James Ross's 'Henry VI'

 

Allen Lane first edition - 2017

Henry VI A Good, Simple and Innocent Man by James Ross    Allen Lane (Penguin Books), 2016 hardback, 118 pp. ISBN 978-0-141-97834-7                   £12.99

Having been brought up on two block-busters (Bertram Wolfe at 400 pages and R.A. Griffiths at a massive, hernia-inducing 976 pages), both published in 1981, it was some relief to be reading James Ross’s mere hundred odd pages on Henry VI. Would this succinct survey align itself with Griffiths’ well-intentioned, credulous and merciful monarch who lacked political experience and astuteness; or would it favour Wolffe’s more critical approach towards a king whom he argued was vindictive and perverse as well as inept?

Ross makes the obvious point, if not always adhered to by other ‘historians’, that if “it is difficult enough for biographers to grasp the personality and character of great figures of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries…it is far more difficult for medieval historians to grasp the personality and character of those living five hundred years before, even that of a king.” However, Ross’ work is character-driven and all the better for it. His most interesting chapter is entitled ‘Behind the Façade’ and what sombre reading it makes. One quotation from K.B. McFarlane – Henry’s “second childhood succeeded first without the usual interval” – is typically apt.

Henry’s early years were inevitably dominated by the war with France and the political rivalry of his uncle Humphrey, duke of Gloucester and his great-uncle Henry, Cardinal Beaufort. His ceremonial    and formal role began in 1429, when he was crowned King of England at Westminster. It was the death of his elder uncle, the duke of Bedford, in September 1435 that forced Henry “into closer involvement in the active ruling of his kingdoms”. However, powerful personalities continued to dominate him throughout his reign: Bedford, Gloucester and Beaufort were succeeded by the dukes of Suffolk and Somerset and Henry’s wife, Margaret of Anjou. Late medieval kings were expected to govern personally, yet “carelessness, lack of attention to detail and sheer incompetence were the hall marks of the king’s involvement in government”, for which, seemingly, he had little interest. This biography perhaps should have been subtitled ‘The occasional king’.

Ross does not exclude Henry entirely from the decision-making, even when Somerset seemed to be responsible for the direction of policy. He argues that Henry must take “the lion’s share” of the blame for the prioritization of domestic expenditure over overseas defence and the failure to give military leadership. He was the only medieval king of England (apart from Edward V) not to lead an army in  war against a foreign enemy.  Henry was simply devoting what energies he had to his soul. Piety was to be the keynote of his kingship. “Put kindly, Henry had a deep, sincere and prominent faith; put unkindly, his was an excessive, consuming and compulsive religiosity.” Perhaps, as Ross suggests, the only tangible achievements of his reign were the founding of Eton College (1440), King’s College, Cambridge (1441) and the endowment of a new Library at Salisbury Cathedral (1445).

In early August 1453 Henry took leave of his senses; they would never be fully recovered. The illness was probably catatonic schizophrenia – “no adult king of England before this date had ever fully lost his mental faculties”. The obvious, really only, choice to govern in the king’s stead was the duke of York. The end of the latter’s Protectorate in February 1456 also marked the end of effective government and the slide into further factionalism and civil war was entirely predictable. It is hard to counter R.L. Storey’s comment that “if Henry’s insanity had been a tragedy, his recovery was a national disaster”. The crown’s policy towards York and his followers bordered on the incoherent. Edward’s victory at Towton “turned Henry, over the next decade, successively into a fugitive, a prisoner, a puppet, and finally a victim of murder”. Henry had become “a stuffed wool sack lifted by his ears, a shadow on the wall, bandied about as in a game of blind-man’s buff, submissive and mute…like a crowned calf” (George Chastellain, 1471).

Few would disagree with Ross that here was one of the least able and least successful kings ever to rule England. Henry may have been born great and had greatness thrust upon him, but he never achieved greatness. One can also concur with the author that it is hard not to feel some sympathy for Henry – “a decent man placed by accident of birth in a role to which he was entirely unsuited” . Perhaps Sellar and Yeatman’s 1066 and All That has a valid assessment of Henry VI: “When he grew up, however, he was such a Good Man that he was considered a Saint, or alternatively (especially by the Barons) an imbecile.”           

As with all the volumes in this excellent Penguin Monarchs series, there are some very useful Notes and Further Reading, and pertinent colour illustrations. I noticed only one typo - in the Family Tree: Cardinal Beaufort died in 1447 not 1477.