The New Murrey and Blue blog

Was Henry VI our most unfortunate king? Well, at only nine months he was certainly the youngest to come to the throne. And when he reached adulthood his mental state was frequently out of kilter. A little like his maternal grandfather, the French king Charles VI, known to posterity as Charles the Mad. Charles went berserk one day and started chopping down the knights of his retinue, killing a number of them before he was restrained. His mental health was “dodgy” from then on.

Henry VI was a much calmer proposition, of course, but certainly not sane for large parts of his long reign. It’s often wondered if things would have been different if his father, Henry V, had lived longer, but even if that had happened, Henry VI would still eventually have ascended the throne. And Henry V certainly wasn’t the dazzling , chivalrous hero of posterity. He was a religious fanatic with some very nasty notions, so England had a narrow escape when he turned up his royal toes at a young age. But he left us with poor Henry VI, who didn’t seem to know whether he was coming or going most of the time.

His dithering daftness—while others reigned for him—was the cause of many a future trouble for England. His mother, Katherine of Valois, had hopped into bed with one Owen Tudor (the small matter of marriage may not have come into it) and they produced two sons, Edmund and Jasper Tudor. Edmund made a dazzling marriage with the child heiress, Margaret Beaufort….and to make sure of holding on to her fortune, he bedded her immediately. She had their son, Henry Tudor, when she was still only thirteen.

And what was Henry VI doing while all this was going on? He was twiddling his thumbs, humming, rocking and gazing into space—or into a Bible. Well, I don’t actually know what he was doing, but it can’t have been too far removed from my description.

Oh, it wasn’t his fault that he was made the way he was, but it was catastrophic for England. His weakness led to the alienation of the 3rd Duke of York….and to the Wars of the Roses.

Henry VI’s weakness also led to Henry Tudor, who would eventually become the first Tudor monarch. One of the glamourous Tudors? Um….no. Have you seen his portraits? Look above. Talk about shifty-eyed. He was enough to sour the milk. And his character was odious too. The Tudors weren’t glamourous at all, yet for some unknown reason appear to have cornered sole right to the description.

This article—this article—is all about Henry VI, and is worth a read.

Before I go….I haven’t mentioned Richard III. I’ve kept him until this last paragraph. Like the Tudors, he appears to have become firmly fixed in posterity as the monster who stole his nephew’s throne and then murdered the boy (and his younger brother) in the Tower. Oh, posterity has done a real hatchet job on poor Richard, that’s for sure. But he no more deserves the odium any more than the Tudors deserve their aura of glamour. Richard III was the true King of England, not a usurper, and he didn’t murder his nephews, as the wonderful new research by Philippa Langley has now proved.

Let’s face it therefore. If Henry VI hadn’t been the feeble-minded nonentity he was, maybe he’d have handled the 3rd Duke of York wisely. Then there wouldn’t have been any Wars of the Roses and Henry’s son (Um, believe that and you’ll believe the moon is made of green cheese! I doubt very much that Henry VI was capable of the physical act necessary for the conception of anything!) Edward of Lancaster wouldn’t have been killed at Tewkesbury in 1471. There’d have been no Yorkist kings, Edward IV and Richard III. And no Tudors!

I deeply regret the lack of Yorkist kings, but not the absence of Tudors. That would be pure bliss.