The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #207 ｜ Henry V： Part III

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs. This week I shall be continuing my story of Henry V, the reign

00:00:06.060 and achievements of Henry V. Apologies for the interregnum there talking about Lawrence of

00:00:11.900 Arabia for a few weeks. So back to the story of Henry V. So I'm going to continue the story of 0.92

00:00:17.460 Henry V's reign before he goes to France for the Agincourt campaign. And it's a period of about a

00:00:23.360 year, a bit more than a year, but all sorts of things happen in that time. So let's go through

00:00:29.000 that period and hopefully we can get up to the French campaign and Half Fleur and all that sort

00:00:34.720 of thing. But quite a few different things go on. So I should continue reading from Anne Currie's book,

00:00:40.960 Henry V's Playboy Prince to Warrior King, because as I said before, I feel like out of all the books

00:00:46.300 I've read, which is quite a few to be honest, I feel like she covers this period the best. Probably

00:00:52.800 won't use her all that much for the actual military campaigning stuff. But again, for this period,

00:00:57.460 she's very good. So she starts talking about here the financial side of things, because that's a big

00:01:02.220 part of the story. You know, it's very expensive to have foreign wars. And medieval kings, their

00:01:10.580 relationship with parliament, where they get given money, essentially, or get given oversight over

00:01:16.240 levying taxes. That relationship is really important. And Henry V's father, Bolingbroke,

00:01:22.380 Henry IV, had had a bad relationship with his parliaments, basically. They kind of never really

00:01:28.760 trusted him or he'd asked them for too much. He'd made promises often that he'd do things in return

00:01:34.440 for monies and then didn't do them or only did them in a half-arsed sort of a way. So his relationship

00:01:41.700 with parliaments and therefore money was always strained. And so Henry V decides to do it a bit

00:01:47.140 differently. Or Henry IV always overspent as well. So Anne Currie says this, quote,

00:01:51.960 Mindful of the financial problems that dogged his father's reign, Henry kept the size and costs of

00:01:57.040 his household low. Nor did his reign see the frequent chopping and changing in office holding,

00:02:02.920 which his father had witnessed. A lower turnover indicated a king who was sure of his judgment

00:02:07.900 and clear in his intentions. Conscious of the criticism his father had attracted for promoting men of

00:02:14.820 low rank. Henry was keen to have leading nobles and clergy as the core of his council. The

00:02:20.920 militarism of his reign, generated by the wars with France, assisted in bringing peers and leading

00:02:26.820 knights into the king's inner circle, end quote. So that's the thing, if you remember, if you go back

00:02:32.080 to various other kings that have been unpopular, I think of Edward II particularly, or maybe Richard

00:02:38.600 II as well, would have people very, very close to him in his inner entourage, in his inner circle

00:02:44.660 of power, who weren't necessarily all that aristocratic or rich or landed or powerful. And the rich and

00:02:52.460 landed powerful aristocratic people don't like that. They feel like they're being cheated out of

00:02:57.360 something. I mean, in a way they are. Power usually is sort of a zero-sum game. If someone else has got

00:03:04.100 a bit of power, it's just a slice of the cake that you haven't got. So anyway, Henry IV was guilty of

00:03:10.940 that a bit. And Henry V had seen that and decided to go the other way with it, make sure he placates

00:03:18.960 the rich and powerful people. It's not a terrible strategy in the early 15th century.

00:03:24.940 Currie continues, quote, Henry was a hands-on monarch, anxious to make his mark in all areas of business,

00:03:30.580 especially in ensuring good justice, public order, and financial probity, and in promoting England's

00:03:36.760 standing in Europe. But it was a mark of a good king to take counsel, both from regular royal counsel,

00:03:43.100 as well as from great councils and parliament. Three days after he was crowned, in a sign of his

00:03:48.720 return from the political wilderness to which he had been relegated before his accession, he arranged

00:03:54.300 an unprecedented personal meeting with the nobles and knights at which he promised to rule for the

00:03:59.800 honour of God and the prosperity of the realm. Those present, in turn, swore oaths of allegiance to him

00:04:06.840 as king. By this ceremony, he sought to expunge any lingering doubts on his inheritance, in the light

00:04:13.340 of his alleged attempted coup and his father's apparent preference for his brother Thomas. As a public

00:04:19.320 gesture, and demonstrating his adherence to expected royal practice at a new accession, the king indicated

00:04:26.560 his intention to issue a general pardon, having messengers sent out on the day of his coronation

00:04:32.220 to proclaim it. These actions publicised his good intentions, but the political nation still needed

00:04:37.700 time to discover what kind of king he would be. So there you can see Henry is still kind of obviously,

00:04:44.840 feels he needs to shore up his position as king in all sorts of ways. For, you know, his father was a

00:04:52.260 usurper, plain and simple. Well, a regicide as well. And then there was that, if you remember back,

00:04:58.620 there was that interesting period where our Henry, Henry V, may have tried to usurp power from his

00:05:06.260 father, Henry IV, briefly. Or during the period of 1410 into 1411, there was a strange struggle for power

00:05:14.620 there, which is kind of a blot on his record, in a way. He needs to, he obviously feels like

00:05:23.180 the, not just his reign, but the whole dynasty needs to be shored up in various ways. One of which

00:05:29.340 is dealing with, dealing with, you know, openly the death of Richard, trying to come to terms with

00:05:36.500 and drawing a line under the fact that he was dethroned and murdered, or at least died in suspicious

00:05:43.500 circumstances. Anne Carey continues here saying, a few weeks after his accession, he had publicly

00:05:48.300 announced that Richard II would receive a royal burial in Westminster Abbey, because he'd been

00:05:53.740 buried somewhere else and all kings really should be buried in Westminster Abbey. You know, the death

00:05:59.380 of Richard had tried to be swept under the carpet, basically. And instead of just keeping it that way,

00:06:06.240 never mentioning him ever again, Henry V decides to do something about it. Try and put the record

00:06:12.100 straight if he can. And in early December, he fulfilled the promise. It was an astute move

00:06:17.700 in bringing Richard, Richard's body, to Westminster from its initial burial place at the Dominican

00:06:24.040 Friary at King's Langley, and what is more, reburying him in the tomb that Richard had previously

00:06:29.500 reserved for himself. The King aimed, unsuccessfully as it turned out, both to quash rumours circulating for

00:06:36.680 over a decade that Richard was still alive and living in Scotland. It also gave Henry the chance

00:06:41.860 to pay his respects publicly to a king who had behaved honourably towards him in Ireland until

00:06:47.600 his father's invasion. Remember, Henry had actually known Richard, grown up with him as king, and, you

00:06:54.220 know, went on that campaign with him in Ireland when everything went down. So it wasn't like Richard was

00:07:00.480 this abstract figure from the past that he'd never known. No, he'd actually known him. Henry V even

00:07:06.680 borrowed the banners used for his own father's burial in June at Canterbury Cathedral, underscoring

00:07:12.740 the new king's keenness to draw the line under past conflicts, while at the same time emphasising

00:07:18.980 the legitimacy and magnificence of his dynastic forebears, and thereby himself. His father's funeral

00:07:26.300 was itself a spectacular event, the king ordering 90 flags, bearing the arms of all Christian

00:07:31.980 kings and other leading men, and 50 with the images of heroes as a sign of Henry IV's place

00:07:38.360 in the panoply of famous men. The candles at the vigil and ceremony cost the king £100, which

00:07:44.000 is loads, with a further £160 being expended on a single item, a golden bejewalled head, to

00:07:52.060 be given as an offering to the shrine of Thomas Becket. It's great that we've got details like

00:07:57.580 this from the royal rolls. We know what they spent money on, and great little details which

00:08:02.960 we don't often get much before this. Henry's reverence for his dead father is also witnessed

00:08:08.520 in his cherishing of the latter's breviary and great bible. Although he subsequently lent

00:08:14.240 the latter to his brigantine foundation at Sheen, he made clear in his last will that it should

00:08:20.200 be returned at his death to his royal successor. In May 1413, with the same mixture of personal

00:08:26.640 devotion and dynastic publicity, he had commissioned a new effigy for his mother's tomb in Leicester

00:08:32.620 with, quote, divers' arms of the King of England, quote, even though she had died five years before

00:08:38.400 her husband seized the throne. He also made other gestures of reconciliation early in his reign,

00:08:44.280 releasing from house arrest Edmund, Earl of March, a possible rival claimant to the throne,

00:08:49.160 given his descent from the second son of Edward III. By the authority of parliament, the earl was

00:08:54.720 given full control of his estate on the 9th of June, 1413, end quote. Now that's an important move,

00:09:01.280 because the earls of March really have got a better claim than the House of Lancaster to be the

00:09:08.740 kings, to be the monarchs, be the King of England. As if you remember, going back to Edward III and the

00:09:15.280 whole John of Gaunt thing, the Black Prince and the second son, Lionel of Antwerp, yet the earls of

00:09:20.840 March, even if it did pass through a woman at one point, they're really the true inheritors of the 0.99

00:09:28.040 throne of England, to be fair. So, I mean, Henry IV knew this, and that's why he'd locked up that this

00:09:35.480 Edmund, Earl of March. So, for Henry V to not only just release him from prison, but give him his

00:09:43.880 estates back, it's quite a bold move, really. You know, it shows that he's quite confident. I think

00:09:51.840 he does. Many medieval monarch or pre-modern monarch might have easily decided to keep Edmund, Earl of

00:09:59.920 March, in prison, or even kill him, even hundreds of years after this. During the age of Henry VIII,

00:10:05.180 for example, he was going around killing people with far less claim than Edward, Earl of March,

00:10:11.480 has in comparison to Henry V. So, for Henry V to release him and give him all his, essentially,

00:10:16.740 money and land and power back, you know, it's an interesting move, isn't it? Whether it was a case

00:10:21.360 of genuine confidence, or whether he was almost like a daring Edmund, Earl of March, to do something,

00:10:29.640 it was probably the former of those two things. I feel like Henry V was just quite bold in the

00:10:34.980 political and military moves he makes, and was quite confident in his position, just didn't think

00:10:41.740 that, and correctly in this case, didn't think Edmund would do anything. If you would like to see

00:10:47.040 the full version of this premium video, please head over to lotuseaters.com and subscribe to gain

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - April 20, 2025

PREVIEW： Epochs #207 ｜ Henry V： Part III

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