A Child-King: Henry VI

Abstract

“The sudden removal of this powerful regal will,” says a recent historian of Henry V’s death, “is the dominating fact of English history in the Lancastrian period.”¹ It was, indeed, for the next four decades. We may even say that had it not been for Henry V’s early death the Lancastrian house would not have come to an end, as it did, nor would his son’s reign have broken down in a welter of chaos brought on by the defeat and extrusion of the English at length from France, the attempt to carry Henry’s impossible legacy abroad. Only that dominating powerful will, with all the aura surrounding his personality, could have kept it going, perhaps for a full lifetime. Even so, we cannot believe that English rule in France could have continued beyond that, contrary to the whole contemporary trends of history.