Anne Curry - Henry V: Playboy Prince To Warrior King

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First published 2015

Copyright Anne Curry, 2015

Cover design by Pentagram
Jacket art by Adam Simpson

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-141-97872-7

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THE HOUSES OF WESSEX AND DENMARK

THE HOUSES OF NORMANDY, BLOIS AND ANJOU

THE HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK

THE HOUSE OF TUDOR

THE HOUSE OF STUART

THE HOUSE OF HANOVER

THE HOUSES OF SAXE-COBURG & GOTHA AND WINDSOR

On 2 December 1420, the Chancellor of England, Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, addressed the assembled Lords and Commons at the opening of Parliament at Westminster. We people of England, he began, have very special reason to honour and thank Almighty God. The reason, as nobody present would have needed reminding, was the high grace, victory and achievement that God had granted to Englands king, Henry V. Langley enumerated these achievements: the suppression of the Welsh rebellion in his youth, and later, when king, the destruction of heresies and Lollardy within the kingdom. But Henry Vs crowning glory, sealed by the Treaty of Troyes some eight months before, on 21 May, was

the recovery of ancient rights pertaining to his crown of England in France and in the blessed conclusion of peace and unity between him and his former adversary of France to the glorious pleasure of God and to the undoubted advantage and happiness of all this kingdom of England.

At the eastern French city of Troyes, Charles VI of France had recognized Henry V of England as his rightful heir. By the treaty terms, on Charless death Henry would become King of France and in doing so he would turn the dream of English kings, ever since Edward III declared himself King of France in 1340, into reality. In the meantime, Henry would be regent for the mentally and physically ailing Charles, whose daughter Catherine he married two weeks after the signing of the treaty, on 2 June. Once Henry succeeded his father-in-law, and for all time to come, the two thrones of England and France would be united under the same ruler. The treaty ordered an immediate end to all animosity between the two realms and their peoples, a remarkable outcome when the last two centuries had been dominated by war between England and France.

Then, the unexpected happened. On 31 August 1422, just twenty-one months after Langleys encomium to Parliament, Henry V, aged almost thirty-six, died from the bloody flux at the great fortress of Vincennes, east of Paris. Predeceasing Charles by six weeks, he was the first English king to die overseas since Richard I over two centuries earlier. His nine-month-old son by Catherine, Henry VI, was recognized as King of France following Charless death, but Henry VI would prove as ineffective as his father had been assertive: within thirty years the English had been removed from French soil, save for a toehold at Calais. Henry Vs double monarchy had failed.

Even so, in the popular imagination, Henry V remains as much a success story today as when Bishop Langley addressed Parliament in 1420. Indeed, he is often considered destined for greatness from the moment he came to the throne on 21 March 1413. His victory at Agincourt on 25 October 1415, still one of the most iconic English victories against a foreign enemy, achieved in the face of allegedly overwhelming odds, is viewed as the consequence of his astute leadership and personal bravery. Whats more, this view of Henry as a successful warrior-king, inspired and supported by God and beloved of his people, has been constant throughout history. It inspired two Latin prose lives of the king in the late 1430s. The first was the anonymous Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti (The Life and Deeds of Henry the Fifth), commonly known as the Pseudo-Elmham since it was once thought, erroneously, to be the work of Thomas Elmham, a monk of St Augustines Abbey, Canterbury, who wrote a verse account of the opening years of the reign. The Pseudo-Elmham appears to have drawn information from Sir (later Lord) Walter Hungerford, much trusted by Henry as councillor and commander, and chosen by the king as one of the executors of his will and guardians of his infant son. The second Latin life of the 1430s was Tito Livio Frulovisis