The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - March 07, 2025


PREVIEW： Epochs #201 ｜ Henry V： Part II


Episode Stats

Length

25 minutes

Words per Minute

184.176

Word Count

4,772

Sentence Count

301

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

10


Summary

Henry V was King of England from 1413 to 141515, and one of the most important monarchs of the early modern period. He was a man of many talents, but most importantly, he was a brilliant military man.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs, where I shall be continuing my story of the reign and achievements, glorious achievements of Henry V.
00:00:07.600 Now, last time I left off, if you remember, just where he had become king.
00:00:11.880 So we did his early life and his struggles with his own father, the usurper, Henry Bolingbroke.
00:00:17.760 So, and I mentioned last time as well, that he hits the ground running because he'd already had experience, essentially, of being the ruler, kind of, mostly,
00:00:27.200 when his father had been more or less incapacitated by illness for a year or two, around 1410, 1411.
00:00:35.080 The young Henry, the Prince of Wales, was doing all the business of government, really, sitting at the helm.
00:00:40.700 So he'd had at least some experience of being the ruler, which goes a long, long way, right?
00:00:46.360 Because sometimes, often, in fact, people think they want the top job, think they'll be great at the top job.
00:00:51.400 And when they get there, they actually don't have the abilities and skills required.
00:00:55.440 But Henry knew that he had what it took.
00:00:58.060 And he's now sort of 25, 26 years old.
00:01:01.260 So, you know, certainly not a child.
00:01:02.800 He's been bloodied in war.
00:01:04.200 He's got over 10 years experience, combat experience.
00:01:07.200 So there's none of these worries of earlier kings where they have to, in sort of a weak, piecemeal way,
00:01:14.860 wrestle control of government away from anyone else.
00:01:18.040 No, as soon as he becomes king, he can and does just start making policy and doing anything he wants.
00:01:24.100 And so the story really begins in earnest at this point.
00:01:27.480 In this episode, I do want to talk about the French side of the equation and all things religious as well,
00:01:32.720 to kind of get those out of the way so we can focus entirely on Henry and his campaigns going forward.
00:01:40.100 But before I do that, just a quick word from Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill, in his book,
00:01:44.900 The History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
00:01:46.580 His opening paragraph on Henry V is very good.
00:01:48.660 A gleam of splendor falls across the dark, troubled story of medieval England.
00:01:54.360 Henry V was king at 26.
00:01:56.360 He felt, as his father had never done, sure of his title.
00:02:00.620 He had spent his youth in camp and council.
00:02:03.200 He had, for five or six years, intermittently conducted the government of the kingdom during his father's decline.
00:02:08.500 The romantic stories of his riotous youth and sudden conversion to gravity and virtue,
00:02:14.060 when charged with the supreme responsibility, must not be pressed too far.
00:02:18.460 It may well be true that, quote,
00:02:20.080 He was in his youth a diligent follower of idol practices, much given to instruments of music,
00:02:25.600 and fired with the torches of Venus herself, end quote.
00:02:28.380 But if he had thus yielded to the vehement ebulations of his nature, this was no more than a pastime,
00:02:34.860 for always since boyhood he had been held in the grasp of grave business.
00:02:39.220 So to say, then, a very broad point is that the early 15th century in all of Europe is a very tumultuous time.
00:02:47.240 You might think that England is having a bit of a rough go of it,
00:02:50.740 with the deposition and murder of the last Plantagenet, Richard II, and the usurper king, Henry IV,
00:02:57.560 and all his wars with the Scots and the Welsh.
00:03:01.040 And the Hundred Years' War is still simmering along.
00:03:04.040 It's more in sort of a Cold War period, but it's absolutely still there.
00:03:07.460 But further afield, it's the same.
00:03:09.620 In the bit of land that we now call Germany was the Holy Roman Empire,
00:03:13.600 this mishmash patchwork quilt of smaller kingdoms,
00:03:17.360 all vying for each other and fighting amongst themselves all the time.
00:03:20.940 And the church, the Orthodox Church, which I'll talk about in a bit,
00:03:24.560 is also in a state of turmoil.
00:03:27.120 There's a schism.
00:03:28.140 Ever since the late 1370s, there's been a Western schism or a papal schism.
00:03:33.860 And there's more than one pope running around.
00:03:36.460 Anti-popes.
00:03:37.160 There's three, briefly even four, popes.
00:03:39.840 And all of that isn't even to mention that we're still living in the aftermath of the Black Death,
00:03:44.620 the Great Pestilence, where some thought the world itself would even come to an end,
00:03:48.840 where every single person would die of this disease.
00:03:51.680 And now we're living in some sort of post-apocalyptic style semi-hellscape.
00:03:56.080 The whole world just trying to claw itself back to where it had once been.
00:03:59.700 Because even though there was that, the main Black Death, if you like, in the late 1340s,
00:04:05.600 it kept coming back.
00:04:06.440 It never really went away.
00:04:07.360 So, intermittently, every few years, there's just another wave of plague.
00:04:13.420 So, tumultuous times.
00:04:15.300 And in the sphere of literature and art and architecture,
00:04:18.920 we're also coming up to the Renaissance.
00:04:20.880 Well, it is the early Renaissance in Italy.
00:04:24.240 And the Germans and the French are catching on.
00:04:26.600 And there are various revolutions in thought all over the place.
00:04:29.800 So, it's a time of change, very much so.
00:04:32.520 A little church will go on briefly here, saying this.
00:04:34.660 Quote, in the surging realm, with its ailing king,
00:04:38.260 that Henry IV, he's talking about there,
00:04:40.300 bitter factions and deep and social moral unrest,
00:04:43.680 all men had for some time looked to him, Henry V,
00:04:46.780 and succeeding generations who seldom doubted
00:04:49.560 that according to the standards of his day,
00:04:52.180 he was all that a king should be.
00:04:54.100 His face, we are told, was oval,
00:04:56.720 with a long straight nose, ruddy complexion,
00:04:59.480 dark smooth hair and bright eyes,
00:05:02.120 mild as a dove's when unprovoked,
00:05:03.980 but lion-like in wrath.
00:05:05.760 His frame was slender, yet well-knit,
00:05:08.720 strong and active.
00:05:10.240 His disposition, religious disposition,
00:05:12.520 was orthodox, chivalrous and just.
00:05:15.080 He came to the throne at a moment
00:05:16.640 when England was wearied by feuds
00:05:19.180 and yearned for unity and fame.
00:05:21.700 He led the nation away from internal discord
00:05:23.940 to foreign conquest, perhaps very deliberately.
00:05:26.880 That's a trick as old as time.
00:05:28.880 To take people's minds off of civil unrest
00:05:30.760 as you create a foreign war or go to war in foreign lands
00:05:34.120 and everyone hasn't really got any option
00:05:36.380 but to all pull together for that.
00:05:38.460 And he had had the dream and perhaps the prospect
00:05:40.880 of leading all Western Europe
00:05:42.880 into the higher championship of a crusade.
00:05:45.820 He never did, incidentally.
00:05:47.340 Council and parliament alike showed themselves
00:05:49.640 suddenly bent on war with France.
00:05:52.400 End quote.
00:05:52.680 So, just to give you some context,
00:05:55.600 some of the dates involved,
00:05:56.820 Henry becomes king in 1413
00:05:59.300 and the Battle of Agincourt is in 1415
00:06:02.900 and it takes a good year to get everything ready
00:06:05.600 for such a big campaign.
00:06:07.180 So, in other words, you can see there
00:06:08.860 that straight away, pretty much straight away,
00:06:11.520 he's already made the decision
00:06:12.840 and starts the process of events
00:06:14.780 which lead to war in France, with France,
00:06:17.460 straight away.
00:06:18.340 And there are lots of reasons for it.
00:06:19.680 One we just mentioned, the idea that
00:06:21.200 to take people's minds off internal strife
00:06:23.400 or internal political weakness even
00:06:25.660 is that you confront an external threat.
00:06:28.320 So, there's that.
00:06:29.220 But there's also this idea of legitimacy as well.
00:06:32.420 Henry V knew, obviously knew,
00:06:34.820 that his father was a usurper
00:06:36.260 and that everyone knew that.
00:06:37.860 He knew that they knew.
00:06:39.280 They knew that he knew they knew.
00:06:41.220 And so on.
00:06:42.580 So, it's a shadow that he has to sort of deal with
00:06:45.840 or can never be completely free of.
00:06:48.080 So, one way to do that, to show the world
00:06:51.100 that your reign is legitimate in the eyes of God
00:06:54.300 is to go out and win a war.
00:06:56.760 In the medieval mind, I've already mentioned this
00:06:58.320 in one of the previous episodes,
00:07:00.100 that if you're successful in war,
00:07:01.940 it was because God and the heavens wanted it that way.
00:07:04.460 And if you fail for the same reason,
00:07:06.800 God wanted it that way.
00:07:08.180 So, to sort of prove that his dynasty is legitimate
00:07:12.000 or has got the sanction of heaven
00:07:14.580 is to go and fight a war with the French and win.
00:07:16.800 Of course, you're gambling then, aren't you?
00:07:18.520 Because you might lose.
00:07:19.340 Of course, you might lose.
00:07:20.900 So, you're gambling with everything,
00:07:22.900 perhaps even your own life,
00:07:24.360 but certainly with your legitimacy
00:07:25.840 and with your honour, with your reputation.
00:07:29.080 But Henry V, like all great men in history,
00:07:31.900 is a gambler.
00:07:32.800 You sort of have to be.
00:07:33.720 Someone like Genghis Khan or Caesar or Napoleon.
00:07:36.360 Endlessly gambled with everything.
00:07:38.520 Went all in, all the time.
00:07:40.340 So, Henry V is doing that.
00:07:41.880 One of the other reasons is that it seems
00:07:44.040 France was at a particularly low ebb.
00:07:47.600 If the kings of England did ever want to
00:07:49.900 bounce across the Channel back into France
00:07:52.460 and start bouchéing all over the place
00:07:54.360 and having Cressy-style battles again,
00:07:57.080 this would be the time to do it
00:07:58.340 because France is at such a weak and low ebb.
00:08:00.680 I'll talk about that in a moment, in some detail.
00:08:03.420 But Britain, England doesn't even control the Channel, really.
00:08:06.820 The Royal Navy exists.
00:08:08.800 There is a Royal Navy, but it's very, very small.
00:08:11.060 It's certainly not what it comes to be in centuries.
00:08:13.880 You know, all-powerful, world-spanning,
00:08:16.280 and there's absolutely no contest in the Channel.
00:08:18.640 Of course, the Royal Navy controls the English Channel.
00:08:22.040 Well, we're just not at that point in history yet.
00:08:24.620 And so there's tons and tons of piracy,
00:08:27.540 quote-unquote, piracy in the English Channel.
00:08:29.840 But what it really is, is French-sponsored privateers,
00:08:33.700 what in later centuries would end up being called privateers.
00:08:36.440 In other words, pirates, you know, someone like Drake,
00:08:39.480 Sir Francis Drake, a type of pirate,
00:08:40.780 but with the sanction of the state.
00:08:43.240 So don't even really control the Channel properly.
00:08:46.580 So it feels like things need to be done.
00:08:49.360 If we're ever going to kick off the Hundred Years' War again
00:08:52.060 with sort of hot war,
00:08:53.720 then this period, as far as the French are concerned,
00:08:56.320 would be the time to do it.
00:08:58.400 Strike while the iron is hot.
00:08:59.920 But let me read a paragraph from Sir Charles Oman,
00:09:02.540 his opening paragraph on Henry V.
00:09:04.020 He wrote this, quote,
00:09:05.360 Henry of Monmouth had a far easier task before him
00:09:08.640 when he ascended the throne
00:09:10.320 than his father had been forced to take in hand.
00:09:13.780 He had the enormous advantage
00:09:14.960 of succeeding to an established heritage
00:09:17.560 and was no mere usurper
00:09:19.360 legalised by a parliamentary election.
00:09:22.080 That belies the fact that he's still the heir to a usurper.
00:09:25.420 In a lot of people's minds, that's not much better.
00:09:27.900 Anyway, Oman goes on.
00:09:28.820 So firm did he feel himself upon his seat
00:09:31.740 that he began his reign
00:09:33.460 by releasing the young Earl of March,
00:09:36.100 the legitimate heir of Richard II,
00:09:38.500 whom Henry IV had always kept in close custody.
00:09:41.420 That's the children,
00:09:43.000 the descendants of Lionel of Antwerp,
00:09:45.240 the second son of Edward III.
00:09:47.720 So really, yeah, the Earls of March
00:09:49.480 are really ahead of the House of Lancaster.
00:09:51.500 But there we go.
00:09:52.320 All that will come up in the next generation.
00:09:54.680 For he knew that none of the odium
00:09:56.240 of his father's usurpation rested upon him.
00:09:59.140 That's a rosy take from Professor Sir Charles Oman there.
00:10:02.840 Very rosy.
00:10:03.860 And that he was well-liked by the nation.
00:10:05.940 Although that does seem fair.
00:10:07.460 Nor was his popularity ill-deserved.
00:10:09.800 Though only 25 years of age,
00:10:11.440 he was already a triad warrior
00:10:12.900 and an able statesman.
00:10:14.400 His life was sober and orderly,
00:10:16.760 inclining rather towards Spartan rigour
00:10:18.800 than display and luxury.
00:10:20.680 He was grave and earnest in speech,
00:10:22.920 courteous in all his dealings,
00:10:24.720 and an enemy of flatterers and favourites.
00:10:27.240 His sincere piety bordered on asceticism.
00:10:30.500 If he had a fault,
00:10:31.680 it was that he was somewhat over-stern
00:10:33.680 with those who withstood him.
00:10:35.640 Like his great ancestor Edward I,
00:10:38.000 his enemies called him hard-hearted and sanctimonious.
00:10:41.500 End quote.
00:10:41.840 So it's clear to see then, isn't it?
00:10:43.760 It's clear to say that he was quite a serious person,
00:10:47.140 very serious person,
00:10:48.460 very pious, very warlike,
00:10:50.120 already experienced when he comes to the throne,
00:10:53.620 still relatively young,
00:10:55.200 but completely a grown man with his own mind.
00:10:58.520 So formidable, I think the word is.
00:11:00.620 Formidable.
00:11:01.560 To underestimate him wouldn't be a great idea,
00:11:03.680 which is one of the things the French do.
00:11:05.500 Try and dismiss him as still just a boy or something.
00:11:08.900 No, there's no real doubt
00:11:10.080 that he's got all the tools he needs
00:11:11.980 to achieve great things.
00:11:14.340 He just has to actually do it.
00:11:15.860 Okay, so before I carry on,
00:11:17.640 I do want to take a few minutes out
00:11:19.460 to talk about the religious side of things,
00:11:21.940 because it has to be mentioned
00:11:23.180 if we're going to paint the world
00:11:24.940 in which Henry V and the Battle of Hachinkor occurred.
00:11:27.800 I have to, at least for a moment,
00:11:29.640 talk about religious affairs.
00:11:32.280 If I get it out of the way now,
00:11:34.000 hopefully I won't have to return to it very often.
00:11:36.400 So there's two big things to mention.
00:11:38.980 There's, on the domestic front in England,
00:11:41.660 as far as Henry is concerned,
00:11:43.680 the Lollards,
00:11:44.680 and then there's the broader,
00:11:45.980 wider picture of the Catholic Church in Europe,
00:11:49.780 certainly Western Europe,
00:11:51.280 and the fact that there's multiple popes.
00:11:53.860 So I'll address those two things.
00:11:55.200 So, first of all then, in England,
00:11:58.040 with the followers of Wycliffe and the Lollards,
00:12:00.680 if you remember before,
00:12:01.580 they're sort of proto-Protestants.
00:12:04.680 It's like a Protestant movement before Protestantism,
00:12:07.800 something like that.
00:12:08.540 People that have got questions and queries and concerns
00:12:12.020 about the way the Catholic Church is doing things.
00:12:16.220 The Lollards, why they're called Lollards,
00:12:18.560 no one's entirely sure.
00:12:19.940 There's various different schools of thought why that is,
00:12:21.960 but no one's really sure.
00:12:22.700 Anyway, the followers of Wycliffe, Lollards.
00:12:24.600 So Henry, if you remember in the last episode,
00:12:27.420 had been relatively kindsome,
00:12:29.140 because, you know, on paper, they're heretics.
00:12:31.580 On paper, they're sort of, they're schismatics.
00:12:34.180 Strictly by the letter of the law,
00:12:35.680 they should be hung or burnt,
00:12:37.460 actually burnt for their crimes,
00:12:39.800 for their blasphemies.
00:12:41.080 But because the things they were saying
00:12:42.820 were really quite reasonable,
00:12:44.000 and people had been complaining about
00:12:45.520 the very same things for centuries,
00:12:48.560 that they usually weren't burnt
00:12:51.240 or persecuted all that badly.
00:12:53.140 Henry IV had looked relatively kindly on them,
00:12:56.920 certainly didn't try to any sort of
00:12:58.840 extremely harsh repression or massacres of them
00:13:02.180 or anything like that.
00:13:03.300 And when Henry V had been Prince of Wales,
00:13:05.700 he'd also had friends that were Lollards.
00:13:07.700 And if you remember last time I mentioned,
00:13:09.460 there was that one incident
00:13:10.240 where he tried to spare a Lollard,
00:13:12.840 tried to give him every opportunity
00:13:14.080 to sort of repent.
00:13:15.600 The guy didn't.
00:13:16.480 But so everyone thought that Henry would be
00:13:18.540 sympathetic to the Lollards,
00:13:20.440 but it turns out he wasn't.
00:13:22.060 Rather, it's probably one of two things.
00:13:24.000 One, it's a political gambit
00:13:26.500 that he just needs everyone to be united
00:13:28.700 under one thing.
00:13:30.080 And so going with orthodoxy is the easiest.
00:13:32.740 And the other angle is that maybe,
00:13:34.480 probably, he was just genuinely orthodox himself,
00:13:37.900 just genuinely wanted to remain
00:13:40.020 completely loyal to Rome.
00:13:42.280 So probably both those things.
00:13:44.380 So I'll read a paragraph from Oman on that.
00:13:46.920 He says this, quote,
00:13:48.360 Henry's piety and his love of order and orthodoxy
00:13:51.400 were a source of much trouble
00:13:52.900 to the unhappy Lollards.
00:13:54.660 From the moment of his accession,
00:13:56.400 he bore very hardly upon them
00:13:57.940 and redoubled the severity of the persecution,
00:14:01.400 which his father had begun.
00:14:02.960 A mild persecution there.
00:14:04.360 So Henry ramps it up quite massively,
00:14:07.220 to be honest.
00:14:07.940 People didn't think he was going to do that.
00:14:09.780 He did not spare even his own friends,
00:14:12.180 but arrested for heresy,
00:14:13.900 Sir John Oldcastle, Lord of Cobham,
00:14:16.020 who had been one of his most trusted servants.
00:14:18.780 When accused of holding the doctrines of Wycliffe,
00:14:21.380 Oldcastle boldly avowed his sympathy for them,
00:14:24.560 spoke scornfully of the papacy and its claims,
00:14:27.340 and taunted his judge, Archbishop Arundel,
00:14:30.300 with all the sins and failings of the clergy.
00:14:33.100 He was condemned to be burnt,
00:14:35.000 but escaped from the tower
00:14:36.220 and hid himself in the marches of Wales.
00:14:38.600 Long afterwards, he was retaken
00:14:40.680 and suffered bravely for his opinions.
00:14:43.280 Henry's ill treatment of the Lollards
00:14:45.020 drove the unfortunate secretaries to despair.
00:14:47.940 Some of the more reckless of them
00:14:49.420 planned to put an end to their sufferings
00:14:51.580 by seizing the king's person
00:14:53.300 and compelling him to relax the persecution.
00:14:56.220 They tried to stir up a popular rising
00:14:58.060 like that of Watt Tyler,
00:15:00.020 but Henry got timely notice of their plot.
00:15:02.480 When they began to assemble by night
00:15:04.540 in St. Martin's Fields,
00:15:05.960 outside the gates of London,
00:15:07.480 he came suddenly upon them
00:15:08.920 with a great body of horse
00:15:10.280 and scattered them all.
00:15:11.580 Forty were hung next day as traitors
00:15:13.740 and for the future,
00:15:15.400 they were treated as guilty of treason
00:15:17.120 as well as of heresy.
00:15:19.280 End quote.
00:15:19.840 Okay, so Henry makes a decision
00:15:21.360 just to go full bore,
00:15:23.400 pro-Rome, anti-Lollard.
00:15:25.780 So in some ways,
00:15:26.500 at least in England,
00:15:28.600 the protesting movement against the church
00:15:32.000 is put back in its box for a while.
00:15:34.980 The story is quite different though
00:15:36.340 in mainland Europe.
00:15:37.360 So I want to talk all about
00:15:38.660 the Council of Constance.
00:15:40.380 That happens in 1414.
00:15:42.660 So one year into Henry's reign.
00:15:44.560 So the Council of Constance
00:15:45.700 is quite a big thing.
00:15:47.100 It's a really quite important moment in time.
00:15:49.580 And what it is,
00:15:51.000 is an ecclesiastical,
00:15:52.960 what they used to call a synod,
00:15:54.480 or council of all the most important people,
00:15:56.560 religiously speaking.
00:15:57.780 They all come to this small town
00:15:59.280 called Constance,
00:16:00.660 right in the middle of Europe,
00:16:01.800 above the Alps,
00:16:03.140 in and around modern day Switzerland,
00:16:04.700 it would be, I think.
00:16:05.420 And it's a small town
00:16:06.660 of only 4,000 or 5,000 or 6,000 people.
00:16:09.880 And thousands and thousands,
00:16:11.200 maybe 10,000,
00:16:12.200 maybe more people descend on it
00:16:14.360 to try and figure out
00:16:15.620 a lot of the problems
00:16:16.680 that are happening in the church.
00:16:19.120 So even before I describe that,
00:16:21.560 I have to give you a little bit of a back story
00:16:23.740 of what's been going on
00:16:25.240 with the Catholic Church.
00:16:26.700 As I say,
00:16:27.160 people had been complaining
00:16:28.260 about various problems
00:16:29.660 already for centuries.
00:16:31.260 People like the Albigensians,
00:16:32.920 for example,
00:16:33.900 the followers of Wycliffe,
00:16:35.420 for a long time,
00:16:36.380 people have said
00:16:36.980 all sorts of things like,
00:16:38.160 well, it's just not fair
00:16:39.240 that the church in Rome
00:16:40.960 controls so much land
00:16:42.700 and taxes people
00:16:44.200 and they spend it on gold
00:16:46.400 and there's the abuses of bishops,
00:16:49.440 all sorts of things.
00:16:50.760 Bishops aren't supposed to be rich
00:16:52.900 or they're not supposed to extort people.
00:16:56.040 There've been all sorts of abuses.
00:16:57.700 Bishops would take many,
00:16:59.560 many wives or lovers.
00:17:00.880 They're not supposed to.
00:17:01.820 They're supposed to be married to the church,
00:17:03.340 supposed to be celibate,
00:17:04.100 but it just wasn't being observed.
00:17:06.420 Or they could be cruel,
00:17:07.520 murderous even,
00:17:08.840 acting like secular rulers.
00:17:11.380 All sorts of abuses,
00:17:12.420 most things you can think of.
00:17:14.060 So like a bishop,
00:17:14.980 it's supposed to be a very serious role,
00:17:17.600 but they would just outsource
00:17:19.040 all the actual work
00:17:20.140 to somebody else,
00:17:21.380 some underling,
00:17:22.320 and they would just sit
00:17:23.040 at the top of this pyramid,
00:17:25.180 collecting all the taxes
00:17:26.260 with the name of bishop,
00:17:27.960 but not doing any of the work.
00:17:29.760 That's not right, is it?
00:17:30.680 And that bishop might not even know
00:17:32.320 anything about the Bible.
00:17:33.900 He might not be acting
00:17:35.180 in a pious way whatsoever.
00:17:37.040 Things like this have been going on
00:17:38.100 for generations already.
00:17:39.780 So I wonder when it gets
00:17:40.660 to the age of Luther,
00:17:42.640 so the 16th century,
00:17:44.000 there was already a giant swell
00:17:46.220 of popular feeling.
00:17:47.780 It had been there for centuries
00:17:49.260 and had been repressed for centuries,
00:17:51.500 and there's only so long
00:17:52.300 you can keep the lid
00:17:53.540 on that pressure cooker.
00:17:54.960 So okay,
00:17:55.360 back in the late 14th century,
00:17:57.000 in the late 1370s,
00:17:59.820 there had been a new pope
00:18:00.860 elected in Rome,
00:18:02.700 but there was some question
00:18:03.700 over coercion.
00:18:05.760 See, this is a classic example
00:18:06.980 of the sorts of problems
00:18:08.260 that are going on
00:18:09.340 in the Catholic Church
00:18:10.220 in the 14th century,
00:18:12.340 is that there seems to have been
00:18:13.600 lots and lots of corruption
00:18:14.700 surrounding the election
00:18:16.320 of the new pope.
00:18:17.360 There's all sorts of power plays
00:18:18.760 and bribery and blackmail
00:18:21.100 and just physical intimidation even.
00:18:24.600 So at the election of this new pope
00:18:25.900 in, what, 1378,
00:18:27.600 the cardinals, the curia,
00:18:29.520 were supposed to vote
00:18:30.160 on who's the new pope,
00:18:31.340 and they voted,
00:18:32.140 but as soon as the vote was over
00:18:33.240 and this new pope was elected,
00:18:35.580 some of the cardinals were saying,
00:18:37.040 look, that wasn't even fair.
00:18:38.280 We were intimidated
00:18:39.220 into voting a certain way.
00:18:41.420 There was a mob outside in Rome,
00:18:43.540 a mob,
00:18:44.500 and we had to vote that way,
00:18:46.080 otherwise we might have been
00:18:47.060 torn limb from limb.
00:18:48.820 So that wasn't fair.
00:18:49.940 The election we just had there,
00:18:51.320 even though it was all sort of
00:18:52.380 squared away by the letter of the law,
00:18:54.180 it wasn't actually fair.
00:18:55.520 And it gets even deeper than that.
00:18:57.560 So, for example,
00:18:58.340 everyone knew that
00:18:59.600 if you could control the pope
00:19:01.520 or even just enough cardinals,
00:19:03.840 it would make you extremely powerful.
00:19:05.940 So you could have actual secular leaders,
00:19:08.260 some duke from Germany or Italy
00:19:10.780 or from anywhere,
00:19:12.260 could bribe a cardinal or a pope
00:19:14.520 or blackmail them
00:19:15.760 or intimidate them,
00:19:17.200 have them in his pocket
00:19:18.380 one way or another.
00:19:19.520 Then that would make him
00:19:20.640 extremely powerful.
00:19:22.040 So there's that going on as well.
00:19:23.720 There's all sorts of rulers
00:19:24.880 all over mainly Central
00:19:26.880 and Eastern Europe
00:19:27.980 and Italy
00:19:28.860 that vied for control of popes.
00:19:32.560 So there's many, many layers to this.
00:19:34.700 And least of all,
00:19:35.340 if you're someone in,
00:19:36.340 if you're just a normal,
00:19:37.540 pious person in Germany
00:19:39.180 or Spain
00:19:39.820 or Ireland
00:19:40.500 or Scotland
00:19:41.600 or wherever,
00:19:42.680 you see all this going on
00:19:44.040 and you're sort of disgusted by it,
00:19:45.940 right?
00:19:46.220 You think,
00:19:46.720 this isn't what Christ had in mind.
00:19:49.180 This isn't what
00:19:49.920 the apostles had in mind.
00:19:52.040 None of this is in the Gospels.
00:19:53.820 This is all sort of
00:19:54.600 dirty, corrupt power plays.
00:19:57.540 And I want to get back
00:19:58.760 to sort of a more honest,
00:20:00.800 pure religiosity.
00:20:02.840 What's going on in Rome
00:20:04.020 is horrible.
00:20:05.220 So, OK,
00:20:05.740 there was this pope
00:20:06.480 that lots of big faction
00:20:08.320 of the cardinals said
00:20:09.840 shouldn't be the legit pope.
00:20:12.160 So long story short,
00:20:13.220 could go into this.
00:20:14.380 If you're interested,
00:20:15.460 it's called the Western Schism
00:20:16.920 or sometimes the Papal Schism,
00:20:19.140 not to be confused
00:20:19.960 with the Great Schism,
00:20:21.460 which is when the Eastern
00:20:22.380 and the Western Church
00:20:23.360 broke apart,
00:20:24.120 but the Western Schism.
00:20:25.100 So another pope
00:20:26.500 gets elected
00:20:27.800 and a bunch of cardinals say,
00:20:29.580 look,
00:20:29.720 that pope just
00:20:30.560 isn't the real pope.
00:20:32.080 He doesn't have
00:20:33.020 the mandate of heaven.
00:20:34.780 We're going to break off
00:20:36.200 and just elect somebody else,
00:20:37.980 which is what they do.
00:20:39.200 And there's a town
00:20:40.060 in southern France
00:20:40.920 called Avignon
00:20:41.600 and they elect another pope
00:20:43.320 at Avignon.
00:20:44.340 So now there's two popes.
00:20:45.700 There's the Roman pope,
00:20:46.920 and the Avignon pope.
00:20:48.380 And so for a long time,
00:20:49.640 30 odd years,
00:20:51.300 there's these two popes,
00:20:52.780 both claiming
00:20:53.480 they're the real pope
00:20:54.500 and that the other one
00:20:55.620 is an imposter,
00:20:57.000 well, not an imposter,
00:20:57.780 an anti-pope.
00:20:59.000 He's a pretender.
00:21:00.120 And it does split the church
00:21:01.740 and Europe fairly cleanly.
00:21:04.120 So broadly speaking,
00:21:05.840 the French and the Spanish
00:21:06.860 usually broadly
00:21:08.340 support the Avignon pope.
00:21:10.440 The Italians and the Germans
00:21:11.680 broadly often support
00:21:13.560 the Roman pope.
00:21:14.800 England and Scotland
00:21:16.460 and Ireland vacillate.
00:21:18.040 Henry IV didn't come out strongly,
00:21:19.680 particularly one way or the other,
00:21:20.920 although it was basically orthodox.
00:21:22.520 But now we've got Henry V.
00:21:23.940 He comes out strongly
00:21:24.760 on the side of the Roman pope.
00:21:26.680 But there's more to it than that.
00:21:28.000 So in, what was it,
00:21:29.600 something like 1409,
00:21:32.080 there's a new council
00:21:33.780 at Pisa in Italy,
00:21:35.860 Leaning Tower of Pisa,
00:21:36.860 Pisa.
00:21:37.160 They call a council
00:21:38.900 where they try to get
00:21:40.500 to the bottom of everything.
00:21:41.920 So there's been two popes
00:21:42.780 running around
00:21:43.340 for a couple of decades
00:21:44.280 and nobody's happy with it, right?
00:21:46.740 Not just a normal,
00:21:48.120 pious person,
00:21:49.400 but everyone is sort of sick of it.
00:21:51.220 They decide,
00:21:51.780 we really need to sort this out.
00:21:53.940 It's, apart from anything else,
00:21:55.120 it's sort of embarrassing,
00:21:56.400 isn't it?
00:21:57.020 The pope is supposed to be
00:21:58.520 like Christ's representative on earth.
00:22:01.560 He's supposed to be
00:22:02.600 Christ's vicar
00:22:03.640 and to be appointed,
00:22:05.220 chosen by God himself.
00:22:07.160 It's just a blaring contradiction,
00:22:09.320 a blaring,
00:22:10.120 a glaring problem
00:22:11.320 to have more than one of them
00:22:13.500 at any given time.
00:22:14.680 So for everyone's sake,
00:22:16.120 they decide they'll all come together
00:22:18.120 in a giant council,
00:22:20.060 like the councils of old,
00:22:21.660 something like the Council of Nicaea
00:22:23.360 or something,
00:22:24.260 a thousand years earlier,
00:22:25.500 and hash it out
00:22:26.700 and come to some sort of conclusion.
00:22:28.840 So they call this big council at Pisa
00:22:30.520 in, I think, 1409.
00:22:31.760 And what they decide
00:22:33.040 is that what might be
00:22:34.660 a good solution to all of this
00:22:36.520 would be to delegitimize
00:22:39.000 both these popes
00:22:40.260 and pick a new one,
00:22:41.660 a third claimant to the Holy See.
00:22:44.480 And then that will please everyone, right?
00:22:46.500 Well, no, not at all.
00:22:47.660 That's what they do.
00:22:48.400 They pick a third pope,
00:22:49.500 now called like the Pisan Pope.
00:22:51.240 So you've got the Roman pope,
00:22:52.220 the Avignon pope,
00:22:53.100 and now the Pisan pope,
00:22:54.680 who's a John XXIII.
00:22:56.220 It's a bit confusing
00:22:57.220 because there's another,
00:22:58.660 because he becomes
00:22:59.520 illegitimized himself later.
00:23:00.960 And then there's another
00:23:01.960 Pope John XXIII
00:23:03.160 in the 20th century.
00:23:05.000 So there's two Pope John XXIII.
00:23:07.480 But anyway,
00:23:07.840 this early 15th century one,
00:23:10.360 it's a bit odd.
00:23:11.280 He, his brothers were pirates,
00:23:13.920 had been pirates
00:23:14.700 and captured and executed.
00:23:16.340 And there was questions
00:23:16.940 over his early life
00:23:18.580 whether he'd been a pirate,
00:23:20.440 but he was backed by the Medici.
00:23:22.580 He'd been a cardinal.
00:23:23.720 He was backed by the Medici,
00:23:24.820 extremely rich and powerful faction.
00:23:26.240 So the idea that
00:23:27.580 if we pick this third guy
00:23:28.820 that will solve the issue,
00:23:30.980 no, it just mudges
00:23:31.780 the waters even further.
00:23:33.740 So now there's three popes
00:23:34.880 because the other two popes
00:23:36.120 don't accept him.
00:23:37.860 So it's just got much worse.
00:23:39.540 So now this is just getting
00:23:41.040 really embarrassing.
00:23:42.280 It's descending into almost a farce
00:23:44.320 and no one's really happy with it.
00:23:46.080 So by 1414,
00:23:48.180 they decide,
00:23:48.880 OK, that didn't work.
00:23:50.040 We'll come together again
00:23:50.800 for an even bigger council
00:23:52.240 and we will get to the bottom
00:23:54.520 of it this time,
00:23:55.320 come hell or high water.
00:23:56.680 That's what they do.
00:23:57.240 They call this,
00:23:58.220 this council of constants
00:23:59.660 to deal with not just
00:24:01.240 the problem of having three popes,
00:24:03.080 but also all the other main concerns
00:24:05.240 that people have been having
00:24:06.160 for a long time.
00:24:07.500 You know, let's make sure
00:24:08.420 that our bishops and our vicars
00:24:09.940 aren't just greedy men
00:24:12.600 who know nothing about religion.
00:24:14.460 Let's make them actually pious
00:24:17.000 and take their ecclesiastical offices
00:24:19.520 seriously.
00:24:21.060 Let's have that.
00:24:21.920 Let's start doing that.
00:24:23.200 Let's put processes in place
00:24:24.680 to make sure that's the case.
00:24:27.140 Let's make sure they're not
00:24:28.160 sort of unjustly taxing their people.
00:24:31.740 Let's make sure that they're not
00:24:32.540 just trying to hold money
00:24:34.080 and land and power
00:24:35.980 for the sake of it.
00:24:37.420 Let's make sure they're not
00:24:38.920 raping nuns, right?
00:24:41.060 Things as serious as this.
00:24:42.940 Let's make sure that,
00:24:44.580 you know,
00:24:44.960 they clean up our act, basically.
00:24:46.680 So at the Council of Constance,
00:24:48.060 usually you would think
00:24:48.920 that it would take a few weeks,
00:24:51.060 a month or two,
00:24:52.680 you know, perhaps a summer
00:24:53.640 to get this done.
00:24:55.020 But it takes four years.
00:24:56.280 They're there for like
00:24:57.140 three and a half, four years
00:24:58.820 before they can sort it all out.
00:25:00.520 And even the Battle of Agincourt
00:25:01.740 happens whilst it's still going on.
00:25:03.600 But what they decide is
00:25:04.620 they'll elect your fourth pope.
00:25:05.720 And long story short,
00:25:08.280 it sort of works,
00:25:09.600 kind of, not exactly.
00:25:10.860 The Avignon pope refuses to accept it,
00:25:13.580 but the other two do.
00:25:15.160 And the Pope John XXIII
00:25:16.780 is put in prison for a while
00:25:18.760 and then released
00:25:20.000 and allowed to be a cardinal
00:25:20.960 in Rome again.
00:25:22.100 And then sort of
00:25:22.940 semi-exiled back to Florence.
00:25:24.160 And it's all a bit messy.
00:25:26.940 And I won't go into it
00:25:27.640 in a fantastic amount of detail here
00:25:29.320 because it's not really strictly
00:25:30.600 necessary for our story
00:25:32.220 of Henry V.
00:25:33.080 But the point is,
00:25:34.560 is that the Roman church is,
00:25:36.780 or Christendom in the West,
00:25:38.900 in Western Europe,
00:25:39.860 is in a state of turmoil.
00:25:41.840 But this Council of Constance,
00:25:43.200 which happens here,
00:25:44.180 begins to start sorting it out.
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