So we may now survey the young king. The extant portraits, albeit somewhat idealized, display a man with a prominent jaw and a faintly pious or innocent expression. Concerning his character and judgment, no general agreement exists. He was of an honest and simple nature, but the virtues of ordinary life may not sit well upon a monarch. For some chroniclers he became the model of the saintly king, ‘without any crook of craft or untruth’; he was ‘pure and clean’, modest in success and patient in adversity. Yet to others he seemed to be a simpleton, an idiot, half-witted, a veritable ‘sheep’. Pope Pius II said of this devoted son of the Church that he was ‘more timorous than a woman, utterly devoid of wit or spirit’. The English churchmen had been gossiping to him. In truth a fifteenthcentury king had to be aggressive and brutal; he had to possess innate authority; he had to be shrewd and courageous. Henry VI seems to have possessed none of these qualities. Those who condemned him as an imbecile and a natural fool were simply registering their disappointment. In any other sphere he would no doubt have passed as a devout and kindly man.
Of his piety itself there can be no doubt. He would never conduct business, or move his court, on a Sunday. He rebuked any of his lords who swore, and his only declamatory language was ‘Forsooth, forsooth!’ His eminent contemporary, William Caxton, wrote that he ‘made a rule that a certain dish, which represented the five wounds of Christ as it were red with blood, should be set on his table by his almoner before any other course, when he was to take refreshment; and contemplating these images with great fervour he thanked God marvellous devoutly’.
After the adhesion of the duke of Burgundy to the French cause, the endless war did not go well for the English. They still held on to Normandy, as well as parts of Gascony and Maine, but their aspirations to French supremacy were now at an end. Bedford, the commanding presence on the English side, proved impossible to replace. All the spirit had gone out of the enterprise of France. Step by step Normandy was being reclaimed by the French. It was perhaps unfortunate that Henry VI himself had no military experience or aptitude. His only visit to France was at the time of his coronation, and never once did he lead his forces into the field. He was emphatically a man of peace, more at home with his studies or his devotions; he was more intent upon his foundations, at Eton and elsewhere, or with his building works at Cambridge. In this he may not have been wholly misguided. Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge, remain the most enduring manifestations of his reign.
When Paris fell to Charles VII in the spring of 1436, and the state of Normandy grew more disordered, Henry was inclined ever more favourably towards peace. Negotiations between the two sides accomplished precisely nothing, however, while the French continued their slow conquest of the disputed territories. The English did not have the men or the materials successfully to defend both Gascony and Normandy, while the central market town and garrison of Calais was always under threat from the forces of the duke of Burgundy. The French king offered a truce, and the possibility of England maintaining its control of Gascony and Normandy, on the condition that Henry VI renounced his claim to the French crown. The king and his council prevaricated, and sent out a series of confused responses. Henry’s council in Normandy said that they were dismayed and apprehensive like ‘a ship tossed about on the sea by many winds, without captain, without steersman, without rudder, without sail’. The king could be construed as the substitute for captain and steersman, rudder and sail.
Plenty of interested parties were of course ready to throw in their opinions. Beaufort and Gloucester were joined by a third such party. Richard, duke of York, had taken the place of Bedford as commander of the English forces; he was in fact Bedford’s nephew, and would continue the factional strife that already undermined English policy. In the complicated tangle of primogeniture he was now one of the likely and immediate heirs to the throne, being directly related to the fifth son of Edward III; Henry himself was descended from the fourth son. It may seem excessively obscure to a modern reader, but at the time all the protagonists knew exactly where they stood in relation to sovereignty; it was in their blood, literally, and guided their actions. Henry never trusted York.
