S9 E9 | Madness Descends

I won't sugarcoat things for you. It's about to get a whole lot more chaotic in Plantagenet England. Stick around for the end of this episode to hear why doe-eyed King Henry VI. isn't going to find peace. Now, over the course of this season, you might have figured out that Henry VI is possibly one of the most ineffectual kings of the entire Plantagenet era. A failure, you might say.

And failures are exactly what's on my mind at the moment, because I'm gearing up to launch a brand new miniseries with my friend and fellow history buff, Elizabeth Day. It's called History's Greatest Failures. And together, Elizabeth and I are going to learn about how losers make history. That'll be landing in your feeds in April. And for its bonus episodes, I want to summon my royal favourites in voice note form.

I want to hear your favourite historical failures of any era, and producer Al and I will discuss them. To record your favourite failure, look out for the links on our royal chat threads on Patreon. That's patreon.com forward slash this is history. Now, on with the show after this short break.

You know what, you've got to feel sorry for King Henry VI, because he wouldn't be anybody's personality hire, and he was just as bad at HR as at kingship. He's the guy who forced all his warring nobles to hold hands in the Loveday parade. If only Plantagenet England had Indeed sponsored jobs. With Indeed, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all the right boxes. Less stress, less time, more results.

When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of my show will get a seventy-five dollar sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indie.com slash this is history. Just go to indeed dot com slash this is history right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash this is history. Terms and conditions apply.

Need a hiring hero? This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator? facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History Hit. Twice a week, join me, Tristan Hughes. As I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts.

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The physician waits outside the door to the king's chamber, waiting to be summoned in. He can feel the worry rising off the royal attendance around him. Like steam. The physician announces himself again. And now someone hurries to the door, though it's opened and shut too quickly for him to see what's going on inside. This new flunky shakes his head gravely. There's been no change since the message was sent summoning the physician here to the Royal Hunting Lodge of Clarendon in Wilkes.

Well, says the doc, you'd better let me in to see him. It can't be that bad, surely. But even as he's talking, he knows this is no ordinary case. A few days ago, the Plantagenet King of England was, in the words of people who've seen him, smitten with a frenzy. Precisely what's wrong with him, no one can say. They just know. It's August 1453, and a few weeks ago news reached England of the worst military catastrophe in living memory.

On July the 17th, an English army was wiped out by the French at the Battle of Castillon. It means almost all of the remaining English lands in France, held for nearly 300 years, are gone. No one's exactly jumping for joy, but Henry has taken it the worst. He's fallen into a sort of stupor. He won't speak, Won't eat or clean himself. He just sits or lies there, slumped and motionless, like the living dead. Admitted to the room, the physician is confronted with this bizarre sight.

He sets to work. He tries everything he can think of to get a response from the vacant king. He grinds herbs, applies poultices, gives his little pot of leeches a try. Nothing. As the afternoon wears on and the light grows long in the room, he has to admit defeat. The king isn't dead, but he's not exactly living either. Henry VI wasn't the most gung-ho monarch at the best of times, but this is like a nightmare vision of his kingship taken to its logical extension.

The thirty-one-year-old English king is there but not there, a plump-cheeked lump of kingly nothing. And England is in deep, deep trouble. I'm Dan Jones and from Sony Music Entertainment, this is history. Season 9 of A Dynasty Today. Episode 9, Madness Discovery. What's the most famous fictional depiction of madness?

Jack Nicholson in The Shining? Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver? Maybe it all comes back to Hamlet, finding out about his father's death, and declaring that he'll put on an anti disposition. Does the Prince of Denmark really lose his reason? Is he putting it on as a defence mechanism? Answers on a postcard addressed to your A level English teacher, please.

The point I want to make for our purposes here is that when we see derangement, mental instability, lunacy, portrayed in art or in film or on the stage. It's usually an extravagant, demonstrative condition. We see characters ranting, raving, behaving erratically, and Even when we've encountered royal madness in This Is History, our miniseries The Glass King charts Charles VI of France losing his marbles, the symptoms of the illness have been dramatic.

Charles VI, who was Henry VI's grandad, we should remember, lost his reason in 1392. From that point on, he would rant, rave, run around, scream in pain, smear his caca around the place, attack people with his sword, and so on. It wasn't good, for Charles. French politics, but it was an active, performed type of disorder. I want to compare that with what happens to Henry VI in the summer of fourteen fifty-three, following the doleful news about the loss of Castillon and Gascony.

Everyone agrees that his mind has gone. But the form his illness takes is kind of baffling. Henry basically doesn't do anything. He doesn't recognize or respond to anyone, including the Queen, pregnant with their first child. He won't speak or eat. He's just Inert, catatonic. Modern historians have sometimes had a bash at diagnosing what was wrong with Henry, but the descriptions of his symptoms are typically too elusive to safely fit into any modern medical assessment.

Check out this week's bonus episode, where I'll be delving into this in more detail.

What matters in fourteen fifty three isn't so much the medical term they slap on Henry, but the effects his illness has on English politics. Because this isn't a problem that the English have really had to deal with before, or certainly not in living memory. Which isn't to say that everything has been hunky dory in England, king wise. There have been several occasions when the king has been too unwell to govern.

Think back to season eight, when Henry IV was too incapacitated by his illness to govern. And the future Henry V had to step up and run the royal council. Or to season seven, when the elderly Edward III was slipping into dementia and the burden of government fell on nobles, including his son, John of Gaunt. There have been minorities during the early reigns of Richard II and Henry VI himself, which have required the adults to take the reins until the king grows up.

And under Richard, there were moments when the king went fully off the reservation and had to have conciliar rule imposed on him to prevent him from abusing his power. Yet this case, with Henry VI simultaneously there and not there, puts up a whole new set of problems. Unlike in a minority, there's no will of the last king to follow, and there are no grey-beard uncles or thrusting young heirs like Henry V once was, who are the natural standards.

Does anyone have the right to rule on Henry's behalf? And if they do, who should it be? These are deadly complicated questions, not least because solving them the wrong way could end up with allegations of treason. Then you have to plug into all that. The fact that this has happened at the worst possible time for both international and domestic policy. Needless to say, the Hundred Years' War

is on the verge of being finally and decisively over. But how should England react to the fall of Gascony? How should they organize the defence of the last bastion on the continent, the garrison at Calais? These are urgent pressing questions. And at home, there's simmering resentment between various leading nobles. As we heard last episode, The king's relative, Richard Duke of York,

Has come back from Ireland demanding to have a stake in directing the Royal Government. But he's been blocked at every turn. By Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, also a royal relative. Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, other noble factions have been knocking lumps out of each other. In the West Country, there's more or less open warfare between the Courtney family, who are Earls of Devon, and the Bonneville family, who are their rivals for power in the region. In the north.

There's another feud brewing between the Neville and Percy families. This is more than just Seat in church on a Sunday, there are sieges, riots, kidnappings, assassinations. It's full-blown gang warfare. These issues are so sensitive and high-level that only a king can properly step in. Yeah. So when the king has all the responsiveness of a pot plant, and that's before he goes catatonic, the realm is in big trouble.

As summer of 1453 ticks by and autumn arrives, the physicians keep lining up to prod King Henry and try and get some response. But they have no luck. It looks like it's going to take something major to snap him out of this. Then, something major does happen. Queen Margaret goes into labour. On October the 13th, the feast day of Edward the Confessor, she gives birth to a baby. He's named after the saint, Prince Edward, and preparations are made to show him to his father.

If this doesn't bring the king back into the realm of the sentient, it's hard to know what will. Hello, Dan Jones here. I'm an author and medievalist, and I don't think it'll surprise you to know I've amassed enough hardbacks to fill a moat. But in the process I've often lost where I am while purchasing a book online, drowning in a sea of tabs that each require a new login. That's why I find bookshops powered by Shopify a breeze to use.

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Prince Edward's baptism should be the happiest royal occasion imaginable. England's churches have been working overtime ever since he was born, giving thanks for his birth and looking forward to a brighter future. The whole realm has been given the nod to pray that he grows up to be healthy and strong. This is the first royal baby born since Henry himself, more than 30 years ago.

The fact of the royal birth should, theoretically, make noble politics a bit smoother. The tricky question of who's heir to the throne is now definitively settled. But as the little prince gets his font dunking, everyone knows things are still pretty dire. Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, is asked to stand godfather to the kid, a reminder that partisan politics are alive and well.

And when Queen Margaret takes the baby to see the king at Windsor Castle, hoping that maybe the sight of his heir will give him some jolt of recognition, nothing happens. As one chronicler puts it, Queen Margaret goes to the meeting with the nobleman Humphrey Duke of Buckingham, and they both do their best to raise a reaction from the king.

But all their labour was in vain, for they departed thence without any answer or countenance, saving only that the king once looked on the prince and cast down his eyes without any more. It's clear that, heir or no heir, England is just going to have to get on with things without a functioning king. So who is going to take charge? Well, that's the million-shilling question. Somerset gets his nose ahead when he's asked to be Prince Edward's godfather.

But that doesn't last long. Because in November, Richard, Duke of York shows up at the Royal Council in London, and he and his allies launch a political attack. they repeat the old allegations that Somerset gave away France to the French, and managed to get the other lords to agree that there's a legal case to answer. Which, let's be clear, is pretty much bang on. It was indeed on Somerset's watch that Normandy was lost.

He hardly put up a tough fight, and when Charles VII was on the rampage, Somerset seemed most concerned to make sure that he got personal compensation from the English government for any lands he himself lost. Public-spirited, it wasn't. York spells out these accusations, and he makes his case forcefully enough that Somerset is sent to the Tower of London to await a trial. As Somerset rings in the new year behind bars,

Queen Margaret is trying to buy time. In January 1454, she issues a public claim that she, not York, should rule in place of her husband and on behalf of her newborn Prince Edward. To make the case for this, she issues a bill, a sort of public letter. We know about it because it's recorded in the famous collection of family correspondence known as the Paston Letters.

The Pastons are an East Anglian family, but they have plenty of interests in London. And when the Queen issues her bill, their friends say The Queen hath made a bill of five articles, desiring those articles to be granted. Whereof the first is that she desireth to have the whole rule of this land, the second is that she may make the Chancellor, the treasurer, the privy seal, and all the other officers of this land, with sheriffs and all other officers that the king should make.

The third is that she may give all the bishoprics of this land and all other benefices belonging to the king's gift. The fourth is that she may have sufficient livelihood assigned for the king and the prince and herself. But as for the fifth article, I cannot know what it is. Well, four out of five isn't bad. Anyway, ambitious as the Queen's bid for power is, it's all in vain. Queens wielding royal power in their own right isn't unheard of. But the precedents in England haven't been great.

Edward III's mum, Isabella of France, was the last to try it, alongside her lover, Roger Mortimer, back in the 1320s. That ended up as a vicious tyranny which required a teenage revolution to get rid of it. Go back and listen to season six, episode one, if you want to revisit the details. In the spring of 1454, Parliament decides that the Queen won't be getting command of the state. Instead, it confirms York as the leader of government.

He's made protector of the realm and chief counselor. Even though the monstrous prospect of a woman being given real power is sidestep. There must still be plenty of jitters in Parliament as York's protectorship gets signed off. After all, York is an insurgent. He's the man whose name has been on the lips of all the wrong people, most notably Jack Cage rebels, who went apeshit in London in 1450. It's a big gamble giving him the wheel to the bus of state.

On the other hand, the bus of state isn't exactly in great condition as things are. It has two flat tires, half the windows are broken, the engine's belching green smoke, and the windscreen wipers have been snapped off. So it's not like this is the dream gig. What's more, once York is put in charge, things actually go reasonably well.

He hurries up north to knock some heads together in the gang war between the Nevils and the Percy's. He manages to be even-handed when he's there, even imprisoning his own son-in-law for getting involved in the fighting. He also goes down south and tries to impose a temporary peace between the Bonvilles and the Courtneys. He hands out land and grants to Queen Margaret, who can't stand the sight of him, as well as to the King's half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor.

So York does what he can to do the job of protector the right way, even under difficult circumstances. But there's one problem he can't solve, the problem of his arch-rival Edmund, Duke of Somerset. If he lets Somerset out of the Tower of London, you can bet the farm that he'll start creating havoc and undermining everything that York is trying to do. But the longer he leaves him in there, the more twisted Somerset is likely to get.

So throughout 1454, as York gets his teeth stuck into government, he leaves Somerset in lock up. Somerset keeps himself up to speed on the news, with a network of spies and informants hanging out in all the lords' houses, constantly taking the temperature of the realm. Since it looks like York doesn't have the authority, or the desire, to actually kill him, Somerset just has to bide his time and hope that events will move in his favour sometime soon.

And then, on Christmas Day, 1454, they do. Because just as the goose is going in the oven and the mince pies are coming out. Something wildly unexpected happens. Henry VI wakes up. Happy Christmas, everybody! The bozo is back. New Maybelline Serum Lips. And I think that's a good thing. The choir at Canterbury Cathedral have been working overtime, giving thanks to God for the great favour he has, allegedly, bestowed on England.

It's New Year 1455, and they've been given special instructions to praise the man upstairs for seeing to it that King Henry is restored to his witch. In the royal palace, meanwhile, Henry is on fine form. he's been introduced to his fourteen month old son, and he's thrown up his hands in joy to learn that he's been given the saintly royal name of Edward.

According to one chronicler, when Henry's ministers arrive to see him and find that he can speak with them as well as he ever did, they weep for joy. All, perhaps, except one. Richard, Duke of York, has good cause to sob, but not with happiness. Because as soon as Henry wakes up, the Queen and others around him are able to start pulling York's protectorate to pieces. They've never liked him, never wanted him, and now they can use the king, awake but as simple as ever, to start bringing him down.

By the end of January, York's nemesis, Somerset, is let out of the tower. The Queen has always favoured him, and the king likes him more than York as well. There's nothing York can do about it. Somerset is released, and all the charges against him are dropped. In February, York is stripped of his title of protector. Then he's dismissed from the office of Captain of Calais, England's last foothold in France, and that's given to SummerSt. The mood music is extremely clear.

Henry's up, York's out, and Somerset is in. And that means unless York hightails it out of London pronto, he'll be tag teaming in Somerset's old Tower of London cell. So in spring 1455, York skedaddles up north, and when he gets there, he falls in with the Neville family, who've been fighting with the Percy.

Somerset has indicated that he's going to favour the Percy family in this one, so the Nevils feel like they're never going to catch a break while Somerset is in power either, and they're tooling up to defend themselves. The Nevilles and York had been tight for some time, and they backed York in his power moves on the Royal Council when he was protector.

So besides their interests in the north, they're also concerned that any blowback on York from the King, Queen, and Somerset is going to find its way to them as well. The most belligerent member of the Neville clan is called Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. He's an ambitious, ruthless, tough 27-year-old who fancies himself as one of the greatest men in the land. He has no time at all for Somerset.

And when York gets to the north, the two men decide the time has been and gone for doing things the nice way. They need to arm themselves, have troops at their back, and show the morons in London they mean business. Their shared aim is simple. Get Somerset out of government and back into the Tower of London stat. Things are escalating, and when news of the York-Nevell Alliance gets to Somerset, he loses his cool.

Probably the best move would be to stay in London and trust that York's not going to risk a repeat of his humiliation when he failed to land a coup. Whiz back through last week's episode if you want to remind yourself of how that went down. But Somerset doesn't stay in London. Instead, he decides that the court needs more security. In May 1455 he gets the king and the whole court ready to up sticks and head to Leicester in the Midlands.

This is the traditional stronghold of the Duchy of Lancaster, the king's private lands, which have been in royal hands ever since Henry IV was king. They tell York to come to Leicester with no more than 200 men and join a great council, basically a mini-parliament, where this can all be thrashed out. But York's not stupid. A mini parliament can be a pretext for an ambush, as Humphrey Duke of Gloucester found out at Berry St Edmunds in 1447.

So he comes south with a few thousand men at his back, skirting clear of Leicester and swinging towards Cambridge. So now there are two great parties in England on the move. The King and Council, nominally led by Somerset, are coming slowly north. York and Richard Neville are well on their way south. On May 21st, the Royal Court is at Watford, just north of London. The Yorkists are heading to the old Roman city of St Albans.

There's less than ten miles between them, and in the royal party at least, everyone's feeling very jittery. Then someone blinks. Somerset is sent back. It happens hours before they have to negotiate with York. Who makes this decision is unclear, but it's probably the Queen, acting in King Henry's name. The Duke of Buckingham, a grand nobleman in his early fifties, with a bit of royal blood in his own veins and military experience going back to Henry V's day, is now in charge.

The hope is probably that Buckingham will be a little less provocative a figure than Somerset. He's the closest thing England has to an elder statesman at this point. Whether Buckingham has the chops to save the day will only be seen when the two sides meet at St Albans. On May 22nd, early in the morning, that's what happens. The Yorkist army is camped in fields just to the east of the city centre, when the royal party rumbles into town.

At breakfast time, the leaders of the two side begin talking. Meanwhile, the king's men and the townsfolk of St. Albans start throwing up roadblocks and barricades in the streets. York says he wants Somerset out, gone, nick. Buckingham, speaking for the king, can do nothing more than play for time. He's hoping that a party of bishops that are said to be on their way will turn up and bring a bit of godly decorum to the whole affair.

But the bishops are nowhere near St. Albans, when, around 10 o'clock in the morning, Yorkists under the Earl of Warwick lose their patience and mount a charge at one of the barricades. This is precisely the opposite of what Henry VI has wanted. The first and last king of England and France has worked for peace, beauty, and piety in his realm. But as the war across the Channel ends,

The first punch of a new one has been thrown. The Wars of the Roses have begun, and bedlams soon going to roar across England. But that's for next time, on This Is History. Yes friends, the moment is here. A dynasty to die for is meeting the wars of the roses. We'll be in the wars this season and next. But in the interim, my question for my dear royal favourites Who would you have let run England when Henry VI was asleep at the wheels?

We'll be getting into all of the York versus Somerset power plays on this week's bonus episode, so do listen out for all of that on patreon.com forward slash this is history. And don't forget to send us voice notes of your favorite historical failures while you're there. Sabrina. Corrent. I have been listening to a new show from The Binge called Fatal Fantasy. I am obsessed.

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