The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - FREEMIUM： Epochs #200

00:00:00.240 Hello and welcome back to Epochs, where it's the big two hundo, the 200th episode, and how

00:00:07.040 appropriate it is, how apt, how fitting and right, how apropos that I should be talking

00:00:12.800 about one of the greatest stories that the English monarchy ever created. That is the

00:00:18.200 story of Henry V, the dread sovereign, good King Howe. I almost feel like I'm not worthy,

00:00:26.220 as many have done before me, including Shakespeare himself, thought that the story was so great

00:00:32.440 that it would be difficult to tell. Well, I shall endeavour nonetheless. So one of the first things

00:00:38.140 to say about Henry V is that his story is so bound up with Shakespeare, Shakespeare's play,

00:00:44.500 Henry V, and he also appears in the earlier plays of Henry IV with Falstaff and all that sort of thing.

00:00:49.620 But in the play, Henry V, it's so sort of famous, especially to sort of the English or British mind,

00:00:54.600 that it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. Of course, here in my story, as your friendly

00:01:00.360 neighbourhood history bro, as your humble narrator, I shall be talking about the real history,

00:01:06.120 of course. Here or there, I might actually quote from the Bard. In fact, I'll start by quoting from

00:01:12.940 the opening of the play, Henry V, and it gives you a sense of that feeling for sort of how great the

00:01:18.580 story is. So the chorus, the narrator for Shakespeare's play opens by saying this,

00:01:23.320 Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the greatest heaven of invention, i.e. I'm going to

00:01:28.860 tell you a story, but you're going to need to use your imagination. A kingdom for a stage,

00:01:33.900 princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene, i.e. we almost need actual kings to play the

00:01:41.400 parts in this play. That's how great it is. Then should warlike Harry, that's the king, Henry V,

00:01:46.800 warlike Harry, like himself, assume the port of Mars. Mars, the god of war. He has become the god

00:01:54.660 of war. And at his heels, leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire crouch for employment.

00:02:01.660 But pardon, gentles all, the flat, unraised spirit that hath dared on this unworthy scaffold,

00:02:07.800 this unworthy scaffold, we're not worthy, to bring forth so great an object. Can this cockpit hold

00:02:15.120 the vasty fields of France? Or may we cram within this wooden O, the Globe Theatre on the South Bank

00:02:21.420 in London, the very casks that did affright the heir of Agincourt? Oh, pardon, since a crooked figure

00:02:28.020 may attest in little place a million, and let us ciphers of this great account on your imaginary

00:02:34.940 forces work. Again, you have to use your imagination quite often. Suppose within the girdle of these

00:02:41.040 walls are now confined two mighty monarchies, whose high up rear-ed and abutted fronts the perilous

00:02:47.900 narrow ocean parts asunder. Peace out our interfections with your thoughts. Within a thousand

00:02:53.460 parts divide one man, and make imaginary prurescence. Think when we talk of horses, that you see they're

00:02:59.840 printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth. For it is your thoughts that now must deck

00:03:04.800 out kings, carry them here and there, jumping over times, turning the accomplishments of many years

00:03:10.900 into an hourglass. For the witch supplier, admit me, chorus, to this history, who, prologue-like,

00:03:17.200 your humble patience, pray gentle to hear, kindly to judge, our play." End quote. Okay, before I get

00:03:23.940 stuck into the early life of Henry, this will have to be more than one episode, of course, just to mention

00:03:29.280 some of the sources, because we actually know quite a bit about the life and times of Henry V. He's sort

00:03:35.840 of, it's fair to say, truly in the light of history. For earlier kings, for William the Conqueror, for

00:03:40.940 example, we know relatively little. There's the pinprick of light shines upon his age, and we get

00:03:47.080 small scenes here and there, and the rest is all darkness. But by the early 15th century, we have a

00:03:52.180 fair bit. It's not quite in the full light of history, I'd say. It's not like the 17th century, where

00:03:56.960 we've got lots of letters and journals and accounts from both sides all over the place,

00:04:01.480 and embarrassment of riches. It's not quite that, but we do have a fair bit. For example,

00:04:05.640 the rolls, the royal rolls, all the accounting. We know how a lot of money was spent, you know,

00:04:11.160 down to the penny, a fraction of a penny often, and you can reconstruct or infer loads from that.

00:04:16.600 But we also have a number of histories. There were two histories written in the 1430s. One is the

00:04:22.320 Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti, The Life and Deeds of Henry V, often known as the Pseudo Elmham,

00:04:28.920 because it was thought it might have been written by Thomas Elmham, a monk of St Augustine's Abbey in

00:04:33.620 Canterbury, that appears to draw on information from the Lord Walter Hungerford, who was actually

00:04:38.240 around at the time. So a good source, really. The other one is the Vita Henrici Quinti, The Life of

00:04:43.380 Henry V, which draws upon Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who was one of Henry's younger brothers.

00:04:48.060 There's also The First English Life of King Henry V, written a bit later, in the very,

00:04:53.200 very early 16th century. There's the Tudor chronicler Edward Hall, who wrote The Union of

00:04:57.940 the Two Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York. And then there's Hollingshed's Chronicles,

00:05:02.760 which is a collaborative work, and that seems scholars have decided that Shakespeare probably

00:05:08.260 drew heavily from Hollingshed. And then there are other bits and bobs here and there,

00:05:11.920 some French accounts and things. But it is a truly great story. Most historians, until very recently,

00:05:16.440 thought of Henry V as possibly our greatest king. In terms of martial prowess, he's certainly one of

00:05:22.780 the greatest, up there with Edward I or Edward III. Even K.B. Macfarlane, a very eminent historian,

00:05:30.320 who's not known for his breathless admiration of monarchs, said that all round, Henry V was,

00:05:35.720 I think, the greatest man that ever ruled England. So let's just jump straight in then to the earliest

00:05:40.820 portions of Henry's life. I shall have to go back over some of the ground I did in the last episode.

00:05:45.560 There was a reason why the episode I did on Henry IV was pretty much an overview, because a lot of it,

00:05:51.820 most of it, the last years of it, I'm going to go over again in a lot more detail here. But from the

00:05:57.060 perspective of the young Henry. So let's try and get into his head. Let's try and find out what kind

00:06:03.420 of person he was or what his formative years were like, the world in which he was born and grew up in.

00:06:08.480 So the first thing to say is that he is a member of the royal family, a senior member, but definitely

00:06:14.420 not, absolutely not in the line of succession. He was never meant to be king. There were many people

00:06:20.420 ahead of him. So, you know, how does that happen? How did that come about that he does in fact become

00:06:24.140 king? So everyone knows what it's like when you're a child and you realise your sort of position in the

00:06:29.820 world, when you realise your social standing. I mean, I for myself, you know, when I was under 10,

00:06:35.380 realised that I was born into a poor working class family. We weren't exactly dirt poor,

00:06:40.240 never went hungry or shoeless, but had no money and certainly didn't own any land, no titles,

00:06:45.560 not even close, but had sort of literary pretensions and me and my siblings were expected to go to

00:06:50.620 university. And then we'd have to work really hard for the rest of our lives to make ends meet.

00:06:54.800 That was, that's my lot in life. That was the hand I was dealt at birth. So for Henry V,

00:07:00.280 you would have been told as a small child that your great grandfather, who's now dead,

00:07:04.080 used to be the king, a great king, Edward III, who ruled for a very long time and was hugely

00:07:09.660 successful. The most successful king in a long time had smashed the French up many times in France.

00:07:16.180 And so this great shining king was your grandfather, great grandfather. And now your uncle is the king,

00:07:22.240 that is Richard II. And your father is his cousin, they're about the same age. And your grandfather

00:07:27.600 is John of Gaunt, who at the time was one of, arguably at certain points, the most powerful

00:07:33.820 man in the country, more powerful than the king sometimes at various points. So you're a senior

00:07:39.480 member of the royal family, very important, but nowhere near the throne itself. But your uncle is

00:07:44.820 king and your father is the Duke of Lancaster, the Earl of Derby, one of the most important lords or earls

00:07:51.480 or dukes in the whole country. And you're his eldest son. So you're absolutely right at the pinnacle

00:07:56.860 of society, not in line to the throne, expected to inherit great things. You will become when you grow

00:08:03.020 up, one of the most, one of the richest and most important men in the country. Your uncle is king

00:08:07.700 and your grandfather is super, super powerful, but sometimes out of favour. Your grandfather is

00:08:13.640 walking a tightrope, a political tightrope, and your father himself has to sort of keep his head down

00:08:18.100 and play the game and be a good boy. But the king himself has got all sorts of political troubles

00:08:23.240 and even views many of his closest men, including your own father and grandfather, as enemies

00:08:28.460 sometimes. Certainly people to be wary of. Okay, so today I'm going to read from Anne Currie, historian

00:08:35.320 Anne Currie, who I think does the best job of painting the picture of the early life, the childhood

00:08:39.620 of Henry V. So I'll be reading from her. And her book is actually called Henry V, Playboy Prince

00:08:44.680 to Warrior King. So before I actually start reading, just to mention again, there's this

00:08:48.860 idea that Shakespeare plays out, which most historians think now isn't really all that

00:08:53.220 accurate, that when Henry was young, or before he actually became king, he was something like

00:08:59.300 a playboy, that he slept around, he drunk wildly, he had very baldy friends, like John

00:09:05.500 Falstaff, and that he was carefree and a bit of a tear away. And but once he became king,

00:09:11.040 he put all those childish things aside and became super serious, super pious, and super

00:09:16.760 warlike, a dread sovereign. Well, we now think that that's just not true. It's not really

00:09:22.440 particularly accurate. He was always a very serious sort of person, had no real choice.

00:09:27.760 The maelstrom that he was thrown into meant that he had to grow up very, very quickly.

00:09:32.040 I mean, by the time he's 12 or 13, he's kind of, well, he is involved in things. By the time

00:09:37.000 he's 15 or 16, certainly involved in things. Okay, so Anne Currie says this, quote,

00:09:42.420 according to an astrological treatise written during his own reign, Henry V, or as he was

00:09:47.720 then known, the young Lord Henry, came into the world at 11.22am on the morning of the

00:09:53.400 16th of September 1386, born in a tower above the gatehouse of Monmouth Carson in the Welsh

00:09:59.540 Marches. Later historians misreading a financial record gave him a fictitious short-lived elder

00:10:05.420 brother, but there is no doubt that he was in fact the firstborn of six to Henry Bolingbroke,

00:10:10.800 Earl of Derby, who at that point can have little idea of the path that would lead him to ascend

00:10:15.840 the English throne as King Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king, and his wife, Mary de Bohel,

00:10:22.300 then some 16 or 17 years old. So one of the first things to say there. Henry had three other

00:10:27.540 brothers, so there's these four boys. His younger brothers are Thomas, Duke of Clarence,

00:10:32.520 John, the Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester, each of which become important and

00:10:37.700 play their role, some of them after Henry himself is dead. But okay, so remember, Clarence, Bedford,

00:10:42.600 and Gloucester, they're his younger brothers. Usually it's a problem to have so many princes

00:10:46.360 like that, that they would vie for power and undermine each other and even kill each other

00:10:51.140 and things. In the Wars of the Roses in the next generation, we'll see exactly that sort of thing

00:10:55.140 play out. But here, although they don't always entirely get on and see eye to eye exactly,

00:10:59.920 the three younger brothers do all look up to Henry ultimately and do as he asks, certainly by the time

00:11:05.460 he actually becomes king. So bear that in mind, they don't turn on each other. So that's lucky.

00:11:10.700 A bit like Hannibal and the Lion's Brood, all the brothers do work more or less essentially in use.

00:11:17.100 Okay, Currie goes on. Henry V's birthplace was owned by his grandfather, John of Gaunt,

00:11:21.840 Duke of Lancaster, the third surviving son of King Edward III, and a major political force

00:11:27.480 in the reign of Richard II. Monmouth was among the many lands and castles which had come to Gaunt

00:11:32.860 thanks to his marriage to Blanche, heiress of the Great Earldom and subsequently Duchy of Lancaster.

00:11:39.360 As Gaunt's first grandson, Henry was the heir presumptive to this great duchy, the largest and

00:11:44.960 most valuable landholding in England other than that of the Crown, with major holdings in Lancashire

00:11:50.220 and the Midlands, but tentacles in East Anglia, South Wales and the Welsh marches or the borderlands.

00:11:56.920 An inheritance from his maternal ancestors could also be expected. Henry's mother was co-heiress

00:12:02.380 with her sister Eleanor of their father, Humphrey de Bowen, Earl of Hereford and Essex, and the

00:12:08.180 expectation was that their inheritance would be divided between their families. This prompted Richard II's

00:12:13.820 granting of the title of Duke of Hereford to Bolingbroke, that's our Henry's father of course,

00:12:18.860 another title his eldest son would expect to inherit. So as I said, not just a senior member

00:12:24.600 of the royal family, but arguably his line of the most powerful, richest ones, but not, definitely not

00:12:30.820 in the direct line of succession. Ahead of young Lord Henry then, was a path that would lead him to

00:12:36.180 becoming one of England's highest ranking noblemen. As a member of a collateral line of the royal family,

00:12:41.580 it was likely that at the age of majority, 21, when you're a child, it said that you're in your

00:12:47.500 minority. Once you become a man, legally, you're in your majority, so bear that in mind. So at the age

00:12:53.600 of majority, 21, or at marriage, he would have been given a title and a landed endowment, even in advance

00:13:00.020 of coming into his full inheritance of the Duchess of Lancaster and Hereford. As a peer of the realm,

00:13:05.940 he would have been summoned to Parliament and involved in national and local politics and governance.

00:13:10.100 He would have served in royal armies and embassies, and perhaps, following in his father's footsteps,

00:13:15.980 participated in crusade. What we can glean of Henry's childhood from the financial records of

00:13:20.660 his father and grandfather, reveals an upbringing commensurate with his future prospects. The earliest

00:13:26.800 known is the purchase of baby clothing, a demi-gown, for him at the age of one. So these are details we

00:13:33.300 just don't get in centuries before this. Again, we're emerging into the full light of history here.

00:13:37.980 As was customary, he spent the first five years of his life with his mother, but he also had a wet

00:13:43.020 nurse, Joan Wirren, whom he remembered when he became king, giving her a generous annuity.

00:13:49.120 Like all aristocratic families, Lord Henry and his relatives and servants moved frequently between

00:13:54.120 their various houses and estates. During his early years, we find him with his maternal grandmother,

00:13:59.220 Joan Fitzallan, Countess of Hereford, at her house at Bitham in Lincolnshire, as well as frequenting his

00:14:06.020 paternal grandfather's castles at Leicester and Kenilworth, which came to be one of his favourite

00:14:11.240 places. As king, he would return there often, even building a special retreat for himself in its

00:14:16.360 grounds. Seven books of Latin grammar bound together were brought for him in London when he was eight

00:14:21.640 years old, around the age at which his formal education would have begun. Later evidence indicates that

00:14:27.300 Henry had a good knowledge of Latin and was conversant in French. Indeed, he appears a

00:14:31.820 relatively bookish king, although the story that he attended Queen's College, Oxford in 1398 is

00:14:37.880 apocryphal. So again, the pictures of a serious, more of a serious boy rather than this runaway,

00:14:44.980 tearaway, uncontrollable, libertine, drunkard womaniser. The evidence isn't really there for that,

00:14:51.400 let's be perfectly honest. Other purchases of the 1390s reveal different aspects of a noble upbringing

00:14:56.240 as he moved towards his teens. Swords, saddles and armour, a chain for his greyhounds and the

00:15:01.900 assigning of a group of several to his care and tutelage, which included Peter de Melbourne,

00:15:07.780 a highly trusted life retainer of both Gaunt and his son. So once again, the details of the records

00:15:13.280 go down to even the buying of a chain to chain up some greyhounds. Remarkable detail for, you know,

00:15:18.880 600 plus years ago. In August 1396, shortly before his 10th birthday, the purchase of saddles with silver

00:15:25.640 guilt fittings, quote, for the journey to Calais, quote, reveals that he had crossed the Dover

00:15:30.280 Strait to attend the marriage of England's king, Richard II, to Isabella, seven-year-old daughter

00:15:36.620 of King Charles VI of France, a union which was intended to cement a 30-year truce with France

00:15:42.620 and facilitate the negotiation of a full peace. So once again, remember, we're still in the middle

00:15:48.340 of the Hundred Years' War, or not in the middle of it, but the Hundred Years' War is still going on,

00:15:52.200 and the Hundred Years' War, no, is much longer than 100 years. So the glory days of Crecy and Poitier

00:15:59.020 are long ago, 50, 60 years ago, but the war is still going on, on and off, shall we say.

00:16:04.220 During the negotiations, there had been mention of Henry marrying Isabella's younger sister,

00:16:08.720 Michelle, then still only a one-year-old, another option being the daughter of the Duke of Brittany,

00:16:14.180 also aged under five. Even if not an active participant in such discussions,

00:16:18.340 we can assume that Henry was already aware of the issues of Anglo-French relations which were to

00:16:24.000 loom so large in his adult life. A year later, he was exposed to national government, so very young,

00:16:30.040 forced to grow up very, very quickly. Robes were provided for him and his eldest brother,

00:16:34.640 Thomas, for the Parliament at which their father was created Duke of Hereford on the 29th of September,

00:16:40.280 1397. Whether or not Henry heard his father make in the Parliament allegations of treason against

00:16:46.080 Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, in response to Mowbray's warning that the king intended to destroy

00:16:51.300 both Bolingbroke and himself, or whether he was present in Coventry in October 1398, when the

00:16:56.980 resulting duel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray was due to take place, is not known. But he undoubtedly

00:17:02.140 felt the effect of Richard II's decision to abort the duel and send both men into exile. Mowbray for life,

00:17:09.120 Henry's father for 10 years. Okay, so that's a massive thing in the young Henry's life. He's like 12

00:17:14.960 odd years old. He's about 12, and his father is completely disgraced and exiled for 10 years. But

00:17:22.080 still, as mentioned in the last episode, Richard II actually takes all the estates that his father

00:17:27.620 had, takes them for himself. So sort of, well, disinheriting the young Henry. Nominally, just for

00:17:33.700 10 years, but everyone knows it would have probably been forever, or it's at least an extremely sharp fall

00:17:40.120 from grace that his grandfather, John of Gaunt, is in foreign lands and essentially keeping his head

00:17:45.320 down. And now his father has been exiled. Mentioned the ill-fated duel there, where the king

00:17:52.300 had decreed that Mowbray and Bolingbroke should duel, perhaps to the death. But at the last moment,

00:17:58.420 Richard calls it off and says, no, you don't have to actually fight. We don't actually need

00:18:01.820 a trial by combat. But you're both exiled and Mowbray forever. So Henry goes from, our young

00:18:09.960 Henry, goes from a shining, a possible shining future, sort of, you know, you would have thought

00:18:14.560 guaranteed, as long as he lives, to be one of the most important men in England, to suddenly

00:18:19.360 now just the son of a disinherited and exiled ex-noble. So terrible. But the young Henry,

00:18:26.240 again, only about 12, himself isn't forced into exile with his father. In fact, Richard,

00:18:31.520 the King Richard II, his uncle, keeps him close, keeps him in his own household. Many people have

00:18:37.340 wondered what their relationship was actually like. I've said it, all this is in the full light

00:18:41.900 of history. Well, not in the full, full light of history. There's no real accounts of exactly what

00:18:46.620 their relationship was like, or what they talked about, or how Richard saw the young Henry, whether

00:18:51.780 he was a type of hostage, or whether he actually liked or even loved him as a nephew, whether he kept

00:18:58.240 him under his wing, and thought of him as some sort of surrogate son, or whether he was just a

00:19:03.240 hostage. We don't know. We don't, we're not really sure. There's lots of conjecture on that. Curry

00:19:08.300 continues. Equally disruptive for the now 12-year-old Henry was the death, four months later, on the 3rd or

00:19:14.300 4th of February, 1399, of his grandfather, John of Gaunt. Richard II decided that the exiled

00:19:19.920 Bolingbroke should not be allowed to seek his inheritance of the Duchy of Lancaster until he

00:19:25.020 had served the full term of his exile. This placed the boy in a potentially difficult position

00:19:30.380 financially, since he could no longer be supported by his father or grandfather. That's that fall from

00:19:35.560 grace I was talking about. Yet the king was keen not to disparage the young man. Within three weeks of

00:19:41.040 his grandfather's death, Richard had granted him £500 per annum from royal revenues, although he seems

00:19:47.880 not to have come to court, but remained in the care of Peter de Melbourne. In early May 1399, he was

00:19:54.760 allocated further funds towards armour and equipment for the king's expedition to Ireland. So there was

00:20:00.280 trouble in Ireland. The Irish were revolting, and the king decided he would go over there and sort the

00:20:05.920 whole situation out with fire and sword. A real blunder in hindsight, strategically. So Henry was going on

00:20:12.440 the king's expedition to Ireland, which Richard had decided he should accompany, and on which de

00:20:17.600 Melbourne also served. According to Jean Cretan, a French observer who later wrote an account of the

00:20:22.880 Irish expedition and of Richard's disposition later in the year, the king dubbed Henry a knight during

00:20:28.980 the campaign, just before an anticipated engagement with the Irish rebels. So once again, forced to grow

00:20:34.800 up very quick. If you're created a knight, you're expected on some level to be acting as a man. I mean,

00:20:40.280 we live in an infantilised world now, but in the pre-modern age and the ancient world, or lots of

00:20:46.600 cultures even to this day, when you're about 14 or 15 or so, you're expected to start behaving like a

00:20:52.500 man. So certainly our Henry here doesn't enjoy much of a childhood. The story goes on. The campaign was

00:20:59.140 Henry's first experience of warfare. Even if we do not know whether he actually participated in action,

00:21:04.120 it was common for noble boys to be taken on campaign once they were 12. But did Richard have

00:21:09.740 an ulterior motive in taking Henry to Ireland, holding him as a hostage to ensure his father's

00:21:15.400 good behaviour as an exile? If this had been the king's intention, then the plan failed.

00:21:20.360 Bolingbroke took the opportunity of Richard's absence in Ireland to return to England in late

00:21:24.860 June, ostensibly in pursuit of his Duchy of Lancaster inheritance, but in effect to mount a challenge

00:21:30.800 to the throne. Richard was forced to come back to England, but before he did so, he ordered the young

00:21:36.240 Henry to be imprisoned in Trimcastle, 30 miles to the northwest of Dublin. By the time Richard arrived

00:21:41.840 home through Wales, Bolingbroke had taken control of much of eastern and central England. He managed

00:21:47.340 by the 9th of August to reach Chester, previously a major centre of Richard's power. Richard had no choice

00:21:53.180 but to agree to negotiations, which led to his surrender and being held prisoner. Around the 20th of

00:21:59.180 August, Bolingbroke led him from Chester to London. By the end of September, Richard had been forced to

00:22:04.720 abdicate and Bolingbroke had seized the throne. He had already ordered his eldest son to be brought

00:22:09.800 back from Ireland. A shipmaster, Henry Dryhurst, was paid just over £13 for sailing from Chester to

00:22:16.940 Dublin and back to collect him. The unusual circumstances of the usurpation and the change to the

00:22:22.540 young Henry's fortunes as a result fascinated contemporary observers and triggered speculation on the

00:22:28.580 conversations that might have taken place between himself and Richard in Ireland when the news of

00:22:33.900 Bolingbroke's invasion broke. So, a bit of a roller coaster for the young Henry then. He goes from being

00:22:38.880 an extremely important member of the royal family to a completely disgraced one and disinherited one

00:22:44.620 to now, well, a Prince of Wales in waiting, quite possibly a future king. So, a real roller coaster

00:22:51.920 there over just the course of like two years or less than two years. The English chronicler,

00:22:56.520 Thomas Walsingham, who was alive at the time and saw and heard all these things himself,

00:23:00.820 continuing the chronicling tradition of the Benedictine house of St Albans, imagined Richard

00:23:06.260 asking Henry, why has your father done this to me? I grieve for your person in that you will perhaps

00:23:11.800 be deprived of your inheritance because of this unfortunate behaviour of your father. Henry's

00:23:16.760 reply, though he was but a boy, was not childish. Gracious king and lord, I am truly much aggrieved at these

00:23:23.540 rumours, but it is obvious to your lordship in my estimation that I am innocent of my father's

00:23:28.960 actions. This pro-Lancastrian tale improved in the telling, serving to emphasise both Richard's

00:23:34.880 deposition and Henry V's greatness as preordained. In both of the Latin lives of Henry V of the 1430s,

00:23:42.820 Richard was made to foretell the future glory of Henry as expressed in the pseudo-Elmham.

00:23:47.580 So these are supposed to be the words of Richard II. We have heard that our own England is destined

00:23:52.940 to give birth to a certain Prince Henry, who will be of exceptional grandeur in his deeds,

00:23:58.660 of rare and immense military prowess, with outstanding titles of fame, and who will shine

00:24:03.660 with prosperity throughout the whole world. We are of the infallible opinion that this very

00:24:08.180 same Henry is that man. Anne Currie goes on. The 13-year-old Henry had played no active part in

00:24:14.000 the deposition of Richard, but he was a beneficiary of it, and his life was irrevocably changed by it.

00:24:20.400 He was probably among those knighted by his father on the eve of the coronation, which was the 12th

00:24:25.200 of October 1399. He certainly carried the sword of justice at the ceremony itself, symbolising his

00:24:30.700 significant place in the new dynasty. Two days later, on the 15th of October, his creation as Prince of

00:24:36.780 Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, was approved by the Lords and the Commons in Parliament,

00:24:41.800 who also expressed their wish to accept him as rightful heir to the throne on his father's death.

00:24:47.660 Henry IV, enthroned, placed a coronet on the head of Henry, and placed a golden ring on his finger,

00:24:53.620 and put a golden staff in his hand, and then kissed him. Henry, the Prince of Wales, was then led to the

00:24:59.100 seat, ordained and assigned to him in Parliament by reason of the Principality. Because of his father's

00:25:04.600 need to secure his dynasty in the wake of a usurpation, Henry is the first eldest son of an English

00:25:10.160 monarch known to have had a formal investiture as Prince of Wales in Parliament, and ended up holding

00:25:15.920 a wider range of titles than any previous heir to the English throne. On the 23rd of October, he was

00:25:21.460 made Duke of Aquitaine, as a means of confirming the new dynasty's commitment to English interests in

00:25:27.380 south-west France. On the 10th of November, he was also created Duke of Lancaster, his father having

00:25:32.660 decided that as king, he could not hold this title himself, although he continued to retain direct

00:25:38.060 control of the revenues of both duchies. So titles being heaped upon the young Henry now. Most of all,

00:25:44.940 of course, the Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne. But a massive landholder besides that. So now,

00:25:50.660 assuming his father can keep the throne, he has been the beneficiary of a massive promotion. The fates are

00:25:57.040 smiling upon him at this point. The young Henry had been transformed from a landless and potentially

00:26:01.860 defenceless prisoner in Ireland into a royal prince with substantial territorial interests. Yet just as

00:26:07.940 he benefited from the trappings of royalty he had acquired, so he shared in the vulnerability of the

00:26:13.060 new regime. The first anti-Lancastrian plot came only weeks later, which came on the 6th of January 1400,

00:26:19.420 and the most high-profile victim was the prince himself, who along with others in the royal household

00:26:24.340 allegedly showed signs of an attempt to poison them. The new regime's response was uncompromising.

00:26:30.620 The leading nobles involved in the plot were put to death, and Richard II was murdered in the hope of

00:26:36.020 curtailing any further threats. Again, a big moment to murder the king, the rightful anointed king,

00:26:42.700 is massive. Whether he was, you know, whether violence was done to him, or whether he was just

00:26:46.860 allowed to starve to death, we will probably never know. But it's a big stain on the new dynasty,

00:26:53.160 one which Henry IV and Henry V, and going in generations further into the Wars of the Roses,

00:26:58.420 can never really be wiped away. Before long, however, the king faced hostility from his

00:27:03.640 erstwhile friends Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and his son Sir Henry Percy, known as Hotspur

00:27:10.360 for his valour, who had been key supporters of his usurpation in 1399. Disappointed that the king had

00:27:16.820 not rewarded them adequately during the first few years of his reign, they rebelled, bringing Henry IV to

00:27:22.220 battle at Shrewsbury in July 1403. Although Hotspur and his uncle Thomas Percy were killed, the Earl of

00:27:28.980 Northumberland was subsequently pardoned, only to stir up northern risings in 1405 and 1408. Both ended

00:27:36.020 in defeat for Percy, ladies, but these actions heightened Lancastrian fears. The 1405 rising prompted

00:27:42.980 an excessive reaction of the king in ordering the execution of Archbishop Scrope of York for his support

00:27:48.900 for the rebels. The rebellion of Owen Glendower in Wales, which began in the autumn of 1400 as a

00:27:54.960 personal dispute with his neighbour, Reginald Grey, but which soon escalated into a campaign of Welsh

00:28:00.100 independence, also became linked to a threat to the Lancastrian right to the throne. In 1403, there

00:28:06.520 emerged a plan to divide the realm between Glendower, the Perses, and the young Edmund Mortimer, Earl of

00:28:11.900 March, the descendant of the second son of Edward III. So there's another important thing to stress,

00:28:17.580 that if the rightful king, the now killed rightful king, Richard II, was the son of the black prince,

00:28:24.000 the son of the eldest son of Edward III, the rightful king, then if Richard II didn't have

00:28:29.640 any children, which he didn't, then it should pass down then to the second son, the black prince's

00:28:35.680 next brother, which was Lionel of Antwerp, the Duke of Clarence, and his children, who are the earls

00:28:42.340 of March. So Henry V and his father, Bolingbroke, and his father, John of Gaunt, they're not in line,

00:28:48.320 it's the earls of March that should be next, but they were just pushed aside, and the third son

00:28:53.280 of Edward III and his descendants take up the throne. Well, again, foreshadowing in the later

00:28:59.120 episodes I'll do, obviously, all about the Wars of the Roses. This is the sticking point, or just

00:29:03.640 rather the House of Lancaster, it's just not the right family to have taken the throne. Okay,

00:29:08.520 Dan Currie says, technically, this Mortimer line had a better claim to the throne than Henry IV,

00:29:14.100 who was descended from the third son of Edward III. In time, Henry IV also began to suspect the

00:29:19.300 loyalty of Edward, Duke of York, heir to the fourth son of Edward III. So Edward III definitely suffered

00:29:24.980 from having too many ambitious sons. There were further anxieties for the new dynasty. Henry IV's

00:29:30.860 usurpation undermined, although it did not break, the 1396 truce with France. The French,

00:29:37.120 ruled by an increasingly ill king, were too divided among themselves to drive out the English from

00:29:42.660 their French lands. But there was nonetheless major insecurity in the Channel for English shipping in

00:29:48.560 the face of officially condoned French piracy, as well as an open war in Gascony, the last area held

00:29:54.300 by the English in southwest France. A much more serious military problem was the insurgency in Wales,

00:29:59.780 which dragged on for many years. This insecurity, both internal and external, brought with it financial

00:30:05.560 difficulties. As a self-made usurping king, Henry IV's authority was weak in terms of persuading

00:30:11.320 Parliament to agree taxation, and in being able to choose how to spend his income. As I said in the

00:30:16.540 last episode, if you remember, Henry IV, Henry Bolingbroke, had sort of endless problems with

00:30:21.480 his Parliament and raising money, and had to be subservient to them, at least marginally, at least

00:30:27.840 every now and again, sort of had to do what he was told by them in order to keep solvent. These uncertain,

00:30:33.400 conflict-ridden years were also those of Prince Henry's royal apprenticeship. It was a time of

00:30:39.400 almost constant military mobilisation, something which is especially significant given that Henry

00:30:44.280 V would spend virtually his entire reign in active warfare. Indeed, he knew no other way to rule.

00:30:50.160 Henry, Prince of Wales, had a longer military formation as heir to the throne than any monarch

00:30:55.340 since Edward I. His knowledge of English military systems, his service in arms in Wales alongside

00:31:00.720 several of those who were to accompany him to France later, and his appreciation of the importance

00:31:05.840 of discipline, as well as of the tactical value of archers, all stemmed from the experience he gained

00:31:11.320 during this period. In the early years of his father's reign, the prince's personality and outlook

00:31:16.160 remained distinct, his actions informed by the circumstances of the new and fragile regime.

00:31:21.480 His creation as Duke of Aquitaine in 1399 was made with a view to sending the teenage prince at the head

00:31:28.380 of an army to this potentially problematic part of the English royal inheritance. But the parliament

00:31:33.580 of 1399 urged his father to reconsider, and they said,

00:31:37.900 The prince should not leave the realm at such a tender age until peace has been more securely

00:31:42.380 established within the kingdom. Henry IV duly followed parliament's advice.

00:31:45.920 When, the following August, he invaded Scotland with a 13,000 strong army, Prince Henry received pay

00:31:52.720 for a company of 17 men-at-arms and 99 archers, but again probably stayed at home, having been appointed

00:31:59.800 keeper of the realm in his father's absence. So he's still only something like 14 years old, and yet he's

00:32:05.420 expected to hold the fort down for the whole of England while his father goes off and fights in Scotland.

00:32:11.980 So it's a bit of a baptism of fire. Once again, no real evidence that he's this flighty child who

00:32:19.420 can't be controlled or trusted. Must have been quite a serious person, very young, to be trusted with

00:32:24.980 that sort of thing, even nominally. Owen Glendale's Welsh rebellion erupted in September 1400 as Henry IV

00:32:31.400 was returning from his brief and inconclusive campaign in Scotland. The king duly headed for the Welsh

00:32:37.220 border, where he was joined around the middle of the month by Prince Henry. On the 16th of

00:32:41.780 September, perhaps deliberately choosing Prince Henry's birthday to make his announcement, Glendale

00:32:46.960 had declared himself Prince of Wales. It was therefore essential that the real prince be present

00:32:52.620 to put down the rebellion. Yet, as on subsequent occasions, for the sake of preservation of the

00:32:57.600 dynasty, Henry IV did not take his son with him on his chevalier, or raid, into Wales. Instead,

00:33:03.640 the prince was sent to his earldom of Chester with power to pardon those Welsh rebels prepared to

00:33:09.440 present themselves to him. Here he spent an extended period in the company of Sir Henry Percy, that is

00:33:14.940 the Hotspur, who was so trusted by Henry IV early in his reign that he was appointed Justicia, or Chief

00:33:20.900 Officer, of Chester in October 1399. The king clearly regarded him as a suitable military mentor for the

00:33:27.740 prince. The latter was with Hotspur at the siege of Conway in April 1401, after Welsh rebels had seized the

00:33:34.660 town. In the following month, the prince continued his military tutelage at the siege with Sir Hugh

00:33:40.320 de Spencer, a seasoned military campaigner and Lancastrian loyalist who had been appointed the

00:33:45.600 prince's governor in October 1399. It took six weeks for Conway to surrender to the prince, his first

00:33:51.900 exposure to the challenges of siege warfare, and not to be the last. In 1401 and 1402, still in his mid-teens,

00:33:59.740 Prince Henry was again in North Wales. He was learning all the time, and it was here that he

00:34:05.000 encountered the problems of dealing with guerrilla warfare in mountainous terrain. His baggage train

00:34:10.000 was attacked by the Welsh, and his possessions carried off. Occasionally, his father counselled him

00:34:15.260 in the practice of war, in one letter urging the prince to ensure the sound defence of the castle of

00:34:21.180 Harlech, on the grounds that it cost less to defend places than to recover them, advice he would take to

00:34:27.040 cart in his own conquest of Normandy. Many years later, that is, obviously. At the age of 16, he was given

00:34:32.860 his first formal command as royal deputy in Wales, with an army of 3,000 for the field as well as for

00:34:39.480 garrisons. He tried to run to ground the would-be prince, but Glendower melted into the hills, and Henry

00:34:45.720 contented himself with pillaging the Pretenders' lands. Writing to his father about this failure, the failure

00:34:52.080 to actually capture Glendower outright. He expressed fears that his troops might desert. With cash running

00:34:58.080 out, he had been forced to pawn his smaller jewels to pay them, and to order his men to carry oats with

00:35:04.420 them, since fodder was in such short supply within Wales. So bitter wars going on between the English

00:35:10.120 and the Welsh in Wales, or on the borderlands of Wales at least. The prince was soon to learn an even

00:35:15.500 harder lesson of the uncertainty of loyalties, one which surely remained with him all his life.

00:35:20.840 When the Perses turned against the king in 1403, several of those who had been in the prince's

00:35:26.820 intimate company in Chester and Wales now revealed themselves as enemies, bringing him and his father

00:35:32.240 to battle in order to effect a regime change, maybe even to make Hotspur king. These included not only

00:35:38.240 Hotspur himself, but his uncle Thomas Percy, who had been appointed the prince's governor at the death

00:35:43.860 of Despenser in late 1401, and who, in the words of one chronicler, slipped away from his prince's house

00:35:50.280 in secret and with much of his treasure. So a real stab in the back there. In the following year,

00:35:55.460 even the chamberlain of the prince's earldom of Chester defected to Glendower. The Battle of Shrewsbury

00:36:00.060 on the 21st of July 1403 was a hard-won victory for the king's army and for the prince, who had been

00:36:06.280 entrusted by his father with command of the vanguard, i.e. right at the very front of the battle.

00:36:11.080 You're 16 years old now, boy. You can go and fight right at the very front, in the most dangerous

00:36:16.300 place, and see blood and gore and slaughter, and maybe get killed yourself. Off you go. You're old

00:36:22.740 enough now. Edward III had given a similar command to his eldest son, the Black Prince, at the Battle

00:36:28.040 of Cressy in 1346, when the latter was 16 years old. So a very interesting parallel there. For the two

00:36:34.700 princes, this was a major military blooding, but it also served to encourage loyalty, confidence,

00:36:39.780 and perseverance in the troops of the royal army. At Shrewsbury, both armies had large numbers of

00:36:46.060 archers, using them to create an opening barrage to weaken their enemy's attack. While the larger

00:36:51.800 royal army was able to predominate, the prince was wounded by an arrow in the face. He gained

00:36:56.820 plaudits for his personal bravery, especially for encouraging his troops to fight on and for refusing

00:37:02.540 to leave the field. We have a fascinating record of the medical procedure he subsequently underwent

00:37:07.800 at Kenilworth Castle, at the hands of his surgeon, John Bradmore, to remove the arrowhead, which had

00:37:13.780 become lodged in the side of his face. Bradmore devised an instrument with a screw device that

00:37:19.200 enabled him to grip the arrow and pull it free. The surgeon helpfully drew a sketch of his instrument,

00:37:24.500 as well as describing the method used to cauterise the wound during and after treatment. Without Bradmore's

00:37:30.120 intervention, blood poisoning could easily have ensued. It is likely that the wound left Henry with a scar,

00:37:35.340 although this is never mentioned in any contemporary descriptions of him as prince or king. I mentioned

00:37:41.320 last time, and it bears repeating really, that that must have been a pretty serious wound when an

00:37:45.760 arrow goes bang right in your face and stuck in there and isn't pulled out for hours, possibly even

00:37:51.340 days, and he's still running around fighting. But it's, you know, it's a trauma. It's a physical and

00:37:56.600 you can only imagine psychological trauma. Some say that the famous portrait of Henry in profile

00:38:01.160 is to hide the side of his face that was scarred. We're not sure if that's true, but could possibly

00:38:06.480 be. It would have certainly left him with a scar. And he was just very, very lucky not to die of it

00:38:11.820 in the first instance in and of itself, but also not to get an infection or septicemia. Very,

00:38:16.540 very lucky. Of course, they had no concept of the germ theory of disease, no antibiotics. There

00:38:20.580 would have been absolutely no way to combat it if it had gone gangrenous or something. So yeah,

00:38:25.440 just luck. And Kerry goes on. Perhaps because of his injury, Prince Henry spent most of his time in 1404,

00:38:30.900 on the English side of the border, sending his senior captains on raids into Wales. These were

00:38:36.360 not enough to prevent Glendower's power reaching its height in 1405. Aided by French troops, because

00:38:42.700 of course, who marched with him as far as the Prince's base at Worcester and also took the castle

00:38:48.160 of Harlech. There, Glendower held a parliament in which, with considerable hubris, he announced his

00:38:53.920 intention to broker a peace between England and France that would include an acknowledgement of Welsh

00:38:58.960 independence. Such insults triggered Henry IV's plans for a big push by two 3,000 strong armies,

00:39:06.020 one from Hereford under his own command, the other from Chester under Prince Harry. This initiative

00:39:10.840 was thwarted by the need to respond to the rebellion of Archbishop Scrope, although the prince did not play

00:39:16.920 a personal role in its suppression. In January 1406, the prince was appointed lieutenant for the whole of

00:39:22.920 Wales. So something like a regent, or a viceroy, or a petty king even. The king had intended to remain

00:39:29.080 involved himself, but the hostile activities of the French in the Channel forced him to return to

00:39:34.360 London and to accept that the prince with his retinue and the power of adjacent counties, in whose

00:39:40.040 loyalty the king places his trust, is in force enough to chastise and subdue the rebels of Wales.

00:39:46.140 I.e. you're on your own son, do the best you can, I've got my hands full elsewhere. At this point,

00:39:51.060 the prince, that's our Henry, had 5,000 men under his command, with three archers for every man at

00:39:56.980 arms, a contrast with the one-to-one ratio often found in the late 14th century for overseas

00:40:02.940 expeditions. This three-to-one ratio dominated English military organisation until the 1440s,

00:40:09.380 including all the expeditions and garrisons of Henry V's own reign. While it is tempting to believe

00:40:14.880 that it was the prince's innovation, his father may have been behind it in reality. Despite the prince's

00:40:20.920 central role in the conflict of these years, Henry IV was slow to give him independence before reaching

00:40:26.700 his majority at 21. This was partly due to the prince's tender age, but it was to an effect of

00:40:33.740 the Glendower Rebellion itself. So comprehensive was the uprising in Wales that by 1403, none of the

00:40:39.940 prince's estate revenues in Wales or Flintshire could be collected because of the disruption.

00:40:46.160 Funds from the earldom of Chester had had to be diverted to cover the costs of the Welsh castles

00:40:51.380 still under English control. As a result, the prince faced a large financial deficit,

00:40:56.640 which inevitably impacted on his ability to act independently. His father's involvement is also

00:41:02.240 seen in the choice of officials. Tried and trusted Duchy of Lancaster men were placed in key posts

00:41:08.520 across the prince's lands. The king had an influence over the grants of annuities too. Such a situation

00:41:14.460 was to be expected while the prince was under age, but as he approached his majority, he would wish to

00:41:19.840 exploit his own patronage and to build up his own affinity, his own royal household that is,

00:41:25.300 completely independent of the king. He began to do this from October 1407. 51 new grants of annuities

00:41:31.780 were made in the course of the following year, a marked contrast with an average of 10 per annum over the

00:41:37.540 previous six years. By this point, Henry IV's health had been in noticeable decline for 18 months.

00:41:43.600 The exact nature of his illness remains uncertain, but it involved a degenerative skin condition

00:41:49.100 as well as debilitating attacks, perhaps in the form of strokes or epileptic fits. So if you remember

00:41:55.240 last time Churchill said it was heart attacks, we just don't know. The detail isn't there and their

00:42:01.080 medical knowledge wouldn't have been up to it anyway. Ann Curry says this, the symptoms would fit

00:42:05.060 with a diagnosis of tertiary syphilis, creating a protracted decline over around eight years,

00:42:11.840 but interspersed with more severe bouts which undermined his capacity to give full attention

00:42:17.060 to government. As the king's health deteriorated, the moment of the prince's succession loomed ever

00:42:22.320 larger. He might become king at any point. As in similar situations across history, the effects on both

00:42:28.160 father and son were marked. In 1406, Henry IV experienced major criticisms from Parliament,

00:42:34.580 whose records suggest hopes for a better future were already focused on Prince Henry. Early that

00:42:39.620 April, the Speaker, on the Commons behalf, petitioned the king to send a letter of thanks to his son

00:42:45.120 for his constant commitment to winning back Wales, quote,

00:42:48.840 and for the chastisement and punishment of the rebels there. And in the same address,

00:42:53.480 he urged that the prince should reside continually in Wales for the wars. Two months later, with Henry

00:42:58.820 IV present in Parliament, the Speaker took the opportunity of making another eulogy on the prince.

00:43:03.980 God had bestowed and endowed him with a good heart and as much courage as any worldly prince could need,

00:43:09.520 he stated, adding that God had given him one great virtue. In particular, he listened to his

00:43:15.700 advisers. No wonder Parliament played up that that was a virtue, listening to your advisers.

00:43:20.700 Indeed, such was the prince's trust in them, that he was genuinely and graciously willing to be

00:43:25.680 contradicted and to conform to the wishes of his council and their ordinance, in accordance with

00:43:31.900 whatever seemed best to them, setting aside entirely his own will. Not only did the prince listen,

00:43:37.100 but advice could be plainly given without fear of censure. What was more, the prince had no ego.

00:43:42.680 He was quite happy to change his view if, in the opinion of his advisers, that view was wrong.

00:43:48.560 The implication to the listening Henry IV was obvious. Praise for the prince's willingness to

00:43:53.980 take counsel was a way of criticising his father for failing to do so. The commons, it was clear,

00:43:59.540 were already looking forward to the day he might be king. So Henry IV a bit unpopular towards the end,

00:44:05.440 and certainly the antagonisms between Crown and Parliament were kind of never-ending.

00:44:10.500 The prince himself faced a dilemma. While the commons were adamant that he should return to Wales

00:44:15.740 with all possible haste, from his perspective it was preferable to stay in London in case his father

00:44:21.740 died. Even though the dynastic threats had subsided, it was wise to be close at hand to prevent any

00:44:27.960 disruption to his possible accession. Perhaps, too, he was concerned about an act passed by Parliament

00:44:34.100 that June, which stipulated that, on Henry IV's death, the crown should pass to Henry and then to

00:44:40.420 his male heirs. But if he had no male heirs, then the successor should be his brother, Thomas,

00:44:46.380 the Duke of Florence. This may have made him less keen to expose himself to danger in Wales,

00:44:51.540 especially when his father was ill. There were signs already that Thomas was his father's favourite,

00:44:56.380 and that relations between Henry and his eldest, youngest brother were lukewarm.

00:45:00.420 Whether or not Prince Henry ended up going to Wales is unclear. His movements at this time,

00:45:05.520 and over the following years, remain difficult to trace. But in October 1406, perhaps at his

00:45:11.320 instigation, the laws of succession were changed. Now the crown should pass to Henry, and then to any

00:45:17.180 heirs of Henry's body, not simply males. The odds of his brother Thomas succeeding to the throne had,

00:45:22.820 in theory, substantially lengthened. Oh, you become less likely. Which was presumably exactly what Henry

00:45:28.860 had in mind. And he was definitely present at a contentious Royal Council meeting on the 8th of

00:45:33.520 December that year, in which a wide-ranging discussion, both of the King's itinerary,

00:45:38.880 which the Council took the liberty of dictating, at least in part, and of Royal Government, was held.

00:45:44.120 The meeting resulted in 31 articles being put forward in Parliament that month for governmental

00:45:48.980 reform, which included a request that all items and matters passed by the Council should be passed

00:45:54.700 by all those of the Council in person. The emphasis was clearly on consultation and collective

00:45:59.320 responsibility. But we can see there that our young Henry is doing the job of government in all sorts

00:46:05.100 of ways. He's extremely important, perhaps the most important voice in government below the King,

00:46:10.520 and is even beginning to claw power away from the King himself, at least a little bit. And now,

00:46:16.980 not that his father, Henry IV, was a tyrant or anything, but he's not going to like that.

00:46:22.420 No monarch likes conceding power. So Anne Currie goes on and tells us that Prince Henry's regular

00:46:28.200 inclusion in the Royal Council for the first time was a sign not only of his growing political

00:46:33.180 importance, especially in the context of his father's deteriorating health, but also of efforts

00:46:38.520 to bring men of higher status into government. The Commons of 1406 had shown disquiet to Henry IV's

00:46:44.600 tendency to use more lowly knights and esquires, and at his spending so much on patronage of those

00:46:50.960 within his circle. By involvement in the Council, and in response to the Commons' requests for reform,

00:46:56.680 the Prince was also indicating his support for efforts to cut costs and end corruption and

00:47:01.700 favouritism. Therefore, as Henry IV's reign progressed, the Prince became increasingly critical

00:47:06.920 in public of his father's rule, and increasingly impatient to assume the throne himself. So there's

00:47:12.800 going to be tension there between father and son. No avoiding it. Absolutely no avoiding it,

00:47:17.240 if that's how each of them are playing their given hands. The following year, however, the Prince was

00:47:22.780 briefly in Wales for the siege of Aberystwyth, which he intended to conduct in such a way that

00:47:28.580 it would be seen as a major symbol of English recovery. But his handling of it proved a disaster.

00:47:34.760 While Henry IV had been harsh in his treatment of the Welsh, his son wanted to be seen as merciful.

00:47:40.240 Therefore, he offered a treaty of composition. If Glendower did not come to rescue the town and give

00:47:45.920 battle, then the defenders would surrender without the need to give hostages. The Prince had relics

00:47:51.880 brought to the siege by his friends, the cleric Richard Courtenay, for the mutual oath-taking.

00:47:57.440 Henry's clemency turned out to be completely misguided. With no royal army encamped around

00:48:02.280 Aberystwyth, Glendower entered the town and expelled those who had made the agreement. Aberystwyth was not

00:48:08.060 taken by the English until September 1408, and by others, not the Prince. Although the Prince

00:48:13.880 continued to hold the royal lieutenancy in Wales into 1410, he chose not to play a direct role,

00:48:19.880 basing himself in Worcester and Hereford when not in London. Anticipating that he might become king

00:48:25.540 any day, he therefore needed to be close to the centre of government. Apparently, it did seem that

00:48:30.540 the old king was close to death for years. They expected he might die at any day, any moment,

00:48:36.520 for years. Which, of course, it goes without saying, is far from ideal if you want a clean succession.

00:48:42.020 Other matters were occupying him now. At the end of 1407, the French, beset by deepening internal

00:48:47.760 divisions following the assassination of Louis, Duke of Orléans, at the bequest of John the Fearless,

00:48:53.200 Duke of Burgundy, don't worry, I'll go into all those details in the next episode, were keen to reopen

00:48:57.700 negotiations with the English, including the prospect of marriage for the Prince. So if you think

00:49:02.680 England is in a bit of a desperate state of flux, the French are in full-blown civil war. Although nothing

00:49:07.740 came of this, it was increasingly apparent that, with the French king suffering from mental illness,

00:49:13.240 factional infighting in France would continue. The assassination of Duke Louis, the king's brother,

00:49:18.580 had given the Burgundians the upper hand at this stage. So there's two big factions in France,

00:49:23.960 the Burgundians and the Orléans. The English, including the Prince, watched the situation with

00:49:29.240 interest, i.e. waiting for a particularly weak moment in order to pounce. Prince Henry attended the

00:49:34.460 royal council often throughout 1408 and carried considerable influence within it. His lack of

00:49:40.160 affection for his brother Thomas is surely reflected in the council's decision in August

00:49:44.720 that the latter should no longer be a charge on the king's household, while a year later Thomas was

00:49:50.620 replaced as lieutenant in Ireland by the steward of the prince's household, Sir John Stanley. The growing

00:49:56.500 influence of Prince Henry on royal policy and his interest in military provision are also revealed

00:50:02.060 by his appointment as constable of Dover and warden of the Sinkports on the 28th of February 1409.

00:50:08.480 Around the same time, he was given custody of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and his brother,

00:50:14.040 as well as the keeping of their estates, since they were both minors. With Henry IV increasingly

00:50:18.760 concerned that he might not have much longer to live, he drew up his will on the 21st of January 1409,

00:50:24.180 it was sensible for his heir to have control of a possible rival claimant to the throne.

00:50:29.200 Remember the earls of March are descended from Lionel of Antwerp, i.e. they're the ones that

00:50:35.080 really should be on the throne if we go by the letter of the law. But the scions of that family

00:50:39.500 are only little children, so they can just be kept under control for now. That autumn, Prince Henry

00:50:45.220 spent much time with the king at his manor of Berthamstead, expecting his father's end to be imminent.

00:50:51.620 The prince was increasingly frustrated. His father's ill health had left the crown at an impasse.

00:50:56.760 He had appeared to be on the verge of death for a number of years, and things came to a head in

00:51:01.640 December, when the prince took matters into his own hands and began to chair the council in his

00:51:06.680 father's absence. There were major disputes between the prince and the old guard over what should be

00:51:11.260 given priority. He forced his father's councillors to resign, the treasurer, Sir John Tiptoft, and the

00:51:17.320 Chancellor, Archbishop Arundel, the latter being a particularly close associate of the king, and

00:51:22.200 opposed to the reforms and changes which the prince supported, and introduced his own nominees to

00:51:27.160 office, Henry, Lord Scrope as treasurer, and Sir Thomas Beaufort as Chancellor. He had the parliament

00:51:32.400 intended to meet at Bristol switched to Westminster. In this parliament, which began on the 27th of

00:51:37.620 January 1410, fully one-sixth of its members were connected to the prince, i.e. his men, his

00:51:43.580 quizlings. It was opened by his half-uncle and ally, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, brother of the

00:51:49.800 Chancellor. Throughout this parliament, the prince's reformist agenda shines through. The articles

00:51:54.600 presented by the Commons on the 23rd of April 1410 included matters close to his heart, such as the

00:52:00.920 costs of the household, enforcement of legislation and law and order. During this parliament, a restriction

00:52:06.260 was also placed on the king's authority. That's a big one. Although its precise nature is uncertain,

00:52:11.000 it hardly endeared young Henry's takeover to the sick king, and nor, we can imagine, did the prince's

00:52:17.480 cutting of expenses of the household and suspension of some annuities. So even though, as we just told

00:52:23.400 there, the exact details are not really known to us, there was some sort of power struggle going on

00:52:28.200 now. It's not just the young Prince Henry nipping at the heels of his father, or, you know, suggesting that

00:52:35.440 maybe we should take away some of his powers or think about what's best to do. He's actually doing it.

00:52:41.060 He's actually beginning to do it, beginning to usurp his authority. Well, even though Boninbroke is

00:52:46.400 extremely ill, he isn't dead yet, and there's still a bit of life left in the old man, and he doesn't

00:52:51.340 take kindly to such things. In this reformist atmosphere, it cannot be a coincidence that a bill

00:52:56.740 for disendowment of the church was put forward at the parliament by Lollard sympathisers, knights and

00:53:02.920 esquires who followed the teachings of John Wycliffe. I've talked about the Lollards and Wycliffe before,

00:53:07.320 haven't I? Hopefully you remember. They're sort of proto-Protestants in a way. With an emphasis on

00:53:11.500 Bible-centred fundamentalism, they, the Lollards, challenged the church's teachings on the sacraments,

00:53:18.240 as well as the special authority of the clergy and papacy. They believed that the church had been

00:53:22.900 corrupted by its involvement in secular affairs and by its extensive land holdings. Hence, they sought

00:53:28.800 in the petition of 1410 to redistribute its possessions in order to fund more worthy causes,

00:53:35.060 such as almshouses, the defence of the realm, and even an expansion in the number of lords, knights,

00:53:41.220 and esquires. Henry had friends who were sympathetic to new ideas in religion, and they were emboldened

00:53:47.280 by his dominance of the government and by a belief that he was open-minded enough to allow at least

00:53:53.160 debate. Nothing came of the petition, but Henry had not shown himself as hostile to its sympathisers.

00:53:59.020 That will change. When John Badby was condemned as a heretic by the Bishop of Worcester for denying

00:54:05.040 transubstantiation that the bread and wine actually did turn to the body and blood of Christ in the

00:54:10.140 Sacrament of Communion, and was handed over for burning in March 1410, the prince had attended

00:54:15.840 in person and made every effort to persuade Badby to repent, even halting the burning briefly when he

00:54:22.000 believed he heard Badby wishing to do so. Throughout 1410 and for most of the following year, the prince's

00:54:27.640 dominance continued unchallenged. He brought into the council more of his own associates, including the

00:54:33.440 earls of Arundel and Warwick, and Henry Chichely, Bishop of St David's, while council meetings were

00:54:39.140 held in unorthodox venues, such as friends' houses and the prince's own dwelling at Coldharbour.

00:54:45.020 Dispensing with the usual protocols, Prince Henry was visibly distancing himself from his father.

00:54:50.960 An expectation that it would not be too long before he became king is reflected in the presentation of

00:54:56.720 the prince. The prince's ascendancy is evidenced in foreign policy too. In July 1410, the council agreed

00:55:03.400 that financial priorities should be given to the prince for the defence of Calais, then under threat

00:55:08.400 of French attack. Having already argued for the importance of this isolated English outpost in

00:55:13.500 France at the council of December 1409, the prince had himself made captain of Calais on the 18th of

00:55:19.420 March 1410, and had ensured that 75% of the wool subsidy granted at the parliament should be earmarked for

00:55:26.400 the wages of the garrison. In France, however, divisions were worsening between John the Fearless,

00:55:31.900 Duke of Burgundy, then in control of the royal government in the light of the French king's

00:55:36.020 incapacity, and his Orléanist enemies. Charles, Duke of Orléans, the son of that Louis who was

00:55:42.680 assassinated by John the Fearless, had built up a group of supporters. These became known as the

00:55:48.140 Armagnacs, through Duke Charles' marriage to the daughter of the Count of Armagnac, and included several

00:55:53.620 leading peers. So continuous civil war in France, basically. Certainly large-scale factional fighting,

00:56:00.560 you can say, at the very, very least. By 1410, the situation was sliding into civil war. In August 1411,

00:56:07.280 Duke John approached the English for an alliance. By way of marriage between my lord, the prince,

00:56:11.960 and the eldest daughter of the duke, a reiteration of the proposal of 1407, but this time in return for

00:56:18.040 military support against his enemies. Prince Henry was not slow to spot an opportunity, specifically

00:56:23.240 gaining Burgundian support for the recovery of English lands in France. The central tenet of

00:56:29.140 English policy towards France remained an insistence on the terms which Edward III had negotiated in 1360

00:56:36.420 at the Treaty of Bretigny, often known to the English as the Great Peace, with good reason. Remember,

00:56:42.340 I said in one of the earlier episodes that this Treaty of Bretigny was extremely advantageous to

00:56:49.600 the English, crazily advantageous to the English. So we would always hark back to it, even though it's

00:56:54.360 like 50 years ago now, we would still keep saying, we want the terms of that. We insist on those terms,

00:56:59.980 and the French nearly always saying, no way. I mean, the terms from the French point of view are sort of

00:57:04.260 crazy, so it becomes a sticking point, even though it's 50 years ago. Anne Currie says,

00:57:09.880 This treaty had given English kings a substantial swathe of sovereign territory in southwest France.

00:57:15.920 But from the end of the 1360s onwards, with Edward III no longer the force he had once been,

00:57:21.180 and then under the boy king Richard II, most of these territorial gains had been lost.

00:57:26.160 Now, in 1411, the deal with Prince Henry, struck with Duke John, reflected his lack of experience in

00:57:32.380 foreign affairs. It was vague and open-ended, requiring no firm guarantee of Burgundian help

00:57:37.940 for the recovery of the lands of the Treaty of Bretigny. Yet Henry was committed to the treaty,

00:57:43.360 presumably because he saw it as a way of dissuading Duke John from attacking Calais.

00:57:48.540 That October, the prince sent English troops under the prince's close friend, Thomas Fitz-Allen,

00:57:53.740 Earl of Arundel, to help the Burgundians recover Saint-Cloud near Paris, which they did on the 9th of

00:57:59.340 November. Tellingly, these troops were not funded from the royal exchequer, but from the prince's own

00:58:04.440 revenues in his earldom of Chester, an indication that the ailing king had not been in agreement

00:58:09.840 with his son's plans. Increasing concerns about young Henry's actions, as well as an apparent

00:58:15.180 involvement in his health, led to the king planning to take back control of government.

00:58:20.040 So finally, Henry IV seems to have had enough how much power Prince Henry was taking for himself,

00:58:27.580 without even asking, really.

00:58:28.880 But tensions escalated. The prince tried and failed in September 1411 to protect Richard Courtenay in

00:58:35.720 his role as Chancellor of Oxford, against the visitation rights of Archbishop Arundel, which

00:58:41.360 threatened the independence of the university, as well as the authority of its Chancellor. In the

00:58:46.280 following month, six of the prince's household knights, including his steward, Sir Roger Lech,

00:58:51.440 were arrested. Around the opening of Parliament on 3 November 1411, the prince appears to have

00:58:57.160 confronted his father, saying that he should abdicate, as he could no longer work for the

00:59:02.160 honour and unity of the kingdom. That's quite a thing to say, isn't it? You're no longer up to

00:59:06.580 being king, old man. Move aside. A proposal seems to have been put to the lords by the prince and

00:59:12.360 Henry Beaufort, quote, as to which of them should ask the king if he was prepared to resign the crown

00:59:18.340 of England and allow his firstborn son to be crowned, end quote. So now there's open talk of

00:59:24.160 abdication. It's a power struggle now, you know, completely bloodless one and relatively low energy

00:59:30.780 one, but nonetheless a power struggle for the very, very top job. Rejecting these approaches,

00:59:36.800 the king took swift action. On the 30th of November, the prince and the royal council he had

00:59:41.860 assembled were publicly sacked in Parliament. The speech the prince gave in response reminded the king

00:59:47.580 waspishly, quote, that they would have been able to do their duty better had they been given more

00:59:53.160 funds and support. The prince was openly criticising the king and the old guard for their opposition to

00:59:58.420 his reforms and his foreign policy. On the 19th of December, the last day of the Parliament,

01:00:03.700 the king squashed the restriction which had been placed on his royal prerogative in the previous

01:00:08.360 Parliament. The prince's associates, Henry, Lord Scrope and Thomas Beaufort, were dismissed from their

01:00:13.920 posts as treasurer and chancellor respectively on the following day. Sir John Pelham, a long-standing

01:00:19.380 member of the king's duchy of Lancaster staff and treasurer of the war in 1404 to 1406, was appointed

01:00:25.940 treasurer and on the 5th of January 1412, Archbishop Arundel was reappointed as chancellor. The new council

01:00:32.580 contained none of the prince's associates. So young Prince Henry is out and the old king is back in

01:00:38.080 control for the time being. Curry says, the prince was cast into the political wilderness. Relations

01:00:43.720 with his father worsened in the spring of 1412 when the king responded positively to an approach

01:00:49.380 by the Armagnac faction in France for military support against the Burgundians, so the other side

01:00:55.320 in the French civil wars. In the subsequent treaty, signed at Bruges on the 18th of May, the Armagnacs

01:01:01.480 acknowledged all English rights of the Great Peace, that's the Treaty of Bretagne, and furthermore

01:01:06.720 offered to assist Henry IV in his just quarrels with the king of France in return for military

01:01:12.640 support, an army of 4,000 men, and a promise not to enter into any alliance with the Duke of Burgundy.

01:01:18.760 Yet in practice, the king showed himself as naive as the prince had been in 1411. The Armagnacs were

01:01:24.500 not in control of Charles VI and could not turn their promises into reality. Furthermore, by the time

01:01:30.160 the English troops arrived in France on the 10th of August, the Armagnacs and Burgundians were already

01:01:35.360 negotiating a peace with each other, which was finally sealed at Auxerre on the 22nd of August,

01:01:41.280 1412. So, the English efforts to play the French factions off against one another had come to

01:01:47.280 nothing, basically. The French had made up among themselves, to all intents and purposes, again,

01:01:52.220 at least for the moment. But one thing to mention there, which I feel I should stress, is you might

01:01:56.460 have noticed that the armies involved here are all quite small. You know, an army of 4,000 men there,

01:02:01.680 an army of 3,000 men here and there, and even a big army is 13,000 men. That's a massive army at this

01:02:10.060 point in the early 15th century. Why? Well, because of the Black Death, because the entire world's

01:02:15.940 population had plummeted. And so, in generations before this, you'd have much, much bigger armies,

01:02:22.200 vastly bigger armies. But now, a third, maybe a half, maybe two-thirds of the entire population of

01:02:28.100 Europe was gone. And so, of course, the size of armies reflect that as well. So, yeah. A contingent

01:02:34.580 of 3,000 or 4,000 men is quite something. It's not to be sniffed at. 10,000 or 15,000 men is big.

01:02:40.720 You know, 20,000 or 30,000 men is gigantic at this stage. Almost unheard of, really, in this stage.

01:02:45.960 So, that's why the numbers of armies, you might have noticed, are so small. Okay. Okay. We'll let

01:02:51.160 Currie continue here. She says, quote,

01:02:52.720 Henry IV had hoped to lead the army to France himself. But by the 8th of June, illness forced

01:02:58.280 his delegating of command to his second son, Thomas, whom he created Duke of Clarence on the 9th of

01:03:04.720 July. So, the army sent over to France. This 4,000 men that the English had promised to the Armagnacs

01:03:10.640 is being led, not by what you would think would be the first choice, i.e. Henry, our Henry V to be,

01:03:17.080 but his next brother down, Thomas. He gets the glory, except there wasn't any glory to be had.

01:03:21.580 Currie goes on saying,

01:03:23.140 Prince Henry's relations with his brother had now reached a very low ebb. While in control of the

01:03:28.580 council in June 1410, he had already refused to pay Thomas the arrears due to him as lieutenant of

01:03:35.160 Ireland until he demonstrated that he had fulfilled the terms of his contract, the implication being

01:03:40.940 that his brother's word could not be trusted. Now, he was completely outraged by the preference

01:03:45.480 being shown by his father to Thomas, whose position had also been strengthened by his marriage

01:03:51.020 in November 1411 to Margaret Holland, widow of the king's half-brother, John Bothal, Earl of Somerset,

01:03:58.200 and niece of Archbishop Arundel. In addition, Prince Henry was embarrassed by having to write to the Duke

01:04:04.040 of Burgundy in late May to explain that he had had no choice but to accept his father's decision

01:04:09.340 to support the Armagnacs. Very embarrassing politically, isn't it, that you've promised all sorts of things

01:04:14.560 and then you have to say, oh, sorry, my dad says I can't. Sorry, I can't play out. My parents have forbid it.

01:04:21.560 On the 17th of June, a week or so after Henry IV had publicly delegated command of the army to his second son,

01:04:28.460 the prince issued a public letter from his manor of Chalesmoor in Coventry.

01:04:33.340 He had been willing to go on the campaign, he claimed, but his father had suggested that he go

01:04:38.180 with such a small force, quote, that the king had made it impossible for us to serve him with honour

01:04:42.960 or to make effective provision for the proper safety of our person, quote. The king, Prince Henry

01:04:48.280 insinuated, had deliberately engineered Thomas's command of the army. Moreover, he added, quote,

01:04:53.460 certain sons of iniquity, quote, had sown rumours that he was trying to disrupt the expedition.

01:04:58.480 These people, he claimed, were desiring, quote, to attack the proper order of succession, quote,

01:05:04.020 the implication being that they were planning to set him aside in preference for his brother,

01:05:08.000 Thomas. Prince Henry took care to name no names, but reading between the lines, it is clear that

01:05:13.500 rumours were rife that he was planning a coup against his father. Around the end of June,

01:05:18.320 the prince came to London with considerable company of friends and a large retinue of men in his service,

01:05:24.100 such had not been seen before in those days. A reminder, if indeed anybody now needed reminding,

01:05:29.880 of the fact that he had a large affinity of armed men at his disposal. So the old king had wrestled

01:05:35.720 control back, but the Prince of Wales, our Henry, just had lots and lots of badass knights at his

01:05:42.420 command who were loyal to him personally by this point. So he rides on London. It could all get very

01:05:48.280 nasty very quickly here if people aren't careful. It could get real dark real quick. But Currie tells us,

01:05:53.540 the king delayed admitting him to his presence, but finally did so, according to Thomas Walsingham,

01:05:59.540 welcoming him with open arms. The first English life of King Henry V gives a colourful account of

01:06:04.740 this meeting. Although written in 1513, a century after the event, it may have some basis in reality,

01:06:11.340 since the anonymous author had at his disposal reminiscences of the 4th Earl of Ormond who had

01:06:17.520 known Henry V. Here the prince comes to the king wearing a blue robe full of islet holes,

01:06:22.920 each with a needle hanging from it. The meaning of such a garment is unknown. Perhaps the holes

01:06:27.820 and needles were intended to symbolise that the prince was not a finished product. The prince fell

01:06:32.760 to his knees and offered a dagger with which the king might kill him. And he's supposed to have said,

01:06:37.840 my life is not so desirous to me that I should live one day that I should be to your displeasure.

01:06:43.180 Even so, the king gave an obtuse answer to the prince's request that those who had denounced him

01:06:48.300 should be punished if they could not be found guilty, saying that such a procedure should await

01:06:53.020 the next meeting of parliament, so that men such as these might be punished after judgment by their

01:06:58.000 peers. The king clearly did not see the need for action as urgently as Prince Henry did. It took him

01:07:03.500 the best part of six months to issue summons for a parliament to meet on the 3rd of February 1413.

01:07:09.560 So even though the young Prince Henry had ridden on London, it was to show his loyalty to his father.

01:07:18.480 Whether all of that is fun and games, whether all of that is some sort of PR stunt, whether the

01:07:23.620 accounts come down to us are truthful, it's not entirely clear. And the king himself seems to have

01:07:29.000 wanted to punish his son for doing that, but he didn't punish him quickly or severely or anything

01:07:34.360 at all. So a bit of a weird episode there, a bit of a weird set of events. It's hard to tell exactly

01:07:39.640 what was going on, you know, behind the scenes. You can sort of read between the lines a bit,

01:07:43.560 can't you? But there's still a power struggle going on of some type or other, but it's certainly

01:07:49.920 bloodless. Okay, continuing on. Meanwhile, the council had taken the opportunity to investigate

01:07:54.880 other charges against the prince that had been involved in peculiation, embezzling the wages of the

01:08:00.600 Calais garrison. This inquiry took three months from July to September, and the prince was not

01:08:06.420 fully exonerated until the 21st of October. So allegations of stealing money, but he was found

01:08:12.180 not guilty of anything. He tried to put pressure on the king again in September by coming to London

01:08:17.120 with a large retinue. So he sort of pulled the same trick again. There may even have been an

01:08:22.120 assassination attempt against him at this point, or so it was claimed in 1426. But amid the rumours of

01:08:27.600 plot and counterplot, the king's state of health continued to decline. The opening of parliament

01:08:32.400 planned from 3rd of February was postponed. On the 20th of March, Henry IV finally passed away,

01:08:38.680 dying in the Jerusalem chamber in the abbot's lodging at Westminster Abbey. So it seems a bit of

01:08:43.820 a deliverance that the old King Henry IV finally died because, you know, again, reading between the

01:08:49.860 lines, it seems like the power struggle was becoming more and more dangerous, or neither side were

01:08:56.400 prepared to sort of give in. And although it had been bloodless, would it have stayed that way?

01:09:02.240 Would the factions have started fighting each other, even if the King or the Prince of Wales

01:09:06.200 hadn't actually tried to kill one another? Would their men have started fighting? Would there have

01:09:11.660 been a real political break? Who knows? But kind of thankfully, in a way, the old King dies of natural

01:09:18.080 causes, finally. I mean, he's not even that old. He's only in his late 40s. But as we've kept saying,

01:09:23.240 has been ill for a while now, so there's no shock. Continuing on, because nothing stops,

01:09:28.360 life must go on. We're told,

01:09:29.680 To what extent father and son were ever fully reconciled during Henry IV's lifetime is difficult

01:09:35.160 to assess. A deathbed scene is found in so many narratives that it cannot be dismissed as simply

01:09:41.080 invention, although it was coloured by how Henry V chose to transform himself after his accession.

01:09:47.160 Both of the Latin lives of Henry V describe the dying King giving his blessing to his son,

01:09:52.220 before telling us of acts of contrition by the Prince, lamenting his past bad behaviour.

01:09:58.080 The first English life also gives an extended scene around Henry IV's deathbed, in which the King

01:10:03.480 expresses his concern that, after his passing, discord would arise between the Prince and his

01:10:09.280 brother Thomas. The Prince assures him otherwise, and in a long oration, his father gives him his

01:10:15.160 blessing. Stories of a deathbed reunion also spread abroad. Burgundian chronicles, written in the mid-15th

01:10:21.500 century, claim that Henry had been seen by his dying father trying on the crown. That's very

01:10:26.720 presumptuous, isn't it? If true. But that this led to an act of contrition by the Prince and the

01:10:31.740 forgiveness of his father. Closer to the event, we have a letter to his son, supposedly written by

01:10:36.940 Henry IV on his deathbed, and recited in a work attributed to Thomas Elham. This was very much in

01:10:42.400 the mode of a model for princes, urging the Prince to honour God and protect his people.

01:10:46.900 By the early 16th century, stories of the Prince's ill-spent youth were popular and were

01:10:52.800 subsequently taken up by Shakespeare. In reality, there is no evidence from the period itself

01:10:57.500 that the Prince behaved as Howe did. That's sort of the character, good King Howe, in the

01:11:02.700 play, Shakespeare's play, Henry V. So Anne Currie says there's no evidence that he behaved

01:11:07.100 that way. Stories of his criminal tendencies and his arrest by Chief Justice Gascoigne were

01:11:13.300 16th century inventions, although he did indeed remove Gascoigne from office on his accession.

01:11:18.900 But the two Latin lives say intriguing things about Prince Henry. The pseudo-Elham, for instance,

01:11:24.960 speaks of the Prince as, quote, an assiduous pursuer of fun, devoted to organ instruments and

01:11:31.260 intentional double entendre, which relaxed the rain on his modesty, although under the military

01:11:36.240 service of Mars he seethed youthfully with the flames of Venus too, and tended to be open to other

01:11:42.200 novelties as befitted the age of his untamed youth. Since these sit awkwardly in what are

01:11:47.880 otherwise sycophantic texts, and both works have links with men who knew Henry well, we should

01:11:53.880 give them some credence. There are other signs of the Prince's enthusiasm for novelty. He owned the

01:11:59.080 earliest known manuscript of Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida, acquired sometime between 1406 and 1413.

01:12:05.340 His keenness for works in English is also seen in his commissioning of John Lydgate in October 1412

01:12:11.440 to write the Troia book, although the poem was not completed until 1420, and of the dedication to him,

01:12:18.000 when Prince, of a translation into English of Gaston Phoebus's Lever de Chase by his cousin Edward,

01:12:24.880 Duke of York. The latter work remained important to him since he commissioned 12 copies of it as

01:12:29.580 gifts in November 1421. His youthful energy, which no doubt contributed to his sense of frustration

01:12:35.740 in waiting for his sickly father to die, is also suggested in the Latin lives, which speak of him

01:12:41.420 as having a long neck and a graceful and strong but not muscular body, with an excellent turn of

01:12:46.840 speed when running to catch deer. Although we have evidence of expenditure on a hostilitude of peace,

01:12:53.180 which is a form of tournament, at his manor of Kennington at Christmas 1409, there is no evidence

01:12:59.180 that he ever participated in person in a joust. As king, his associates seem to have been keen

01:13:05.520 to send wrestlers to entertain him, perhaps reflecting his enthusiasm for the sport.

01:13:10.180 What cannot be doubted is that Prince Henry was impatient to become king. The way he conducted

01:13:15.460 affairs when in control of the government in 1410 to 1411 suggests that he did not always conform

01:13:21.680 to expected patterns of political behaviour. Witness his convening of the Royal Council in private

01:13:27.180 houses, and the suspicion that he had misused funds for the Calais garrison. Relations with his father

01:13:33.200 reached crisis point at the end of 1411, when he tried to force an abdication, and again in the summer

01:13:39.400 of 1412, when he was believed to be attempting a coup, and when his father may have considered excluding

01:13:45.020 him from the succession, and may never have been fully resolved in Henry IV's lifetime. This situation

01:13:51.020 led to the Prince's disengagement with government in the last year or so of the reign. Such knowns can be

01:13:57.060 taken to suggest that the unknowns of riotous behaviour and unsuitable associations are true."

01:14:03.080 End quote. Okay, so that's the end of the portion of Henry's early life. He's now become king.

01:14:08.520 You're king immediately upon the death of the old king. Having a coronation is basically just sort of

01:14:14.160 rubber stamping it. The moment the old king has ceased to live, you are immediately king. So our Henry of

01:14:19.980 Monmouth is now King Henry V, and events only speed up. There's very little hesitation from Henry once he

01:14:27.420 becomes king to start acting and doing big things politically and militarily. He hits the ground

01:14:33.080 running. He's roaring to go. So next time I'll talk all about the actual reign of Henry V, and it's

01:14:40.160 again a great roller coaster of events. It's certainly not boring. So I hope you've enjoyed this so far.

01:14:46.840 I hope I've done it some justice. I hope it's sort of worthy of episode 200. As always, let me know in the

01:14:52.660 comments any thoughts and feelings you've got. Okay, so until next time, take care.

01:14:57.920 While I'm ever gonna get that person, when I talk all the signs you say, I let me know in the

01:15:08.560 way.

01:15:13.000 Bye-bye.

01:15:17.380 Bye-bye.

01:15:17.500 Bye-bye.

01:15:17.680 Bye-bye.

01:15:19.680 Bye-bye.

01:15:21.540 Bye-bye.

01:15:22.740 Bye-bye.

01:15:23.640 You're welcome.

01:15:24.680 Bye-bye.

01:15:25.020 Bye-bye.

01:15:25.560 Bye-bye.

01:15:25.680 Bye-bye.

01:15:26.680 Bye-bye.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - February 28, 2025

FREEMIUM： Epochs #200 ｜ Henry V： Part I

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