first edition - 2024
It's been quite some time since I have read a book relating to Henry V - fiction or non-fiction (or movie). I found Dan Jones' biography refreshing and and packed of information I hadn't previously fully 'taken on board'. Unusually, half the book (just under 200 pages) deals with Henry's life before he became king, viz. 1386-1413. Jones convincingly shows how a long, eventful and invaluable apprenticeship to the office of monarchy, where Henry learned as much from his and other's mistakes as from any successes, shaped his ruling modus operandi. Secondly, through a narrative style, the author writes Henry's biography in the present tense. Henry rides. He fights. He prays. He plans, He rules. And it works! It is almost as if the story is presented in 'real time'.
Jones details the importance of Henry's mother, Mary de Bohun; of his grandfather, John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster; and, most importantly, of his father, Henry Bolingbroke, who, in 1399, usurps the crown as Henry IV from Richard II. From his mother, Henry inherits his love of books and, above all, music. A devotee of fine cloths and good living, she is also pious; this will be one of her eldest son's traits throughout his life. Henry is 12/13 years old, a most impressionable age, when his father is banished from the kingdom for a decade. But just a year later, and his father, only recently made Duke of Hereford, has returned and overthrown Richard. A bewildering sequence of events, as Jones emphasises young Henry's attachment to the deposed monarch.
The years of his father's time on the throne are a helter-skelter of opportunities and dangers for Henry. He narrowly misses death, from an arrow lodged in his skull during the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury; he fights wearying skirmishes and conducts sieges in Wales, attempting to put down the tiresome rebellion of Owen Glendower; he watches as his father's health degenerates and he, for a while, is virtually reigning in his stead; and he becomes evermore determined to root out the heresy of the Lollards, even if it means dealing with his old friend and fellow warrior, Sir John Oldcastle. What Jones has successfully done is to make the reader feel that they are there with Henry in 1413, having followed him, almost as a companion, through the previous decade or more.
As the author writes:
In March 1413 Henry ascends to his father's throne better prepared for rule than any king in living memory. He arrives at a moment of extraordinary opportunity. Yet he succeeds with some doubts still remaining about his fitness for office, entrenched financial, religious and political challenges, and lingering resentment of the Lancastrian dynasty at large. The fourteen chapters and Epilogue which follow, guide the reader through the vicissitudes of the reign. The image of the playboy Hal transforming into monarchical gravitas is over-egged. Any newfound seriousness does not require a wholesale changing of his ways, for gravity, religiosity and intensity of focus are already essential parts of his character. We see him cajoling various Parliaments into granting yet more funds for his increasingly expensive military campaigning in France; dealing ruthlessly with plotters at Southampton (his close friend Lord Scrope is summarily executed), on the very eve of his voyage to Harfleur; by force of personality leading his weary and sickly troops towards Calais and the 'miracle' of Agincourt; and the long, drawn-out aftermath of mainly siege warfare which leads not only to the Regency of the French crown and a marriage to the daughter of the permanently 'unwell' French king, Charles VI; but to his early death from dysentery on 31st August 1422 at the chateau of Bois-de-Vincennes.
I hadn't realised how important Henry's younger brothers were to the success of his reign. John, created Duke of Bedford, shaped in the same mould as Henry, who served as warden of the north-east, 'managed' England as lieutenant whilst Henry was abroad, and who took up the mantle in France - achieving at the Battle of Verneuil in 1424 a victory as splendid as that of Agincourt. Moreover, four years before his death in 1435, he had overseen the crowning of his nephew, Henry VI, as king of France. Thomas, created Duke of Clarence, a headstrong but brave soldier who was killed in March 1421 at Baugé, the first defeat for an English army in a major battle in France in nearly eight decades. Humphrey, created Duke of Gloucester, the youngest brother, under-occupied and inexperienced before the Agincourt campaign, who becomes one of Henry's ablest supporters and who is sent back to England in 1420 to take over the reins of domestic government and who excels in the tricky task of cajoling parliaments to grant yet more money. Moreover, in his uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, Henry V has another consummate politician, who regularly provides finance for his nephew from his wealthy bishopric's coffers. All these men are consistently loyal to the king and, in no small part, contribute to the successes of his reign, whether on the battlefield or in the politics at home.
Jones has an interesting Summary of Henry's posthumous image. Curated and maintained by his younger brother Humphrey - who commissioned a Latin biography known as Vita Henrici Quinti - enthusiastically aped by a young Henry VIII and further embroidered by Shakespeare, only from the 19th century was the warrior king looked at with a critical eye. Whereas William Stubbs maintained the king was the noblest and purest man who ever ruled England, J.R. Green accused Henry of wanton aggression and a failure to make good on his miraculous victory at Agincourt. Whilst C.L. Kingsford called Henry a typical medieval hero, and K.B. McFarlane stated that he was the greatest man that ever ruled England; Ian Mortimer, a 'popular writer', in his 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (2009), lays into the king from a 21st century viewpoint: Henry was a deeply flawed individual, a misogynist, a religious fundamentalist, a reckless spender of other people's money and a second-rate military commander! As a fellow History alumni of University College, London, I feel a trifle embarrassed by his over-the-top anachronistic strictures. He appears to belong to the Desmond Seward 'school' of slanted history. Rather, I agree with Dan Jones who, siding with McFarlane, suggests that he has presented a Henry who is a little more rounded and human...Henry's contemporaries saw in him a paragon of Christian, knightly virtue and the living embodiment of traditional kingship. They perceived - rightly - a ruler who made the systems of English government work as they were supposed to without resorting to novelty or swindling the system...
Other Biographies of Henry V in my Library:
1703/4: The History of the Reign of Henry the Fifth
1838: J. Endell Tyler - Henry of Monmouth (Richard Bentley)
1889: The Rev. A.J. Church - Henry the Fifth (Macmillan and Co.)
1901: C.L. Kingsford - Henry V. The Typical Medieval Hero (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
1919: R.B. Mowat - Henry V (Constable & Company)
1934: Philip Lindsay - King Henry V. A Chronicle (Ivor Nicholson & Watson)
1935: J.D. Griffith Davies - Henry V (Arthur Barker)
1937: L.A.G. Strong - Henry of Agincourt (Thomas Nelson and Sons)
1947: E.F. Jacob - Henry V and the Invasion of France (Hodder & Stoughton)
1967: Harold F. Hutchinson - King Henry V (The John Day Company)
1968: C.T. Allmand - Henry V (The Historical Association)
1972: Peter Earle - The Life and Times of Henry V (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)
1975: Margaret Wade Labarge - Henry V. The Cautious Conqueror (Secker & Warburg)
1985: G.L. Harriss - Henry V. The Practice of Kingship (Alan Sutton)
1987: Desmond Seward - Henry V as Warlord (Sidgwick & Jackson)
1992: Christopher Allmand - Henry V (Methuen London)
2004: Keith Dockray - Henry V (Tempus Publishing)
2009: Ian Mortimer - 1415. Henry V's Year of Glory (The Bodley Head)
2015: Teresa Cole - Henry V. The Life of a Warrior King (Amberley Publishing)
I also have 25 Novels on Henry V's reign, which, not surprisingly, tend to concentrate on the Agincourt campaign. One of these, Monmouth Harry by A.M. Maughan (Hodder and Stoughton, 1956), I first read as an impressionable teenager - it got me 'hooked' for evermore on both the king and Agincourt.