Beargarden
Bertram Wolffe
The Reign of King Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority 1422-1461 Ralph A. Griffiths (Ernest Benn pp. 968, £25) The reign of Henry VI was one of the longest, most dramatic and disastrous in English history. Needless to say, historians are in profound disagreement about it and everything they say is open to question. In 1422, while still in his cradle, Henry inherited both the English kingdom of his formidable hero father Henry V and the French kingdom of his mad Valois grandfather Charles VI. Or was his possession of the French throne really an illusion from the start? For 15 years his Lancastrian uncles and other councillors had to rule his realms for him. In time they had him crowned and anointed king in London and Paris, and in 1437 handed over his heritage to him in good shape and virtually intact.
Or were his French possessions in fact slipping inexorably away and his kingdom of England rent by aristocratic factions which would ultimately ruin the country? When he reached manhood he certainly lost all his French possessions, with the excep tion of Calais, and presided over a division of his English nobility and gentry into hostile camps which led to the longest Period of intermittent civil war in English history. Was his kingship really only nominal? Should others bear the responsibility for the defeats abroad and rebellions and dissentions at home? Are the causes of the ensuing civil wars really to be found in the period of his personal rule to 1453? Or were they simply a dynastic struggle arising as a result of his subsequent insanity? He did lose his wits in 1453, that is certain. He appears to have recovered them, but for how long is, again, a matter of dispute. He was deposed in 1461, became a fugitive and was imprisoned in the Tower. Against all Possibility he was restored to the throne in 1470, but after a few months he was again deposed and murdered by his Yorkist supPlanters. Within the decade his former English subjects were worshipping him for his posthumous miracle cures; from 1485 Henry Tudor, who claimed that Henry VI had chosen him as his divinely ordained successor, began to create that legend of the holy, innocent, martyr king which Shakespeare made immortal.
Consequently, the reputation made for Henry VI in the first few generations after his death has barred the way ever since to all authentic picture of the living king. Here IS the final problem. Even if these 'cosmetic layers so expertly applied' can be Penetrated, as Dr Griffiths puts it, can one therefore hope to make sense of his obscure reign by centring the account on Henry himself? Dr Griffiths has found sufficient material for a lengthy study limited to the exercise of the royal authority, 1422-1461, Which he takes as the approach best suited to answer the basic outstanding questions of the reign. Appended to his bibliography is a list of 60 relevant unpublished theses Which he has been able to consult. The size of this book is thus indicative of the still burgeoning growth-industry which 15thcentury English historical studies have become since the Second World War. Does it mean that we now have all the answers? Dr Griffiths's leisurely progress through the Shires and down the years certainly provides all the information one could possibly need to answer the questions, but his vision is Perhaps too close to identify cause and effect and isolate long-term issues clearly.
This book finds the realities of the Politics of that age in regional networks of Patronage, kinship and dependent lordship Which are here meticulously investigated. According to this view, the institutions of later-mediaeval England, the apparatus of law and order, the council and, to a lesser extent, parliament, were permeated by these competing affinities, and the greatest and most pernicious affinity of them all was the personnel of the royal household, with its tentacles stretching throughout the Shires, and within it, at the centre, an exclusive circle of advisers counselling or manipulating the king. Shakespeare, of course, was sure that Henry VI was totally manipulated and had no doubt who created the beargarden, as Hazlitt aptly christened his picture of the reign: Whose state so many had the managing, That they lost France and made his England bleed.
Some historians, seeing the contrasting healthy state of England under Henry V and realising that the father's ministers were no better than the son's, have laid the responsibility squarely at the king's own door. Dr Griffiths is not one of these. Some Tudor propaganda appears to have stuck to him and Henry is still described in this book as a great educationalist, a dedicated peacemaker and humane ruler. At the same time he shows that the king was not entirely innocent of the disasters of his reign. He believes that the young Henry took full power to himself in 1437 and could not be stopped from assuming it. He shows how his partisan distribution and withholding of offices, patronage and favour exacerbated rather than assuaged the power conflicts of his princes of the blood and peers of the realm, both in France and England. This peacemaker who, as an earnest of good faith could give away a whole province to his French adversary in the teeth of his subjects' opposition, without any quid pro quo, had earlier been instructing his Beaufort kinsman and agent, the Duke of Somerset, to wage 'most cruel and mortal war' in France. Later he authorised a dishonourable surprise attack on the Breton fortress of Fougeres by one whom he had made a councillor and an honourable Garter knight. This brought his peace policy down in ruins about his ears and cost him Normandy. He 'divested himself of much of the routine of ruling' (which mediaeval king did not?), but yet he cannot be relegated to the sidelines. He himself made the imprudent and reckless distribution of the crown's resources which was so much condemned in 1450. Bad decisions were sometimes clearly his and, after all, he had to authorise everything. In this book, however, Henry is only made to share responsibility for the decisions which led to the disasters at the end of the period of personal rule: the loss of France, popular rebellion and the collapse of law and order, though no specific examples are provided of his ministers acting independently on matters of high policy.
From 1453, after his first illness, the exact nature of which Dr Griffiths thinks unimportant, there followed a period of 'uncertain rule by a listless king'. At least that is what Dr Griffiths says he is describing in the text. In his Preface he dubs this the period of rule by others. There is in fact evidence of Henry ruling after 1453, though admittedly we do not know for certain when he was sane and when he was Incapacitated. Dr Griffiths portrays these years 1453-1461 as especially sordid. He shows proud magnates and a proud and despotic queen jostling for power, intent on furthering their own interests. Richard Duke of York, it seems, was no better than the rest, exploiting his unique opportunity as protector of the realm to consolidate his own power and that of his Nevi11 friends. The skirmishes and set battles of these years are presented not as actual, predetermined civil war, but as the approach of civil war which only began with Henry's deposition. Is there, then, no need to look earlier than 1453, to the central period of Henry's personal rule, for the root causes of the Wars of the Roses? I think there is. Surely Dr Griffiths's own carefully constructed politico-social analysis of a fragmented society under a king who failed to act as impartial arbiter and unifying force, who exacerbated aristocratic rivalries and ruled through a faction, clearly indicates this?
The book is divided into three parts: composite rule to 1437, personal rule 1437-1453 and the rule of persons other than the king from 1453-1461. The 25 chapters are further subdivided into over 100 sections, each with its separate sub-title. Chronological sequence is often broken and sometimes indeed reversed to include expert periodic surveys of affinities, lawlessness and violence, financial affairs, frontiers and foreigners, the propaganda of the age and other specialised subjects. The politicosocial anatomy is stimulating, but one misses the good tale well told. As Dr Griffiths's publishers rightly claim, this very long book contains more reliable, informative detail, some of which is new, than has ever been assembled on this period before — or indeed, or might add, is ever likely to be again.
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