry VI alongside earlier exponents of kingly sanctity was a visual shorthand locating him within an existing category. This directed devotees’ expectations of his nature and powers in ways that did not draw directly on Henry’s actual character or conduct, or require much (if any) knowledge of these. Such images placed an emphasis on kingship as an intrinsic dimension of his sanctity, which partly worked in iconographical terms. Henry was rendered 245
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recognizable to his devotees not by the emblem of his martyrdom (though it seems to have been fairly well known that he was stabbed) but by objects of his royal regalia: crown, orb, sceptre and frequent inclusion of the antelope which was his heraldic device.122 The pilgrim badges which devotees could buy after visiting his tomb at Windsor illustrate the visual importance of kingship to Henry’s cult, as does a surviving devotional woodcut of him probably also produced for sale to pilgrims.123 Henry’s kingship was not just a question of recognition, but perceived as part of his intercessory power, thus seen as a logical extension of his kingship. In addition Henry’s cult emphasizes his assertion of a divinely approved monarchical authority in death that he was not able to wield in life.124 As a result the cult rewrote him as a good king, incongruous though this may seem, because of his ability to perform miracles and materially to improve, even to save, the lives of his subjects/devotees. This is why, in 1492, James Ryman could address Henry thus: ‘A kyng thou were of royall fame/ And of full worthy gouernaunce … A king thou were of grete renowne/ And of virtue more excellent’.125 One prayer to Henry VI even describes him as ‘[t]he flowr of all knyghthood that never was fyled’ and uses martial imagery to express his holiness:
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O crownyd kyng with sceptur in hand Most nobyll conqueror I may thee call For thou hast conqueryd I undyrstand A hevynly kyngdome most imperyall Hwar joye haboundeth and grace perpetuell In presens of the holy Trenite Off wych grace thou make me parcyall Now swet kyng Henre praye for me.126 The fact that the real Henry had demonstrably not been a good king and that this was largely because he did not possess sufficient manliness to make a success of the role made no difference to his posthumous representation. Indeed, given the currency of narratives in which holy men demonstrated their superior masculinity by eschewing temptation (especially sexual temptation) it was easy to rewrite what were earlier seen by some as problematic aspects of Henry’s conduct as incontrovertible evidence for his holiness and manhood instead.127
Notes 1 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116548, accessed 2 Feb. 2013]. 2 Griffiths sees him as well-meaning but incapable by this point, pp. 775–77. 3 Margaret was not alone in her concern about York, see Watts, p. 332 for the lords’ ‘deep seated concern about both the fact and consequences of York’s usurpation of royal power’.
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4 James Gardiner (ed.), The Paston Letters, vol. 3 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1904), p. 75. 5 Thomas Gascoigne, Loci e Libro Veritatem, ed. J.E.T. Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881), p. 204; see Maurer, p. 128 for context. 6 Maurer, ibid. 7 As also noted by Griffiths, p. 776; Wolffe, p. 316. 8 Griffiths, pp. 772–74. 9 Diana E. S. Dunn, ‘Margaret (1430–82)’, ODNB, online edn, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18049, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. 10 Laynesmith, p. 165; Griffiths, p. 777. 11 Maurer, pp. 132–33. 12 For more on Margaret’s informal wielding of power Maurer, pp. 136–39. 13 Maurer, pp. 133–36. 14 Quoted by Maurer, p. 134. 15 J.L. Laynesmith, ‘Constructing queenship at Coventry: pageantry and politics and Margaret of Anjou’s “secret harbour”’ in Linda Clark (ed.), The Fifteenth Century 3: Authority and Subversion (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 137–47. 16 Watts, p. 338. 17 E.g. Griffiths, pp. 868–70 for reaction to Edward’s disinheritance in October 1460. 18 Maurer, pp. 136, 53. 19 Most famously Richard, earl of Warwick, ‘the Kingmaker’, switched allegiance from Edward IV to Margaret and Henry in 1470, following his failed rebellion against Edward; Charles Ross, Edward IV (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press), pp. 126–77. 20 A point discussed further below, pp. 234–36. 21 Discussed by Maurer, p. 153 and summarized from her account of the case. 22 Brut, p. 527. 23 The Commentaries of Pius II, Books II and III, (trans.) Florence Alden Gragg with introduction and notes by Leona C. Gabel, Smith College Studies in History 25 (Northampton, MA: Published by the Department of History of Smith College, 1939–40), p. 268; Pius here reflects Yorkist opinion which he received via his legate to England Francesco Coppini, Maurer, pp. 179–80, 194–95. 24 English Chronicle, p. 78; the full account of Margaret’s activities from which this extract comes has been particularly influential in fixing her later reputation. 25 The section of the chronicle recounting 1440–61 is ‘strongly Yorkist’, English Chronicle, p. xiv. 26 Griffiths, p. 776; Maurer, p. 139. 27 Nicholas Scott Baker, ‘Power and passion in sixteenth-century Florence: the sexual and political reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de’Medici’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 19 (2010), 432–47, 454–55 for the use of this rhetoric against Elizabeth I. 28 PROME [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116551, accessed 2 Feb. 2013]. 29 Gregory’s Chronicle [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45559, accessed 2 Feb. 2013]; here and elsewhere Margaret’s troops were also demonized in Yorkist propaganda for being a rabble of Northerners, despite the fact that many of them came from elsewhere in the country, Maurer, pp. 193–94. 30 Maurer, p. 166; see the poem ‘Huff! A galaunt’ as a representative example, Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, (ed.) Russell Hope Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 138–39. 31 English Chronicle, p. 78. 32 Laynesmith, pp. 135–36; similarly it is often stated that Isabeau of Bavaria had an affair with Charles VI’s brother Louis of Orléans, and that this called into question the paternity of Charles VII, but Adams demonstrates that this was a matter of propagandist rumour, not fact, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore, MD: The Johns
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33 34 35
36 37
38 39 40
41 42 43
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44 45
46 47 48
Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp. 38–72 for Isabeau’s adultery in fifteenth-century sources and later historiography. The Governance of Kings and Princes, p. 189 (repeated on p. 201). For further discussion of ideal feminine virtues see Kim M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270–1540 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 77–97. Maurer and Laynesmith both note the developing nature of stories about the prince, which began with the rumour that he was not Margaret’s son (John Helton was executed in February 1456 for having said this), and then that he was Margaret’s son, but not Henry’s, Maurer, pp. 46–48; Laynesmith, pp. 136–38. The English Chronicle account quoted above seems to combine both versions. Commentaries of Pius II, pp. 269–70; Laynesmith, p. 138 describes another account in which Warwick claimed Prince Edward’s father was a minstrel and notes that the Yorkists may have been trying to draw parallels between Margaret and Isabella of France. CSPM [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=92248, accessed 2 Feb. 2013]. The Somerset referred to here is Henry Beaufort, son of Edmund Beaufort (who had been killed at the Battle of St Albans in 1455). The fact that Henry never married may have lent weight to the idea that he was Margaret’s lover. Cf. Laynesmith, pp. 138–39. See above, p. 197. The Trials and Joys of Marriage, (ed.) Eve Salisbury (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/salintro.htm (introduction) http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/s4frm.htm (texts), accessed 2 Feb. 2013] provides a range of literary articulations of these anti-feminist stereotypes drawn from a range of genres in Middle English (fabliaux, homily, secular lyrics, didactic treatises), including examples penned by Lydgate. Jean-Philippe Genet (ed.), Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), p. 205; also discussed by Laynesmith, pp. 242–43. York Plays: The Plays Performed by the Crafts or Mysteries of York on the day of Corpus Christi in the 14th, 15th, and 16th Centuries, (ed.) Lucy Toulmin Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885), p. 33, ll. 136–38. See Dives and Pauper vol.1 part 2, (ed.) Priscilla Heath Barnum, Early English Text Society original series, 280 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 66–72 for discussion of this in relation to lechery, which is here held to be far more the fault of the man than the woman. Pauper also makes the point about Adam being more to blame than Eve, pp. 81–84. This belongs to a wider discourse which responded to misogynist invective, Alcuin Blamires (ed.), Woman Defamed and Woman Defended (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 223–302 for discussion and further examples. Although that does not mean it was believed by all, Laynesmith, p. 137. Martin W. Walsh, ‘Divine cuckold/holy fool: the comic image of Joseph in the English “Troubles” play’ in W.M. Ormrod (ed.), England in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1986), pp. 278–97; Theresa Coletti, ‘Purity and danger: the paradox of Mary’s body and the en-gendering of the infancy narrative in the English mystery cycles’, in Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury (eds), Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1993), pp. 65–95. English Mystery Plays, (ed.) Peter Happé (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), p. 223, ll. 53–56. Ibid., pp. 226–28, ll. 137–224. Probably in response to this rather burlesque representation of Joseph, towards the end of the Middle Ages and into the early modern period he transformed from an old man into a younger, more virile husband and father and moved from the margins to a more central role in Christ’s upbringing: Pamela Sheingorn, ‘Appropriating holy kinship,
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MARGARET OF ANJOU AND PRINCE EDWARD
49 50 51
52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63
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64 65
gender and family history’ in Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn (eds), Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens, GA and London: University of Georgia Press, 1990), pp. 169–98. The Riverside Chaucer, New Edition, (ed.) Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 153–68. See also the poem attributed to Lydgate, ‘Prohemy of a marriage betwixt an olde man and a younge wide, and the counsail’ in Trials and Joys of Marriage. Jonathan Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002), p. 50 for ‘Henry’s apparent senility at the age of thirty’ and the link drawn by some between this and the circumstances of his grandfather’s accession. Neal, p. 68; he notes that in church court cases which involve the defamation of a man as ‘cuckold’ the insult rarely appears on its own but usually in combination with others, particularly ‘thief’, pp. 73–82; for the gendered implications of theft as an insult see pp. 30–36. Shannon McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2006), p. 142. For this and the following quotation CSPM [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report. aspx?compid=92248, accessed 2 Feb. 2013]. Laynesmith, p. 138. Historical Poems, p. 197, ll. 13–18. Cf. Laynesmith, p. 138 on Henry being ‘too weak to keep control of his queen’s body let alone his kingdom’. PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116549, accessed 2 Feb. 2013]. The oath was taken on 11 December and a list of those who took it is included. Maurer, p. 173 for more on this incident. See above, p. 195. CSPM [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=92245, accessed 2 Feb. 2013]. E.g. Maurer, pp. 171–72. See quotation above, p. 232. I am not suggesting that such men held an ‘enlightened’ view towards the desirability of women holding power, as Kim M. Phillips notes, women were allowed power by men when this would help to further ‘homosocial ambitions’; ‘Masculinities and the medieval English sumptuary laws’, Gender & History 19 (2007), 22–42 (32). Adams, Isabeau, p. 115. Maurer notes the significance of a further rash of rumours about Margaret while she was abroad attempting to commandeer support for Henry’s cause in the early 1460s, pp. 204–5, e.g. the 1462 poem ‘A Political Retrospect’ which contains the lines: Moreovyr it ys Right a gret abusion, A womman of a land to be Regent– Qwene margrete I mene, þat ever hath ment To gouerne all engeland with myght and poure, And to destroye the Ryght lyne was here entent, Wherfore sche hath a fal, to here gret langour.
Historical Poems, p. 224, ll. 51–56; the poem goes on to outline the terrible consequences of her rule, ll. 57–64. 66 Thomas Gascoigne, Loci e Libro Veritatem, (ed.) J.E.T. Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881), pp. 204–5. I quote Maurer’s translation, p. 139, n. 74. 67 Laynesmith, ‘Constructing queenship’, p. 140, notes that we cannot know for sure the extent of Margaret’s involvement in the pageant’s creation, but makes a case for the contents having been prompted by the queen and her councillors. For Maurer’s discussion of the pageant, pp. 140–42.
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HENRY VI
68 For the full text: The Coventry Leet Book or Mayor’s Register, (ed.) Mary Dormer Harris, Early English Text Society original series, 134 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1907), pp. 287–92 (the lines of the script have not been numbered). 69 Laynesmith, ‘Constructing queenship’, p. 144. 70 Laynesmith, pp. 165–66. 71 Laynesmith, ‘Constructing queenship’, pp. 138–40. 72 It is impossible to say whether Henry had any direct involvement with the form or content of the pageant. 73 Coventry Leet Book, p. 287. 74 Ibid., p. 291. 75 Lesley A. Coote, ‘A letter from Babylon: Henry VI and the Sultan of Syria’, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 14 (2002), 17–24 (18). 76 Laynesmith, p. 150; Griffiths, p. 888 notes that Prince Edward was almost always with Margaret in the 1460s, the pair were in exile on the continent while Henry remained in England. 77 English Chronicle, p. 78 for the claim Margaret tried to compel Henry to abdicate and her failure to achieve this; Maurer, p. 136. 78 See above, p. 224. 79 Watts, p. 309. 80 Quoted by Maurer, p. 177. 81 Cf. ibid. 82 Griffiths, pp. 869–75 for events and armed conflict in the wake of York’s declaration, up to the accession of Edward IV. 83 For the text of the letter see Margaret Kekewich (ed.), The Politics of Fifteenth Century England: John Vale’s Book (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), pp. 142–43. 84 For this and what follows, ibid., p. 143. 85 As discussed above, p. 232. 86 Laynesmith, p. 146. 87 Also suggested by Laynesmith, p. 168. 88 Gregory’s Chronicle [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45560] for this and what follows; see also English Chronicle, p. 98. 89 Maurer, p. 196. 90 Laynesmith, p. 169, see also Maurer, p. 183. 91 Edward IV was born on 28 April 1442 so aged 18 when his father died. 92 Ross, Edward IV, pp. 22–24, 41–42. 93 David Santiuste, Edward IV and the Wars of the Roses (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2010) for Edward’s military role and status as a commander. 94 CSPM [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=92253, accessed 3 Feb. 2013]. 95 Fortescue had been appointed chancellor to Henry VI in the early 1460s. For full details of his career: E. W. Ives, ‘Fortescue, Sir John (c.1397–1479)’, ODNB, online edn, October 2005 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9944, accessed 3 Feb. 2013]. 96 Sir John Fortescue On the Laws and Governance of England, (ed.) Shelley Lockwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 3–4. 97 See above, pp. 24–25. I am grateful to Joanna Laynesmith for her thoughts on these descriptions of Edward and what they may imply about a lack of maturity. 98 On the Laws and Governance of England, p. 4. 99 Also suggested by Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), pp. 102, 184–85. 100 George Ashby, ‘Active Policy of a Prince’, in George Ashby’s Poems, (ed.) Mary Bateson, Early English Text Society Extra Series, 76 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1899), pp. 12–41.
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MARGARET OF ANJOU AND PRINCE EDWARD
101 Kekewich, Politics of Fifteenth Century England, pp. 222–25. Warwick had returned to England and reinstated Henry VI as king in October 1470. Edward and Margaret did not return until Spring of the following year, see below, pp. 244–45. 102 The last time Margaret and Edward ever saw Henry was in July 1463, Maurer, p. 205. 103 This is now Royal MS 15 E VI, available online [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_15_e_vi, accessed 3 Feb. 2013]. For discussion of contents and contexts, see Anne D. Hedeman, ‘Collecting Images: The Role of the Visual in the Shrewsbury Talbot Book (Royal 15 E. vi)’; Andrew Taylor, ‘The Time of an Anthology: British Library MS Royal 15 E. vi and the Commemoration of Chivalric Culture’; Craig Taylor, ‘The Shrewsbury Book (BL MS Royal 15 E. vi) and Chivalric Writing in Late Medieval England’; Karen Fresco, ‘Christine de Pizan’s Livre des fais d’armes et de chivalerie and the Coherence of Brit. Lib. MS Royal 15 E. vi’; all in Karen Fresco and Anne D. Hedeman (eds), Collections in Context: The Organization of Knowledge and Community in Europe (14th–17th Centuries) (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2011), pp. 139–67, 169–91, 193–223, 225–68. 104 Commentaries of Pius II, p. 578. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid., p. 580. 107 Ibid. 108 Patricia Ann Lee, ‘Reflections of power: Margaret of Anjou and the dark side of queenship’, Renaissance Quarterly 39 (1986), 183–217 (197). 109 In addition to the example of Joan of Arc (who herself was represented in terms of an established type of female military leader), Margaret’s portrait here probably also owes something to the depiction of the amazons, who were familiar from contemporary retellings of the Trojan war. For amazons as the embodiment of female masculinity see Karma Lochrie, Heterosyncracies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), pp. 103–38. 110 Griffiths, pp. 890–91, for the reconciliation between Margaret, Prince Edward, Warwick and George, duke of Clarence (Edward IV’s brother, who had sided with Warwick); Kekewich, Politics of Fifteenth Century England, pp. 215–18. 111 For what follows Mary-Rose McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in Writing (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2002), p. 60. 112 For more detailed discussion of this and comparison to an earlier procession just before Henry’s reinstatement, ibid., pp. 58–63. 113 Quoted by Wolffe, p. 344. 114 Laynesmith contends that it is likely Prince Edward’s marriage to Anne Neville was consummated, p. 44. 115 R.A. Griffiths, ‘Edward, prince of Wales (1453–71)’, ODNB, online edn, [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/8524, accessed 3 Feb. 2013]. 116 EHD, pp. 314–15 traces the development of the story of Prince Edward’s death in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century accounts. 117 EHD, p. 315. 118 A local cult grew up around Prince Edward’s memory, Nicolas Rogers, ‘The Cult of Prince Edward at Tewkesbury’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 101 (1983), 187–89. Margaret no longer posed a threat once her son and husband were dead and she lived under house arrest until 1476 when Louis XI ransomed her and she returned to France. She had to sign over all claims to her parents’ land to Louis (who was first cousin both to her and Henry) and died on 25 August 1482, Maurer, p. 208. 119 Which is not to say that she made no mistakes, but that her rule could have delivered the throne to her son in the end, which was its object. 120 Adams, Isabeau, p. 37 notes that if Isabeau had been a widow ‘her role would have been clearer’ and it would have been easier for her to unify support, but the continued,
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HENRY VI
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intermittent presence of Charles VI hampered her ability to do this, and the same argument could be applied to Margaret. E.g. on the rood screen at Ludham. Leigh Ann Craig, ‘Royalty, virtue and adversity: the cult of Henry VI’, Albion 35 (2003), 187–209 (194–98); Danna Piroyansky, Martyrs in the Making: Political Martyrdom in Late Medieval England (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 80–85. Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges. Medieval Finds From Excavations in London (London: The Stationery Office, 1998), pp. 189–92; Ellen Ettlinger, ‘Notes on a woodcut depicting King Henry VI being invoked as a saint’, Folklore, 84 (1973), 115–19. As argued by Simon Walker, ‘Political saints in later medieval England’ in R.H. Britnell and A.J. Pollard (eds) The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society, (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), pp. 77–106 (pp. 95–96). Historical Poems, p. 199, ll. 3–4; p. 200, ll. 8–9. John Blacman, Henry the Sixth: a reprint of John Blacman’s memoir, ed. and trans. M.R. James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919), pp. 50–51 for the entire prayer. Discussed at greater length in Katherine J. Lewis, ‘“Imitate, too, this king in virtue, who could have done ill, and did it not”: lay sanctity and the rewriting of Henry VI’s manliness’ in P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 126–42.
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EPILOGUE Edward IV, Richard III and the return of Henry V
At the opening of Edward IV’s first parliament on 12 November 1461 the speaker of the Commons addressed the king, praising his
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noble and worthy merits, princely and knightly courage, in the great and victorious acts described above, the beauty of person that it has pleased Almighty God to send you, the wisdom that, by his grace, accompanies it, and the blessed and noble disposition and dedication of your said highness to the common weal and government of your said realm, and to God’s church there … 1 The remarks about nineteen-year-old Edward’s appearance were not mere flattery; he was possessed of an arresting appearance and charm that were to prove an immense asset to his rule. Blonde and well over six feet tall, here was a handsome, charismatic man who looked like a king.2 Moreover, Edward had secured his throne on the battlefield at Towton which further emphasized the contrast he provided to Henry VI. His warrior accomplishments and the sense of a new start offered by his accession must have brought to mind the opening of Henry V’s reign, as described in the Brut and elsewhere. Edward’s advent was welcomed enthusiastically, with a report from the end of August that his subjects in the south ‘bear him so much love that they adore him like a God’.3 However, in one important respect Edward IV was very different to Henry V. On 31 July the Milanese ambassador Giovanni Pietro Cagnola reported that: The king’s desires seem to me to be directed towards having some sort of pleasure. It is true that he tries hard to afford every kind of pleasure that he can to the count, both festivities of ladies and hunting.4 Far from becoming a new, chaste man on his accession, Edward seems to have used it instead as an opportunity to indulge his lusts more comprehensively. Domenico Mancini, writing in 1483, described Edward thus: 253
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EPILOGUE
He was licentious in the extreme … he pursued with no discrimination the married and unmarried, the noble and the lowly: however he took none by force. He overcame them all by money and promises, and having conquered them, he dismissed them.5 Edward IV’s reign poses the same interpretive problem as that of Henry VI in that there is a dearth of contemporary narrative sources, and much of the evidence for his character was written after his death.6 However, it is clear that Edward did not adhere to the standards of chastity outlined in mirrors for princes, either before or after his marriage.7 Philippe de Commynes, who met Edward in 1470 and 1475, described him in his Memoirs as follows: He was already by then accustomed, after 12 or 13 years, to more luxuries and pleasures than any prince of his day because he thought of nothing else than women (far more than is reasonable), hunting and looking after himself … [H]e had a personality as well suited to these pursuits as any I have ever seen. He was young and more handsome than any man then alive.8 That Commynes viewed Edward’s sexual conduct as unreasonable is significant and there is other evidence that it was seen to reflect badly on his kingship and manhood. Mancini stated:
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Edward on taking possession of the kingdom behaved for a while in all things too dissolutely. One of the ways he indulged his appetites was to marry a lady of humble origin, named Elizabeth.9 Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville took place in secret in 1464, Edward only admitting that it had happened several months after the event.10 Elizabeth was a widow with two sons. This, in concert with her nationality and status as the daughter of a knight, made her a highly unusual and unsuitable choice as queen, especially for a king whose position was still under threat from a rival.11 In marrying Elizabeth, rather than making a politically sensible alliance to one of the established continental royal families, Edward does seem to have let his lust (or love, if we want to be more charitable about it) get the better of his judgement.12 However, when Elizabeth was presented as queen in September 1464 the nobility accepted her and during Edward’s lifetime she formed a vital element of his kingship, balancing his display of hegemonic qualities by fulfilling the role of beautiful, submissive and fertile wife with distinction.13 In this way Edward could demonstrate that his rule comprised a restoration of the gendered norms which had been so damagingly inverted by Henry and Margaret, and thus present further justification for having replaced them. 254
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EPILOGUE
There has been a general consensus that Edward’s sexual proclivities and conduct had little or no bearing on his rule.14 None of Edward IV’s mistresses seem to have become involved in politics, or even to have gained anything very conspicuous from their association with him. Edward IV used women for his pleasure, rather than allowing them to use him for their own gain or aggrandisement. But Hughes questions the idea that Edward’s sexual conduct would have been irrelevant to his contemporaries, especially as he grew older.15 One of the last public appearances Edward IV made was during the Christmas festivities at court in 1482. The Crowland chronicle tells us that he appeared wearing a succession of sumptuous outfits of unusual style, which displayed the king ‘like a new and incomparable spectacle set before onlookers’.16 This description should be read alongside Commynes’ observation that in 1475 Edward ‘was a very handsome prince and tall, although he was beginning to get fat and I had seen him on previous occasions looking more handsome’.17 The fact of Edward’s increasing girth is reiterated three times by Commynes: after regaining the throne in 1471 Edward ‘pursued his pleasures more than before, fearing nobody, and growing very fat and gross’.18 The quotation above which ends ‘He was young and more handsome than any man then alive’, continues, ‘I say he was because later he became very fat.’19 Edward had been the handsomest of princes, but could lay claim to that title no longer, and this must have been something of which he himself was intensely aware, especially as there had always been an important link between his physical presence and his kingship. The impression of Edward in 1482 is of a man who realized that he could no longer rely on his looks and physique to impress people without some form of artificial assistance, such as ever more lavish clothing. In admiring this people would perhaps be distracted from the signs that Edward’s frame was bearing the unmistakable signs of a life of debauchery.20 Indeed, Commynes suggests at one point that Edward died of apoplexy, having reached the limits of his excesses, and there are various other traditions which claim he died as a result of too much food or drink.21 Edward’s fatness made manifest his lack of self-control and this raised the possibility that as he got older he would become more vulnerable to the influence of his mistresses. The wellknown example of Edward III and Alice Perrers proved that even the manliest of kings was not immune to this fate. The potential political connotations of Edward’s licentiousness were made manifest after his death in the Titulus Regius of 1 January 1484 which set out Richard III’s case for taking the throne in place of his nephew Edward V. It stated that in the past England had been governed prudently, but that since the ‘pretensed mariage’ between Edward and Elizabeth, ‘the ordre of all poletique rule was perverted’.22 Subsequently: this land was ruled by silf will and pleasur, fere and drede, almaner of equite and lawes leide apart and dispised, wherof ensued many 255
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EPILOGUE
inconvenientes and myschefes, as murdres, extorsions and oppressions, namely of poore and impotent people, soo that no man was sure of his lif, land ne lyvelode, ne of his wif, doughter ne servaunt, every good maiden and woman standing in drede to be ravysshed and defouled. And besides this, what discordes, inwarde battailles, effusion of Cristen mens blode, and namely, by the destruccion of the noble blode of this londe, was had and committed within the same, it is evident and notarie thorough all this reame, unto the grete sorowe and hevynesse of all true Englisshmen. Reference was made to Edward’s alleged pre-contract to Eleanor Butler, as rendering his children by Elizabeth illegitimate and thus ineligible to rule, which may also have served the purpose of implying that Edward regularly made promises of marriage (later repudiated) in order to get women into bed. Certainly it was crucial for Richard to establish his brother as an irrational womanizer whose sexual habits had excluded his sons from the throne and plunged the whole realm into sinful tyranny.23 The terms used here were conventional expressions of tyranny and had also been applied to Margaret of Anjou, but the reality of Edward’s libidinous conduct gave an extra edge to the condemnation of his rule. By comparison, Richard was established as the model of excellent kingship and manhood, being possessed of ‘greate wytte, prudence, justice, princely courage and the memorable and laudable actes in diverse batalles whiche as we by experience knowe ye heretofore have don, for the salvacion and defence of this same reame’.24 Mancini echoed this by stating that Richard’s ‘previous career and blameless morals would be a sure guarantee of his good government’:
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The good reputation of his private life and public activities powerfully attracted the esteem of strangers. Such was his renown in warfare, that whenever a difficult and dangerous policy had to be undertaken, it would be entrusted to his discretion and his generalship.25 Richard’s preoccupation with personal morality has often been discussed and it became a central part of his self-presentation as the embodiment of kingly and manly virtue in order to justify his actions in seizing the crown.26 By this means Richard positioned himself as the true Henry V redux. This brief discussion of Edward IV and Richard III indicates how much more there is to be said about kingship and masculinity in late medieval England. Henry VII could usefully be made the subject of such analysis too, if for no other reason than to rescue his young heroic self from the trappings of the ageing miser of popular perception. Henry VIII’s selfconscious efforts to emulate the achievements of Henry V and attain a similarly glorious reputation are often identified among his chief motives in 256
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EPILOGUE
going to war with France early in his reign.27 It is also argued that the example of Henry V shaped Henry VIII’s conduct on campaign in 1513, especially visible in his treatment of the captured town of Tournai.28 For C.S.L. Davies this forms part of a wider case for emphasizing the continuity which the Tudors forged between their style and exploits and that of their medieval forebears.29 This is a useful corrective to approaches which create a firm dividing line between ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’ and emphasize the ‘newness’ of the Tudor monarchy at the expense of its inherently traditional aspects.30 Similarly the influence of medieval models of manhood on Henry VIII’s gender identity could fruitfully be explored. An examination of the contrasting configurations of Henry V and Henry VI’s masculinity reveals the extent to which the successful performance of kingship was predicated on the ability to embody and display widely recognized qualities of ideal manhood. This adds an extra dimension to our understanding of the successes and failures of their reigns as they were regarded at the time. It also intimates that the image of Henry V’s peerless masculinity, preserved at its height and casting its shadow across the rest of the century, disadvantaged his son. The more Henry V’s example was pressed upon Henry VI the less it seems to have been appreciated that living up to it was impossible, because it was a product of circumstance, not purely of Henry V’s own abilities. Moreover, exploring the events and conditions which have contributed to the understanding of Henry V and Henry VI as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in gendered terms demonstrates that certain traits were not understood as always or essentially ‘manly’ or ‘unmanly’. It depended on the balance of these within the wider configuration of qualities which together made up the social presence of their manhood and kingship. So, both religiosity and chastity feature centrally in the perception and representation of father and son, both of whom were described by contemporaries as appearing to be more like professional religious than kings. But this property conveys opposing messages about them as men. For Henry V it becomes an active virtue and a means of channelling his abundant vigour into productive military and administrative channels. Whereas for Henry VI it becomes indicative of an innate defect and evidence that he had no vigour to control – although these are not the only ways in which their devout personae can be understood, as we have seen. This is a reminder that the meanings of their manliness were not, indeed are not, absolutely fixed. There are indications both that Henry V’s manhood could have been compromised by the changing situation in France, and that Henry VI’s manhood was in the process of recuperation before he was taken ill. There is only so far ‘what if?’ can usefully take us, but it provides a reminder that the masculinity of both kings does not simply constitute what they were like, or what they did. The preservation of their gender identities in certain forms also owes some of its substance to the choices that have been made about how and why their characters and actions were represented, in 257
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EPILOGUE
contemporary sources and in much later accounts too. This indicates the tenacity of the brand of manliness which Henry V exemplified and against which Henry VI was found to be so pathetically wanting, and suggests its continuing power in some quarters.
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Notes 1 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116551, accessed 3 Feb. 2013]. 2 Charles Ross, Edward IV (orig. pub. 1974, this edition New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 9–10; Jonathan Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002), p. 164. 3 CSPM [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=92248, accessed 3 Feb. 2013]. Hughes, Arthurian Myths, pp. 116–61 for the prophetic traditions surrounding Edward’s accession, pp. 162–91 for the Arthurian terms in which his kingship was welcomed and perceived. 4 Ibid., the ‘count’ referred to here is another Milanese diplomat, Ludovico Dallugo, who filed the report on Edward’s popularity just quoted. 5 Domenico Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard III, ed. C.A.J. Armstrong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 65. Mancini wrote his account of events for Angelo Cato, archbishop of Vienne. 6 Ross, Edward IV, pp. 429–35; Michael Hicks, Edward IV (London: Arnold, 2004), pp. 27–53 for assessment of the sources. 7 Ross, Edward IV, pp. 86–87, 315–17; Hughes, Arthurian Myths, p. 193. Edward fathered a number of illegitimate children of whom the most prominent was Arthur Plantagenet. David Grummitt, ‘Plantagenet, Arthur, Viscount Lisle (b. before 1472, d. 1542)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/22355, accessed 5 Feb. 2013]. 8 Philippe de Commynes, Memoirs: The Reign of Louis XI 1461–83, (trans.) Michael Jones (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 188. Commynes was originally part of the household of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, but entered the service of Louis XI in 1472. His account of Edward contrasted with Louis’ exemplary sober morality, p. 409. 9 Mancini, Usurpation, p. 61. 10 Laynesmith, pp. 65–70. 11 Elizabeth’s mother, Jacquetta, was from the royal house of Luxembourg and had been John, duke of Bedford’s second wife. Her own second marriage ‘down’ to Richard Woodville was in itself anomalous and her royal status did not transfer to their children, see Laynesmith, pp. 53–58. 12 Ross argues that ‘the whole episode inevitably raised doubts in political circles about the future of a king who could so rashly indulge himself’, Edward IV, p. 92, see also pp. 85–86; although see Laynesmith’s rejoinder, p. 40. 13 Joanna L. Chamberlayne, ‘Crowns and virgins: queenmaking during the Wars of the Roses’ in Katherine J. Lewis, Noël James Menuge and Kim M. Phillips (eds), Young Medieval Women (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999), pp. 47–68 for the representation of Elizabeth in Marian terms. Resentment was aroused by the wholesale promotion of Elizabeth’s family, which has been interpreted both as evidence that Edward could refuse Elizabeth nothing, and that he deliberately empowered them to create his own court party, Laynesmith, pp. 194–205. After Edward’s death she was forced into a more active political role in the interests of her sons, just as Margaret had been, and her reputation suffered as a result, ibid., pp. 173–79. 14 E.g. Ross, Edward IV, pp. 315–16.
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EPILOGUE
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15 Hughes, Arthurian Myths, pp. 7, 192–211. 16 The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, (eds) Nicholas Pronay and John Cox (Stroud: Sutton, 1993), p. 149. 17 Commynes, Memoirs, p. 258. 18 Ibid., p. 414. 19 Ibid., p. 188. 20 See Hughes’ discussion of Edward’s final years which considers these issues, Arthurian Myths, pp. 264–99. 21 Commynes, Memoirs, p. 414; see Mancini, Usurpation, p. 67, for Edward’s obesity and habitual use of emetics to allow him to gorge himself. Edward died 9 April 1483 after a short illness. 22 For this and what follows PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx? compid=116561, accessed 4 Feb. 2013]. 23 Ross, Edward IV, p. 315. Laynesmith suggests that Mancini’s account of Edward threatening Elizabeth with a dagger to force her to have sex with him (Usurpation, pp. 60–61) may also derive from Richard’s use of Edward’s immorality to discredit his kingship, pp. 67–68, p. 68 n. 208. 24 PROME [https://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116561, accessed 4 Feb. 2013]. 25 Mancini, Usurpation, pp. 97, 64–65. 26 For more detailed discussion see David Santiustue, ‘“Puttyng downe and rebuking of vices”: Richard III and the Proclamation for the reform of morals’, in April Harper and Caroline Proctor (eds), Medieval Sexuality: A Casebook (New York and Abingdon: Routledge), 135–53. 27 C.S.L. Davies, ‘Henry VIII and Henry V: the wars in France’ in J.L. Watts (ed.), The End of the Middle Ages? (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp. 235–62; Steven J. Gunn, ‘The French wars of Henry VIII’ in Jeremy Black (ed.), The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987), pp. 28–51. 28 C.S.L. Davies, ‘Tournai and the English crown, 1513–19’, The Historical Journal 41 (1998), 1–26; Neil Murphy, ‘Henry VIII’s French crown: his royal entry into Tournai revisited’, Historical Research 85 (2012), 617–31. 29 C.S.L. Davies, ‘Tudor: what’s in a name?’, History 97 (2012), 24–42. 30 The importance of continuity with the medieval past to Henry VIII’s war with France is discussed by Lucy Wooding, Henry VIII (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 66–75.
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REFERENCES
Primary sources London British Library Cotton MS Domitian A. xvii, available online [http://www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_domitian_a_xvii, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. London British Library Harley MS 2278, available online [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_2278, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. London British Library Royal MS 15 E VI, available online [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_15_e_vi, accessed 3 Feb. 2013].
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The Commentaries of Pius II, Books II and III, (trans.) Florence Alden Gragg, Smith College Studies in History 25 (Northampton, Mass.: Published by the Department of History of Smith College, 1939–40). The Commentaries of Pius II, Books VI and IX, (trans.) Florence Alden Gragg, Smith College Studies in History 35 (Northampton, Mass.: Published by the Department of History of Smith College, 1951). Philippe de Commynes, Memoirs: The Reign of Louis XI 1461–83, (trans.) Michael Jones (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). The Coventry Leet Book or Mayor’s Register, (ed.) Mary Dormer Harris, Early English Text Society original series, 134 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1907). The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, (eds) Nicholas Pronay and John Cox (Stroud: Sutton, 1993). Dives and Pauper, 2 vols, (ed.) Priscilla Heath Barnum, Early English Text Society original series, 276, 280 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976, 1980). [Thomae] Elmhami Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto, in Charles Augustus Cole (ed.), Memorials of Henry the Fifth, King of England (London: Rolls Series, 1858), pp. 79–166. An English Chronicle 1377–1461, (ed.) William Marx (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999). English Historical Documents volume 4: 1327–1485, (ed.) A.R. Myers (London and New York: Routledge, 1969). English Mystery Plays, (ed.) Peter Happé (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975). Fifteenth-Century Translations of Alain Chartier’s Le traité de l’esperance and Le quatrilogue invectif, (ed.) Margaret S. Blayney, Early English Text Society original series, 270 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974). The First English Life of King Henry the Fifth, (ed.) C.L Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). E. Flugel, ‘Eine mittelenglische Claudian-Ubersetzung (1445)’, Anglia 28 (1905), 255–99. Sir John Fortescue: On the Laws and Governance of England, (ed.) Shelley Lockwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Titi Livii Foro-Juliensis, Vita Henrici Quinti, (ed.) Thomas Hearne (Oxford: Sheldonian, 1716). Gardiner, James (ed.), The Paston Letters, 4 volumes (London: Chatto & Windus, 1904). Gascoigne, Thomas, Loci e Libro Veritatem, (ed.) J.E.T. Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881). Genet, Jean-Philippe (ed.), Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977). Gesta Henrici Quinti: The Deeds of Henry the Fifth, (ed. and trans.) Frank Taylor and John S. Roskell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Gilte Legende 2, (ed.) Richard Hamer with the assistance of Vida Russell, Early English Text Society original series, 328 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). The Governance of Kings and Princes: John Trevisa’s Middle English Translation of the De Regimine Principum of Aegidius Romanus, (ed.) David C. Fowler, Charles F. Briggs and Paul G. Remley (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1997). John Capgrave’s Book of the Illustrious Henries, (trans.) F.C. Hingeston (London: Longman, Brown, Green Longmans & Roberts, 1858). John Gower, Confessio Amantis, vol. 3, (ed.) Russell Peck with Latin translations by Andrew Galloway (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), available online [http:// www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/cav3b7fr.htm, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. Gregory’s Chronicle, The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, (ed.) James Gairdner (London: Camden Society, 1876) available online [http://www.british-his tory.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45548, accessed 31 Jan. 2013].
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Hamer, Richard and Vida Russell (eds), Supplementary Lives in Some Manuscripts of the ‘Gilte Legende’, Early English Text Society original series, 315 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Handlyng Synne: Robert Mannyng of Brunne, (ed.) Idelle Sullens (Binghampton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983). The Chronicle of John Hardyng, (ed.) Henry Ellis (London: F.C. and J. Rivington et al., 1812). Head, Thomas (ed.), Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (New York and London: Routledge, 2001). Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, (ed.) Russell Hope Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). Hoccleve, Thomas, The Regiment of Princes, (ed.) Charles R. Blyth (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/ hoccfrm.htm, accessed 26 Jan. 2013]. Hoccleve’s Works: I. The Minor Poems, (ed.) F.J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society Extra Series, 61 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1892). Hymns to the Virgin and Christ, the Parliament of Devils, and Other Religious Poems, (ed.) F.J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society original series, 24 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1867). Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, (trans.) Caroline Smith (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008). The Lay Folks Catechism, (eds) Thomas Frederick Simmons and Henry Edward Nolloth, Early English Text Society original series, 118 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1901). Legendys of Hooly Wummen by Osbern Bokenham, (ed.) Mary S. Serjeantson, Early English Text Society original series, 206 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 50, ll. 1833–36. Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France, 2 vols in 3, (ed.) J. Stevenson (London: Rolls Series, 1861–64). Letters of Queen Margaret of Anjou and Bishop Beckington and Others, (ed.) Cecil Munro, Camden Society 86 (London: Camden Society, 1863). Lives of Edward the Confessor, (ed. and trans.) H.R. Luard (London: Rolls Series, 1858). Lydgate and Burgh’s Secrees of Old Philisoffres, (ed.) Robert Steele, Early English Text Society Extra Series, 66 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1894). The Minor Poems of John Lydgate: Part 2. Secular Poems, (ed.) Henry Noble MacCracken, Early English Text Society original series, 192 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934). John Lydgate’s Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund and the Extra Miracles of St Edmund, (eds) Anthony Bale and A.S.G. Edwards (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009). Lydgate, John, Troy Book: Selections, (ed.) Robert R. Edwards (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998), available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/ troyint.htm, accessed 28 Jan. 2013]. ——, Mummings and Entertainments, (ed.) Claire Sponsler (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010), available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/scjlintro. htm, accessed 2 Feb. 2013]. Mancini, Domenico, The Usurpation of Richard III, (ed.) C.A.J. Armstrong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). Middle English Sermons edited from British Museum MS. Royal 18 B. xxiii, (ed.) Woodburn O. Ross, Early English Text Society original series, 209 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940). Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies by Johannes Mirkus (John Mirk), (ed.) Theodor Erbe, Early English Text Society Extra Series 96 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1905).
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Original Letters Illustrative of English History vol. 1, (ed.) Henry Ellis (London: Harding, Triphook and Lepard, 1874). The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, (eds) C. Given-Wilson (General Editor), P. Brand, A. Curry, R.E. Horrox, G. Martin, W.M. Ormrod and J.R.S. Phillips (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), available online to subscribers via British History Online [http://www.britishhistory.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=1241, accessed 27 Jan. 2013]. Pisan, Christine de, The Treasure of the City of Ladies or The Book of the Three Virtues, (trans.) Sarah Lawson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985). On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholmæus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum, (ed.) M.C. Seymour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, (trans.) Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Keven Brownlee, (ed.) Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (New York and London: W.M. Norton & Co., 1997). Political, Religious and Love Poems, (ed.) F.J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society original series, 15 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1886), pp. 12–14. Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, 7 vols, (ed.) N.H. Nicholas (London: HMSO, 1834–37). [Pseudo-Elmham] Thomae de Elmham: Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti, (ed.) Thomas Hearne (Oxford: Sheldonian, 1727). The Riverside Chaucer, New Edition, (ed.) Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions, (ed.) M.A. Manzalaoui, Early English Text Society original series, 276 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). The St Albans Chronicle volume 2, 1394–1422: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, (ed.) John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs and Leslie Watkiss (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011). Taylor, John, ‘The chronicle of John Strecche for the reign of Henry V’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 16 (1932), 137–87. Three Prose Versions of the Secreta Secretorum, (ed.) Robert Steele, Early English Text Society original series (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1898). The Trials and Joys of Marriage, (ed.) Eve Salisbury (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), available online [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/salintro. htm (introduction), http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/s4frm.htm (texts), accessed 2 Feb. 2013]. The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, (ed. and trans.) Monica H. Green (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2001). The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, (ed.) Chris Given-Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, 2 vols, (trans.) William Granger Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (1376–1422), (trans.) David Preest with introduction and notes by James G. Clark (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005). Recueil des croniques … par Jehan de Waurin, 5 vols, (eds) W. Hardy and E. L. C. P. Hardy, (London: Rolls Series, 1864–91). Worcester, William, The Boke of Noblesse, (ed.) John Gough Nichols (originally published 1860; this edition New York: Burt Franklin, 1972). Wright, Thomas, (ed.), Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, vol. 2 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1859). York Plays: The Plays Performed by the Crafts or Mysteries of York on the day of Corpus Christi in the 14th, 15th, and 16th Centuries, (ed.) Lucy Toulmin Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885).
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REFERENCES
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Secondary sources Adams, Tracy, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). Aird, W.M., ‘Frustrated masculinity: the relationship between William the Conqueror and his eldest son’ in Dawn M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1999), pp. 39–55. ——, Robert Curthose: Duke of Normandy (c. 1050–1134) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008). Allmand, C.T. (ed.), Society at War: The Experience of England and France During the Hundred Years War (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1973). ——, ‘Henry V the soldier, and the war in France’ in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 117–36. ——, Henry V (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1992). ——, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c. 1300–c. 1450 (originally published 1988, revised edition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). ——, ‘Henry V (1386–1422)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/12952, accessed 27 Jan. 2013]. ——, The De Re Militari of Vegetius: The Reception, Transmission and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Allmand, C.T. and M.H. Keen, ‘History and the literature of war: the Boke of Noblesse of William Worcester’ in C.T. Allmand (ed.), War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), pp. 92–105. Armstrong, C.A.J., ‘Politics and the Battle of St Albans’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 33 (1960), 1–72. Arnold, John H., Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). ——, and Sean Brady (eds), What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Arnold-Foster, Frances, Studies in Church Dedications. Volume 2 (London: Skeffington & Son, 1899). Bailey, Merridee L., Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, c. 1400–1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012). Baker, Nicholas Scott, ‘Power and passion in sixteenth-century Florence: the sexual and political reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de’Medici’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 19 (2010), 432–47. Bale, Anthony (ed.), St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint (York: York Medieval Press, 2009). Bennett, Michael, ‘Military masculinity in England and Northern France c.1050–c.1225’ in Dawn M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1999), pp. 71–88. Benz St John, Lisa, Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Binski, Paul, ‘The Liber Regalis: its date and European context’ in D. Gordon et al. (eds), The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1997), pp. 233–46. ——, ‘Hierarchies and orders in English royal images of power’ in Jeffrey Denton (ed.), Orders and Hierarchies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Buffalo, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), pp. 74–93. Bloch, Marc, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, (trans.) J.E. Anderson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).
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Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, Poets, Saints and Visionaries of the Great Schism, (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2006). Bozoky, Edina, ‘The sanctity and canonization of Edward the Confessor’, in Richard Mortimer (ed.), Edward the Confessor: the man and the legend, (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 173–86. Briggs, Charles, Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275–c. 1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Brown, A. L. and Henry Summerson, ‘Henry IV (1367–1413)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12951, accessed 28 Jan. 2013]. Bull, Edvard, ‘The cultus of Norwegian saints in England and Scotland’, Saga-book of the Viking Society for Northern Research 8 (1913–14), 135–48. Burrow, J.A., ‘“Young saint, old devil”: reflections on a medieval proverb’, The Review of English Studies new series 30 (1979), 384–96. ——,The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). ——, ‘Hoccleve, Thomas (c. 1367–1426)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/arti cle/13415, accessed 27 Jan. 2013]. Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990; republished with a new preface in 1999). Cadden, Joan, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Carpenter, Christine, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Catto, Jeremy, ‘The king’s servants’ in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 75–96. ——, ‘Religious change under Henry V’ in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 97–116. Chamberlayne, Joanna L., ‘Crowns and virgins: queenmaking during the Wars of the Roses’ in Katherine J. Lewis, Noël James Menuge and Kim M. Phillips (eds), Young Medieval Women (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999), pp. 47–68. Clark, James G., A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans: Thomas Walsingham and his Circle, c. 1350–1440 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome and Bonnie Wheeler (eds), Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1997). Coletti, Theresa, ‘Purity and danger: the paradox of Mary’s body and the en-gendering of the infancy narrative in the English mystery cycles’ in Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury (eds), Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1993), pp. 65–95. Connell, R.W., Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). Contamine, Philippe, War in the Middle Ages, (trans.) Michael Jones (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1984). Coote, Lesley A., ‘A letter from Babylon: Henry VI and the Sultan of Syria’, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 14 (2002), 17–24. Craig, Leigh Ann, ‘Royalty, virtue and adversity: the cult of Henry VI’, Albion 35 (2003), 187–209. Cron, B.M., ‘The “Champchevrier portrait”: a cautionary tale’, The Richardian 12/154 (2001), 321–27.
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Cullum, P.H., ‘Virginitas and Virilitas: Richard Scrope and his Fellow Bishops’ in P.J.P. Goldeberg (ed.), Richard Scrope: Archbishop, Rebel, Martyr (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2007), pp. 87–100. ——, and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004). Curry, Anne, ‘Sex and the soldier in Lancastrian Normandy, 1415–50’, Reading Medieval Studies 14 (1988), 17–45. ——, ‘Lancastrian Normandy: the jewel in the crown?’ in David Bates and Anne Curry (eds), England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London: The Hambledon Press, 1994), pp. 235–52. ——, ‘English armies in the fifteenth century’ in Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994), pp. 39–68. ——, ‘Isolated or integrated? The English soldier in Lancastrian Normandy’ in Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks and A.J. Minnis (eds), Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 191–210. ——, The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000). ——, Agincourt: A New History (Stroud: Tempus, 2005). ——, ‘After Agincourt, what next? Henry V and the campaign of 1416’ in Linda Clark (ed.), Conflicts, Consequences and the Crown in the Late Middle Ages (The Fifteenth Century VII) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), pp. 23–52. ——, ‘The battle speeches of Henry V’, Reading Medieval Studies 34 (2008), 77–98. ——, ‘The military ordinances of Henry V: texts and contexts’ in Chris Given-Wilson, Ann Kettle and Len Scales (eds), War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c. 1150–1500 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), pp. 214–49. Curry, Anne and Michael Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994). Davies, C.S.L., ‘Henry VIII and Henry V: the wars in France’ in J.L. Watts (ed.), The End of the Middle Ages? (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp. 235–62. ——, ‘Tournai and the English crown, 1513–19’, The Historical Journal 41 (1998), 1–26. ——, ‘Tudor: what’s in a name?’, History 97 (2012), 24–42. Davis, Isabel, Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Deeming, Helen, ‘The sources and origin of “The Agincourt Carol”’, Early Music 35 (2007), 23–38. Dickens, Bruce, ‘The cult of S. Olave in the British Isles’, Saga-book of the Viking Society for Northern Research 12 (1945), 53–80. Dillon, Viscount, and W.H. St John Hope, ‘An inventory of the goods and chattels belonging to Thomas, duke of Gloucester and seized in his castle at Pleshy, co. Essex, 21 Rich. II (1397); with their values, as shown in the escheator’s accounts’, Archaeological Journal 54 (1897), 275–308. Dobson, R.B. (ed.), The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (second edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1983). Dodd, Gwilym, ‘The rise of English, the decline of French: supplications to the English crown, c. 1420–50’, Speculum 86 (2011), 117–50. Dodd, Gwilym and Douglas Biggs (eds), Henry IV: the Establishment of the Regime (York: York Medieval Press, 2003). ——, (eds), The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion and Survival, 1403–1413 (York: York Medieval Press, 2008).
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Thibodeaux, Jennifer D. (ed.), Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Thomson, John A. F., ‘Oldcastle, John, Baron Cobham (d. 1417)’, ODNB, online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20674, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. Tosh, John, ‘Hegemonic masculinity and the history of gender’ in Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh (eds), Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 41–58. ——, Manliness and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005). ——, ‘What should historians do with masculinity?’, in John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005), pp. 29–58. ——, ‘Gentlemanly politeness and manly simplicity in Victorian England’, in John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005), pp. 83–102. ——, ‘Manliness, masculinities and the new imperialism, 1880–1900’, in John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005), pp. 192–214. Tuck, Anthony, ‘Henry IV and chivalry’ in Gwilym Dodd and Douglas Biggs (eds), Henry IV: the Establishment of the Regime (York: York Medieval Press, 2003), pp. 55–71. Turner, Wendy J., ‘A cure for the king means the health of the country: the mental and physical health of Henry VI’ in Wendy J. Turner (ed.), Madness in Medieval Law and Custom (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 177–96. Tyerman, Christopher, England and the Crusades 1095–1588 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Vale, Brigette, ‘Scrope, Henry, third Baron Scrope of Masham (c.1376–1415)’, ODNB, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/24959, accessed 29 Jan. 2013]. Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, (trans.) Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Villalon, L.J. Andrew and Donald J. Kagay (eds), The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Vollrath, Hannah, ‘Was Thomas Becket Chaste?’, Anglo-Norman Studies 27 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), 198–209. Wakelin, Martyn F., ‘The manuscripts of John Mirk’s Festial’, Leeds Studies in English new series 1 (1967), 93–118. Walker, Simon, ‘Political saints in later medieval England’ in R.H. Britnell and A.J. Pollard (eds), The McFarlane legacy: studies in late medieval politics and society, (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), pp. 77–106 (pp. 95–96). Walsh, Martin W., ‘Divine cuckold/holy fool: the comic image of Joseph in the English “Troubles” play’ in W.M. Ormrod (ed.), England in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1986), pp. 278–97. Warnicke, Retha M., ‘Henry VIII’s greeting of Anne of Cleves and early modern court protocol’, Albion 28 (1996), 565–85. Warren, Nancy, Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Watts, John, ‘De Consolatu Stilichonis: texts and politics in the reign of Henry VI’, Journal of Medieval History 16 (1990), 251–66. ——, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
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——, ‘The pressure of the public on later medieval politics’ in Linda Clark and Christine Carpenter (eds), The Fifteenth Century, IV: Political Culture in Late Medieval Britain (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), pp. 159–80. ——, The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). ——, ‘Richard of York, third duke of York (1411–60)’, ODNB, online edn, May 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23503, accessed 1 Feb. 2013]. ——, ‘Pole, William de la, first duke of Suffolk (1396–1450)’, ODNB, online edn, September 2012 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22461, accessed 31 Jan. 2013]. Webb, Diana, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London and New York: Hambledon, 2000). Weiler, Björn, ‘Kings and sons: princely rebellions and the structures of revolt in western Europe, c. 1170–c. 1280’, Historical Research 215 (2009). Weissberger, Barbara F., Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Winstead, Karen A., ‘Capgrave’s Saint Katherine and the perils of gynecocracy’, Viator 26 (1995), 361–76. ——, Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1997). ——, John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). ——, ‘St Katherine’s hair’ in Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 171–200. Wolffe, Bertram, Henry VI (originally published 1981, this edition New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2001). Wooding, Lucy, Henry VIII (London and New York: Routledge, 2009). Wylie, J.H. and W.T. Waugh, The Reign of Henry the Fifth, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914–29). Yarrow, Simon, ‘Masculinity as a world historical category’ in John H. Arnold and Sean Brady (eds), What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 114–38. Youngs, Deborah, ‘Cultural networks’ in Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove (eds), Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 119–33. ——, The Life Cycle in Western Europe c. 1300–c. 1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).
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INDEX
Active Policy of a Prince by George Ashby, 242 Adam, 27, 234 Adam of Usk, 72, 122 adolescence see youth Æthelberht of East Anglia, St 20 Æthelstan, 21 Agincourt, Battle of 46, 48, 49, 106, 108–11, 120, 176 Agincourt Carol 110 Aird, W.M., 70, 72, 73 Aiscough, William, bishop of Salisbury, 180, 199–200 Alchred, king of Northumbria, 20 Alexander the Great, 17, 18, 19, 27, 243 Alfred the Great, 19, 183 Alkmund, St 20–21, 29, 39n36 Allmand, C.T. 47, 48 Anglicus, Bartholomæus, 5 Anne, St 206–7 Anne of Burgundy (daughter of John the Fearless), 74, 87 Antigone (illegitimate daughter of Humfrey, duke of Gloucester), 87 Aquitaine, 57, 71, 77, 103, 178 Aristotle, 6, 27 Arras, Treaty of, 53, 147 Arthur, 19 Arthur (illegitimate son of Humfrey, duke of Gloucester), 87, 167n30 Arundel, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, 69, 72 Ashby, George 21, 25, 39n48, 242 Augustine of Hippo, St 6 Augustus, emperor 93
Baker, Nicholas Scott 11 Baugé, Battle of 86, 123–24 Beauchamp, Richard, earl of Warwick, 121, 143–45, 147, 171 Beaufort, Edmund, 2nd duke of Somerset, 54, 175, 179, 181, 214, 217, 222 Beaufort, Henry, bishop of Lincoln and Winchester, Cardinal 69, 98n21, 104–5, 106, 111, 112, 126, 142, 145, 148, 150, 151, 156, 157, 176, 220 Beaufort, Henry, 3rd duke of Somerset, 233, 236, 248n37 Beaufort, Joan, 18 Beaufort, John, 1st earl of Somerset, 74 Beaufort, John, 1st duke of Somerset, 175, 179, 198, 218 Beaufort, Margaret 218 Beaufort, Thomas, duke of Exeter, 69, 141–42 Becket, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, 85 Bekyngton, Thomas 183 Benedict, St 202 Bernard of Clairvaux, St 202 Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan, 195 Blacman, John 57–58, 202, 203–4 Blanche (daughter of Henry IV), 79, 210n42 Blanche of Castile, queen of Louis VIII, 184 Blore Heath, Battle of 232 Bocking, John 229 Body politic, 25–26
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INDEX
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Bohan, Mary de (first wife of Henry IV), 37n17 Bokenham, Osbern 162, 206–7 Boniface VIII (pope), 184 Bonville, Lord 240 Booth, Lawrence 230 Boteler, Alice 143 Boteler, Ralph 143 Bourchier, Isabel, Countess Eu, 207 Bourges, Treaty of, 74 Bracton, Henry of, 22, 26 Bradmore, Henry, 67 Brétigny, Treaty of, 103 Bridget of Sweden, St, 90 Brunanburh, Battle of, 21 Brut chronicle, 1–2, 19, 31, 49, 50, 85–86, 124, 231 Burgh, Benedict, 127 Burnet, Robert, 231 Butler, Eleanor, 256 Butler, James, fourth earl of Ormond, 22, 24, 27, 29, 32, 49, 76, 78, 79, 87, 88, 113, 114, 122, 204 Bury St Edmunds, abbey of, 151
Commynes, Philippe de, 254, 255 Connell, R.W., 34 Constance, Council of, 104 Coote, Lesley A., 172 Coppini, Francesco, 233 Coronation, 18, 30, 33, 84 Council, Royal, 30–31 Coventry, 75, 229, 238–29 Cromwell, Lord, 145 Curry, Anne, 107, 129 Curtays, John, 162 Dartford, 217 Davies, C.S.L., 257 Davis, Isabel, 130 De Laudibus Legum Angliae (In Praise of the Laws of England) by John Fortescue, 23, 241–42 De Proprietatibus Rerum (On the Properties of Things) by Bartholomæus Anglicus, 5–6, 23 De Re Militari (On Military Matters) by Vegetius, 18, 21, 127 De Regimine Principum (On the Government of Rulers) by Giles of Rome, 7, 17, 21, 69, 243 Denston, John, 207 Denston, Katherine, 207 Despencer, Henry, bishop of Norwich, 163 Dives and Pauper, 203, 204
Cade, Jack, 32, 54, 161, 180, 214 Cade’s Rebellion, 53–54, 180–81, 214–15, 216 Caen, 122, 127 Cagnola, Giovanni Pietro, 253 Calais, 46, 78, 82n48, 103, 108, 127, 147, 148, 152, 175, 187, 216 Camulio, Prospero di, 233, 236 Capgrave, John, 163–64, 184, 200–201 Castillon, Battle of, 218, 219 Catherine de Valois, 29, 46, 96–97, 103, 105, 143, 153,n17, 196 Catto, Jeremy, 89 Caxton, William, 19 Celestine V (pope), 90 Charlemagne, 19, 243 Charles, duke of Orléans, 71, 74, 176–77 Charles VI, king of France, 46, 53, 103, 104, 106, 177, 219, 220, 222 Charles VII, king of France, 46, 47, 53, 123–24, 134, 144, 147, 176, 177, 197, 216, 237 Chartier, Alain, 34 Chastellain, Georges, 244 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 18, 235 Clifford, Lord, 216 Cobham, Eleanor, 98n25, 157
Eadwig, king of England, 19 Eardwulf, king of Northumbria, 20 Earenfight, Theresa, 4 Edgar, king of England, 19 Edmund of East Anglia, St, 20, 151, 152, 171–72, 201, 245 Edward I, 19 Edward II, 4, 10, 57 Edward III, 1–2, 4, 9, 19, 22, 31–32, 83n76, 103, 104, 134, 136n34, 141, 176, 177, 255 Edward IV, 40n62, 54, 55, 57, 164, 166, 181, 224, 226n36, 231, 232, 241, 245, 253–56 Edward, earl of March, see Edward IV Edward V, 255 Edward, Prince (son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou), 21, 23, 25, 53, 182, 186, 193, 198, 207, 219, 220, 222, 224, 229–30, 238, 239, 244–45; rumours of illegitimacy, 208, 232–33, 236–37, 239;
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INDEX
maturation, 239–41; aggressive character, 241–42; death, 245; cult of, 251n118 Edward the Black Prince, 60n4, 108, 227n53 Edward the Confessor, St, 20, 183–84, 201, 238, 245 Edward the Martyr, St, 20 Elmham, Thomas, 48, 91, 105, 108, 112 Elzéar of Sabran, count of Ariano, St, 58 English Life of Henry V, The, 49, 76, 88, 113, 115, 127 Erik VII, king of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, 79 Eton College, 58, 156, 165, 182–83, 201 Eugenius IV (pope), 149 Eve, 27, 234
Handlyng Synne, 203 Hardyng, John, 73, 92, 97, 108 Harfleur, 46, 107, 115, 127 Harold Harefoot, 19 Harriss, G.L., 47, 78, 92, 121 Hector, 18, 19 Henry, 1st duke of Lancaster, 163 Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, 163 Henry III, 141, 144 Henry IV, 46, 52, 60n4, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78–80, 91, 92, 94, 103, 104, 134, 148, 166; illness of, 69, 71–72, 74, 79, 204; death of, 80, 84, 85, 91 Henry V, 4, 18, 26, 29, 31, 36, 45, 143, 150, 166, 173, 174, 175, 176–77, 178, 197, 202, 204, 217, 239, 241, 253, 254, 256, 257–58; summary of reign, 46–47; contemporary and near contemporary biographies of, 48–50; physique, 52; modern critical approaches to, 47–48; reputation of, 52, 133–35; religiosity, 57, 89–90; military experience in Wales, 67–69, 150, 218; rule on behalf of Henry IV, 69–70; political opposition to Henry IV, 73–79; riotous youth, 78, 84–88, 105–6, 150, 204; conversion on accession, 84–91, 95–96; chaste lifestyle, 89, 129–30, 131; management of government, 91–92; marriage, 96–97; pursuit of hereditary rights in France, 103–5; and the tennis balls, 105–6; Agincourt campaign, 103–15; appearance and conduct during Battle of Agincourt, 109–10, 120; treatment of conquered people, 112–13, 114–15; relationship with nobility, 121–22; relationship with brothers, 122–25; management of troops, 125–31; death of, 126, 141, 142 Henry VI, 4, 10, 21, 23, 29, 31, 36, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 97, 124, 127, 134–35, 146, 240, 253, 254, 257–58; summary of reign, 53–55; contemporary accounts of, 57, 149, 163; physique, 175; modern critical approaches to, 55–58, 141; arrangements for education and upbringing, 143–44, 171; arrangements for government during his minority, 141–42; coronations, 144, 173; evidence for growing self-awareness, 144–47; beginning of involvement in
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Fall of Princes by John Lydgate, 19, 151 Fastolf, Sir John, 229 Ferrer, Vincent, St, 49, 113–14 Festial by John Mirk, 19–21 Fiennes, James, Lord Say, 180 Finucane, Ronald, 206 Fitzalan, Thomas, earl of Arundel, 71, 121 Fletcher, Christopher, 11–12, 58, 165, 179 Fortescue, John, 23, 227n61, 241 Fremund, St, 171–72 Frulovisi, Titus Livius, 49, 50, 68, 85, 87, 107–8, 110, 128, 151, 174 Fusoris, Jean, 89 Gascoigne, Thomas, 204, 229, 238 Gaveston, Piers, 32 Gawain, 18 George, St, 108, 110 George, duke of Clarence, 245 Gesta Henrici Quinti (The Deeds of Henry V), 48, 84, 88, 93, 94, 104, 107, 111, 115 Giles of Rome, 7, 17, 21, 37n8, 69 (see also De Regimine Principum) Given-Wilson, Chris, 23 Glyndwˆ r, Owain, 67 Godfrey de Bouillon, 18, 19 Gransden, Antonia, 48 Gravelines, 150, 176 Gregory’s Chronicle, 118n68, 180, 187, 232 Grey, Thomas, 93–94 Griffiths, R.A., 55, 56, 60, 146, 148, 149, 152, 176, 183, 185, 201
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INDEX
Jacquetta of Luxembourg (mother of Elizabeth Woodville), 258n11 James, M.R., 202 John IV, count of Armagnac, 194–95; daughters of, 194–95 Jesus Christ, 19 Joachim, St, 206–7, 208 Joan of Arc, 53, 243–44 Joan of Navarre, queen of Henry IV, 96, 209n21 John (illegitimate son of John, duke of Bedford), 86 John (illegitimate son of Thomas, duke of Clarence), 86 John, king of England, 19 John, duke of Burgundy (the Fearless), 46, 71 John, duke of Bedford, 19, 53, 79, 86, 122, 124, 125, 141–42, 144, 145, 147, 170, 173–74, 175, 182 John of Gaunt, 60n4, 98n24, 204, 210n44 Joinville, Jean de, 184 Jordan, William Chester, 184 Joseph, St, 235 Joshua, 19 Josiah, 163 Jourdemayne, Margery, 157 Julius Caesar, 19, 239
politics, 147–48, 156, 157–58; concern for development of, 150–52, 162–64, 165–66; mismanagement of patronage, 158–59; immoderate exercise of mercy, 159–60, 164, 165; lack of warrior accomplishments, 160, 166, 170–87; contemporary criticism of his rule, 158, 160–62, 178, 199–200; literary works written for, 151–52, 163–64, 166, 171, 175, 183–84; chaste lifestyle, 164, 201–4; negotiations for marriage of, 194–95, 197; ramifications of childlessness, 198–208, 234–36; humoural imbalance of, 204–5; possible perception of his impotence, 205–6; period of successful rule, 182, 214–19; mental breakdown, 57, 181, 182, 219–20; arrangements for government during his incapacity, 220–24; character in later years, 229, 244; as hen-pecked husband, 233–36; death, 55; cult of, 55, 57–58, 149;, 244–45 Henry VII, 55, 256 Henry VIII, 49, 61n32, 256–57 Herrup, Cynthia, 11 Hoccleve, Thomas, 18, 23, 28, 33, 39n48, 69, 94–95 Holland, John, earl of Huntingdon and duke of Exeter, 92, 198 Holland, Margaret, 74, 86 Hicks, Michael, 10, 56 Homersley, John, 99n47 Hughes, Jonathan, 204, 205, 255 Humfrey, duke of Gloucester, 19, 49, 50, 53, 79, 87, 110, 122, 123, 125, 127, 141–42, 144, 145, 146, 147–48, 150, 151, 152, 156–57, 165, 167n30, 173, 174, 175, 177, 198, 204, 205, 220, 223 Hungerford, Walter, Lord, 49–50, 108, 110, 150, 151
Kantorowicz, Ernst H., 11, 56 Katherine of Alexandria, St, 25, 164 Kemp, John, 215, 216 Kenelm, St, 163 Kerver, Thomas, 161–62, 164–65, 178 King’s College Cambridge, 183 Kingsford, C.L., 47, 50, 51 kingship, 1–3, 17–36 (see also individually named kings); warrior identity as an aspect of, 22–25, 152, 160, 162, 171, 172 Knutsdotter, Katarina, 89 Kymer, Gilbert, 26 Kyriell, Thomas, 240
Isabeau of Bavaria, queen of Charles VI, 220, 222, 237, 247n32 Isabel, queen of Castile and León, 16n75 Isabella of France, queen of Edward II, 4, 258n36 Isabelle of Anjou, wife of René, 221 Isaiah, 239
Lancaster, Thomas of, 57 Lancelot, 18 Laynesmith, J.L., 9, 196, 238, 240 Le Livre de la mutacion de la fortune (The Book of the Mutation of Fortune) by Christine de Pisan, 221 Le Livre du trésor de la cite des dames (The Book of the Treasure of the City of Ladies) by Christine de Pisan, 221, 222
Jacob, E.F., 196 Jacqueline of Hainault, 87
281
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oxford/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from oxford on 2023-06-12 14:08:16.
INDEX
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Lee, Becky R., 107 Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A., 11 Le traité de l’esperance (The Treatise of Hope) by Alain Chartier, 34 Liber de Illustribus Henricis (Book of the Illustrious Henries) by John Capgrave, 163–64, 184, 200–201 Liber de Moribus et Officiis Nobelium ac Popularium Super Ludo Scachorum (The Book of the Morals of Men and the Duties of Nobles and Commoners, on the Game of Chess) by Jacob de Cessolis, 69 Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto (Metrical Book of Henry V) by Thomas Elmham, 48–49 Life of St Edmund by John Lydate, 151, 152, 171–72 Life of St Katherine of Alexandria by John Capgrave, 164 Lionel, duke of Clarence, 60n5, 227n61 Lollards/Lollardy, 46, 48, 94–95 Louis, the Dauphin, 107 Louis, duke of Orléans, 71 Louis II, king of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem, 195 Louis VIII, king of France, 184 Louis IX, king of France, St, 58, 184–85 Louis XI, king of France, 162, 178, 243, 244 Lucan, 108 Lucy, Walter, 93 Ludford Bridge, Battle of, 186 Ludwig III, count palatine, 79, 210n42 Lydgate, John, 18, 19, 29, 51, 127, 151, 152, 171–72, 205
232–33, 234–36 and Lancastrian responses to these, 236–37; attempted solution to Henry’s incapacity as ruler, 238–39, 241, 243–44, 245; imprisonment and death, 251n118 Margaret of Antioch, St, 196 Margaret of Provence, queen of Louis IX, 184 Marie of Anjou, queen of Charles VII, 197 Mary (illegitimate daughter of John, duke of Bedford), 86 Mary, Blessed Virgin, St, 108, 198, 235 Masculinity, modern critical approaches to, 4, 9–12; medieval understandings of, 5–9, 17–36, 158, 233–34; self-mastery as crucial to, 24–28, 89, 111–12, 123–24, 131–33; hegemonic, 34–35, 70–71, 120–21, 160, 185–86, 242–43 Matusiak, John, 47 Maurer, Helen E., 10, 195–96, 215, 222, 224, 241 Merfeld, John, 161 Merfeld, William, 161 Mirk, John, 19–21 mirrors for princes, 17–18, 21–36, 112, 151–52, 172, 242 Monk of Saint-Denis, 111, 131–32 Monstrelet, Enguerrand de, 49 Montagu, Thomas, earl of Salisbury, 92 Monte, Piero da, 149, 201–2, 203 Mortimer, Edmund, earl of March, 46, 93–94 Moss, Rachel, 86 Nall, Catherine, 95 Neal, Derek, 5, 34, 88, 205, 207 Negra, Raffaelo de, 195, 237 Neville, Anne, 244 Neville, Cecily, 199 Neville, George, archbishop of York, 244 Neville, Isabel, 245 Neville, Richard, earl of Warwick (the Kingmaker), 54, 181, 242, 243, 244, 245, 247n19 Nine Worthies, The, 19, 238 Normandy, 46, 53, 106, 112, 122, 123, 147, 178, 179, 197 Northampton, Battle of, 54, 181, 233
Malory, Thomas, 190n56 McFarlane, K.B., 51, 55, 89 McNiven, Peter, 77 McSheffrey, Shannon, 236 Maccabeus, Judas, 19 Magnus, St, 20 Mancini, Domenico, 253–54, 256 Margaret of Anjou, 4, 10, 53, 54, 59, 179, 181, 182, 186, 187, 215, 220, 254, 256; modern critical approaches to, 193–94, arrival and reception in England, 195–97; length of time to conceive a child, 198, 199–200; bid for the regency, 221, 222–24; as effective leader of the Lancastrians, 229–30, 237–38; contemporary criticism of her rule, 231–32; accusations of immorality, 208,
Oda, St, archbishop of Canterbury, 21 Olaf, St, 20, 245 Oldcastle, John, 46, 94–95
282
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oxford/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from oxford on 2023-06-12 14:08:16.
INDEX
Oldcastle’s Rebellion (see Oldcastle, John) Ordinances, military, 126–30 Orme, Nicholas, 171 Ormrod, W. Mark, 1, 9, 10, 17 Oswald of Northumbria, St, 20
Richard, duke of York, 54, 143, 162, 175, 178–79, 181, 186–87, 198–99, 214, 215, 216, 217, 221, 222–24, 229, 231, 233, 237, 239, 240, 241, 243 Robert Curthose, 70, 72, 73 Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose), 18 Rouen, 46, 112, 113, 122, 125, 127, 132–33 Rundle, David, 49–50, 51 Rupert, count palatine, king of the Romans, 79 Rupert (son of Blanche and Ludwig III), 210n42 Ryman, James, 246
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Page, John (composer of poem about the siege of Rouen), 112, 122 Page, John (accused of seditious speech against Henry VI), 199–200 Panicharolla, Giovanni Pietro, 241 Paris, Treaty of, 103 Parker, William, 178 Parliament, 30–31 Paston, Sir John, 127 Pearsall, Derek, 86 Percy, Henry, earl of Northumberland, 92 Perrers, Alice, 2, 32, 255 Philip III, king of France, 184 Philip IV, king of France, 17 Philip, duke of Burgundy (the Good), 46, 49, 53, 147 Philip, Sir William, 145 Philippa, daughter of Lionel, duke of Clarence, 60n5, 227n61 Philippa (daughter of Henry IV), 79 Phillips, Kim M., 35, 86 Pisan, Christine de, 221–22, 243 Pius II (pope), 231, 233, 243–44 Plantagenet, Arthur, Viscount Lisle, 258n7 Pole, William de la, duke of Suffolk, 53, 157–58, 161, 178, 190n72, 195, 199–200 Pollard, A.J., 10, 56, 60 Powell, Edward, 92 Pseudo-Elmham, 49, 84, 109, 110, 120, 152
St Albans, First Battle of, 54, 231, 180; Second Battle of, 54, 182 Say, John, 165 Scott, Joan Wallach, 3 Scrope, Henry, 93 Scrope, Richard, archbishop of York, 57 Scrope, Stephen, 22 Secreta Secretorum (Secret of Secrets), 17–18, 22, 24, 27, 29, 30, 32, 49, 127, 204 sex, 2, 26–28, 86–87, 97, 129–33, 202–3, 205–6, 254–56 Shakespeare, William, 47, 105, 193 Sheen Priory, 89 Shrewsbury, Battle of, 67, 68–69 Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, 104, 173 Solomon, 142, 163, 164 Somerset, John, 50, 152, 205 Southampton Plot, The, 46, 93–94 Stafford, Anne, 93 Stafford, Humphrey, earl of Stafford and duke of Buckingham, 175, 181, 198 Strecche, John, 105–6 Strohm, Paul, 94 Stubbs, William, 47, 51 Sutton, John, Lord Dudley, 180 Swynford, Katherine, 86, 98n24 Syon Abbey, 89
queenship, 3–4, 7, 9–10, 27, 29, 97, 193–94, 196, 230 (see also individually named queens) Rawcliffe, Carole, 204, 205 Regiment of Princes by Thomas Hoccleve, 18, 69–70 René of Anjou, duke of Anjou, king of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem, 197 Richard II, 1, 4, 10, 11, 22, 27, 46, 58, 67, 68, 72–73, 79, 91, 92, 141, 144, 165, 179, 180 Richard III, 255–56 Richard, earl of Cambridge, 62n55, 93
Talbot, John, earl of Shrewsbury, 230 Tetzel, Gabriel, 207 Tewkesbury, Battle of, 54, 245 Thomas, duke of Clarence, 49, 73–74, 76, 77–78, 79, 80, 86, 88, 89, 96, 107, 122–24, 125 Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, 18, 19, 37n17, 210n44
283
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oxford/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from oxford on 2023-06-12 14:08:16.
INDEX
Tiptoft, Lord, 145 Tosh, John, 3, 88, 131 Towton, Battle of, 232, 253 Tractatus De Regimine Principum ad Regem Henricum Sextem (On the Rule of Princes to King Henry VI), 151–52, 172 Trevisa, John, 5, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 33, 34, 35, 163, 170, 232 Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer, 18 Trollope, Andrew, 187 Troy Book by John Lydgate, 18, 51 Troyes, Treaty of, 46, 96, 186, 197 Tudor, Edmund, 218 Tudor, Jasper, 218 Tudor, Owen, 153n17 Tyler, Wat, 180
Watts, John, 10, 17, 56, 60, 146, 149–50, 173, 183 Waugh, W.T., 47 Wavrin, Jean de, 58, 59, 109 Waynflete, William, bishop of Winchester, 201, 230 Weiler, Björn, 70 Westminster, 78, 90, 187 Whethampstead, John, abbot of St Albans, 59 William of Tyre, 18–19 William Rufus, 19 William the Conqueror, 70, 72 Windsor, 55, 246 Winstead, Karen A., 151, 172 Wolffe, Bertram, 56, 57, 59, 148, 149, 182–83, 193 women, 28, 221–22, 233–34 Woodville, Elizabeth, queen of Edward IV, 207, 254, 255, 258n13 Worcester, William, 24, 178, 185, 217–18 Wycliffe, John, 95 Wylie, J.H., 47
Upton, Nicolas, 127, 130 Vale, John, 220 Vegetius, 18, 51, 243 Vita et Gesti Henrici Quinti (Life and Deeds of Henry V) by Pseudo-Elmham, 49–50, 151 Vita Henrici Quinti (Life of Henry V) by Titus Livius Frulovisi, 49, 50, 151, 172
Yarrow, Simon, 35 Yolande of Aragon, 195, 221 Yong, James, 49 Young, Thomas, 198 youth (as life-cycle stage), 8–9, 87–88, 105, 121–22, 130–31, 150, 162, 163, 193, 201–2, 204
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Wakefield, Battle of, 241 Walsingham, shrine of the Holy House at, 198 Walsingham, Thomas, 71, 75, 77, 80n4, 84, 86, 90, 93, 108, 120, 124, 142 Warnicke, Retha M., 195
Zouche, Lord, 244
284
Lewis, Katherine. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oxford/detail.action?docID=1377494. Created from oxford on 2023-06-12 14:08:16.
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