Wars of the Roses (17 page)

There is no doubt that Henry VI was a religious man and that his personal piety was genuine. Blacman says that, at the principal feasts of the year, ‘but especially at those when of custom he wore his crown’, he wore next to his skin a rough hair shirt. He was ‘a diligent and sincere worshipper of God, more given to devout prayer than to handling worldly things or practising vain sports or pursuits. These he despised as trifles.’ He feared God and avoided evil. He would not transact any business on Sundays or holy days, nor would he allow his courtiers to speak during services, bring their hawks into church, or wear their swords or daggers there, and he would remain on his knees throughout the service in perfect silence, his head bowed. When going about his daily duties he was constantly engaged in meditation and prayer, withdrawn into a world of his own to which he could retreat from the harsh realities of political life.

It is true that he was rather more than conventionally pious, but then so were many people at that time. Because he was the King, his piety attracted attention. By the time he was twenty-five he was famed for it throughout Europe, and Pope Eugenius IV, impressed by the King’s charities and care for the poor, awarded him the highest papal honour, the Golden Rose. There was, nevertheless, a more cynical reason for this award – Eugenius wanted money from the Church in England and hoped Henry would assist him in obtaining it.

The King’s piety generally endeared him to his subjects, although there were those who were privately of the opinion that he would make a better monk than a king. He was forever exhorting his magnates to prayer, and, knowing that it was in their interests to do so, they acquiesced, for Henry could be very generous to those he favoured.

Like his father, another pious man, Henry VI was merciless to Lollards and other heretics, and many were burned at the stake during his reign. Unlike Henry V, he did not found any religious
houses or endow many chantries. Towards the end of his reign, sermons preached before him were censored beforehand by the Council so as to avoid the King being confronted by any embarrassing criticisms.

It would be fair to say that Henry saw himself as a guardian of public morality. He never took the Lord’s name in vain, could not abide swearing, and refused to tolerate it in his presence, gently admonishing or severely chiding any noble who disobeyed this edict: ‘Everyone who swore was abominable to him.’ His strongest oaths were ‘St John’ or ‘Forsooth and forsooth!’

He had no time for the vagaries of fashion, believing that the revealing clothes of the period led people into promiscuity, an opinion shared by many contemporary moralists. Blacman says, ‘He took great precautions to secure not only his own chastity but that of his servants,’ and was so concerned about immorality at his court that he was not above keeping ‘careful watch through hidden windows of his chamber’ on ladies entering his palace, ‘lest any foolish impertinence of women cause the fall of any of his household’.

He was excessively prudish and much offended by nudity, often quoting Petrarch on the subject, saying, ‘The nakedness of a beast is in men unpleasing, but the decency of raiment makes for modesty.’ When he visited the Roman baths at Bath, he saw men ‘wholly naked, with every garment cast off, at which he was displeased’, and fled with embarrassment from the scene, ‘abhorring such nudity as a great offence’. One Christmas time, a certain lord, probably for a malicious prank, ‘brought him a dance or show of young ladies with bared bosoms who were to dance in that guise before the King, who very angrily averted his eyes, turned his back upon them, and went out to his chamber, saying, “Fie, fie, for shame!” ’

Shortly before Henry married at the age of twenty-three, the papal envoy to England reported that he lived more like a monk than a king and ‘avoided the company of women’. Blacman says that as a youth he was ‘a pupil of chastity’. He was ‘chaste and pure from the beginning of his days and eschewed all licentiousness in word or deed while he was young’. He was fond of reading moral treatises and other improving literature, and firmly believed that the spread of such works would lead to more virtuous behaviour on the part of his subjects. Indeed, his chamberlain, Sir Richard Tunstall, recalled how the King would spend much of his leisure perusing books and chronicles, or, on holy days, the scriptures.

Like his father, Henry was a patron of music, and was the first king to appoint a master for the children of the Chapel Royal, while
under his auspices the first degrees in music were awarded by the University of Cambridge. He himself was no mean composer and the manuscript of his
Sanctus
is still preserved at King’s College, Cambridge.

Education was one of Henry’s chief passions, and he was especially anxious to promote the spread of literacy among his subjects: in fact, he was more enthusiastic about education than he was about governing his realm and righting its wrongs. He was a generous patron of scholars and a great benefactor of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. During his reign a great many grammar schools were founded, catering for boys from the newly prosperous middle classes and for poor boys who might not otherwise obtain a good education and could benefit from the charitable places available.

Henry’s chief interest was in his two great academic foundations, Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. Not only did he found these two institutions, but he also devoted great care and expense to their buildings. Blacman states that he ‘graced the laying of the foundation stones with his presence, and with great devotion offered his foundations to Almighty God’.

Since he was seventeen, Henry had wished to found a college dedicated to prayer and charity, where the sons of poor families could benefit from a free education. ‘The King’s College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor’ was founded in 1440, with provision for a provost, a schoolmaster, ten priests, four clerks, six choristers, twenty-five poor and indigent scholars, and twenty-five feeble and poor old men. Tuition was free. In 1443 the King raised the number of poor scholars to seventy and cut the number of poor men to thirteen. The Lower School at Eton, which is still in use, dates from this time, the college hall and chapel from a few years later. Henry was concerned that, being near the court at Windsor, ‘the young lambs should come to relish the corrupt deeds and habits of his courtiers’. If he found any boys within the castle boundaries, he would promptly send them back, telling them his court was no place for the young. He liked nothing better than to visit Eton, and would give the scholars money and bid them be good boys, ‘gentle and teachable, and servants of the Lord’.

King’s College, Cambridge was founded in 1441 to provide further education for boys who had completed their studies at Eton. The college buildings and chapel are still numbered among the chief glories of the University of Cambridge. There was an element of laying up treasure in heaven about Henry’s foundations, for in lavishing so much expense and care on them he was consciously
aiming to eclipse similar foundations such as the schools and colleges founded by William of Wykeham in the fourteenth century.

Henry spent lavishly on his educational projects, his palaces, and – above all – his favourites, with little regard for his depleted treasury. He was easily manipulated and exploited by unscrupulous courtiers, who took advantage of his extravagant generosity; he, in turn, lacked the perception to judge the worthiness of its recipients. He was an unworldly man, basically shy and naive, who had little aptitude for dealing with people. He was too simple to adopt a political role, too open and honest, lacking in cunning and the ability to dissimulate. He was sensitive, not only about the Lancastrian title to the throne, but also about attempts to limit his royal authority, which – given his long minority and the difficulties he faced in asserting his authority – is perhaps understandable. As a man he was virtuous and good; as a king, he was a disaster.

Henry VI’s chief weakness was allowing himself to be dominated by political factions, who frequently manipulated him into making unwise decisions and who were chiefly concerned with promoting their own interests. He had a peculiar talent for surrounding himself with the most rapacious, self-seeking and unpopular magnates, in heeding whose advice he showed a marked lack of political judgement. Nor did he make much attempt to stand up to those he disagreed with. Whoever controlled the King controlled the country; throughout Henry’s reign, therefore, the government of England was carried out according to the wishes of whichever faction was able at any given time to influence him.

Few kings can have inherited so many problems: a kingdom near bankruptcy, a Council divided by factions, a legal system corrupted by local magnates and their armed retainers, an aristocracy that was growing ever mightier and losing its integrity, and a war that could not be won but which was draining the country of its resources. None of these problems was Henry’s fault, but his failure to address them effectively made their escalation his responsibility.

Waurin wrote: ‘The King was neither intelligent enough nor experienced enough to manage a kingdom such as England.’ Although Henry’s chamberlain, Tunstall, says that he did spend a good deal of time ‘diligently treating of the affairs of his realm with his Council’, he left much of the business of government to whichever faction was in power, and when he did assert control it was sometimes only to make serious mistakes. Lord Chief Justice Fortescue, who remained faithful to Henry in prosperity and dire adversity, was yet a realist when it came to assessing his sovereign’s limitations, and in his treatise
The Governance of England
he stressed
the need for a strong and united Council to protect the King from his own follies and extravagance, especially when it came to the profligate giving away, or alienation, of crown lands.

People inevitably compared Henry VI to his father, usually to his detriment, but criticism of him was rarely voiced out loud. Because of his virtues and his inherent goodness, even his most unruly nobles respected him, and the universal reverence for an anointed monarch acted as a brake on those who might have rebelled against him. Those who did rebel, in the cause of good government, aimed their complaints at the nobles who controlled the King, not at Henry himself. His favourites naturally shielded him from such complaints, while Henry himself was inordinately sensitive to any implied criticism of himself and his abilities as king. Those who dared openly to take him to task for his shortcomings – Gloucester in the early years, York later on – provoked in him deep suspicion of their motives. To such men he could be – and was – vindictive and dangerous.

A king’s most important function was to protect and defend his subjects, therefore he had to be an efficient warrior and general, capable of planning campaigns and winning battles. Henry VI was the complete antithesis of this, categorically refusing to take the field against his fellow Christians. He did not share the enthusiasm of his magnates for martial endeavour, and they in turn were shocked and astonished that the son of Henry V should display such marked lack of interest in military glory. Although Henry rode at the head of his armies during the Wars of the Roses, he remained by his standard while battles were fought and awaited the outcome, leaving the planning of strategy to his commanders. He never fought any campaigns in France, and therefore earned the dubious distinction of being the first English king since the Norman Conquest of 1066 never to have led an army in battle against a foreign foe.

Conversely, although he desired peace with France on his terms, he made little effort to endear himself to his French subjects, and never set foot in France after 1431. This was a fatal policy in an age when monarchical government was expected to be carried out on a personal level.

Unlike Richard II, who had sought peace with France because he had feared the effect of war upon the Crown’s finances, Henry VI’s wish for peace was inspired by his piety and his distaste for the carnage and waste of war, and above all by the views of his uncle, Cardinal Beaufort. To pursue a peace policy in the current political climate was a bold move but, predictably, it was not at all popular in England. Fired by Henry V’s victories and the acquisition of an
empire in France, the vast majority of his English subjects were greedy for more conquests and more glory, and were convinced that, given the right strategies, the present dismal trend of the war could be reversed. Their view was that the only person who could possibly benefit from a peace policy was Charles VII. Already it had created divisions at court, which could only be to Charles’s advantage, for the English magnates now preferred to fight each other in the Council chamber than confront the enemy on the field in France.

Henry VI’s court was a dull place compared with the later courts of the Yorkist and Tudor sovereigns. Like all mediaeval courts it was itinerant, moving from palace to palace throughout the year so that royal homes recently vacated could be cleaned and their larders restocked.

Westminster was the chief royal residence and the administrative centre of government. Within the palace were to be found the Exchequer, the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of King’s Bench, but it was also a luxurious royal home. Visitors gazed in wonder at the beautiful St Stephen’s Chapel, decorated in 1350–61 with murals depicting the family of Edward III, and at Henry Ill’s Painted Chamber, the walls of which were covered with frescos of scenes from the Bible. Then there was the Star Chamber, built by Edward III and so called because of its ceiling, which was painted as blue as the night sky and patterned with gilded stars. The private chambers of the royal family were sumptuous indeed, with beds hung with cloth of gold and satin, and made up with deep feather mattresses, pillows embroidered with the arms of England, and coverlets furred with ermine. The whole effect of the state apartments was one of magnificent colour and splendour, calculated to impress foreigners and so convince them of the wealth and might of the island kingdom.

Westminster was really an amalgam of three palaces: the Great Palace, which was the official seat of government; the Privy Palace, which housed the royal apartments; and the Prince’s Palace, where the royal family normally lodged. These were all stone buildings, probably two storeys in height. Courtiers and servants are thought to have been accommodated in adjacent timbered dwellings. In front of the palace stood thirteen stone statues of the kings of England, from Edward the Confessor to Richard II, the latter having commissioned them. Richard had also erected a new gateway with marble pillars and a campanile.