England’s Alexander, Dan Jones on Henry V
I’m sure many of us remember studying Henry V at school. For those of us at the age of thirteen not wholly thrilled to be forced to read Shakespeare, this play was undeniably entertaining. We even enjoyed mimicking the accents of the home nations as Gower, Llla and are all given their various country’s characteristics. But of course it was the rousing speech of Henry at Harfleur, then even more inspiring before Agincourt that got all our juices flowing. So I have to confess to raising an eyebrow when interviewed by a certain pin-striped politician on his daily news show on last year’s Crispin’s Day, when he asked if Rishi Sunak or Boris Johnson could be compared with the great king. It took me a moment to realise what I was being asked, and so I could not help smiling. The suggestion was so preposterous to me, doubly so since reading Dan Jones’ new biography.
However there is a man from history who I was reminded of when reading Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England’s Greatest Warrior King. The figure I was thinking of was the son of a usurper, had a troublesome relationship with his father, embarked on a major military campaign overseas, won stunning victories, suffered a serious wound before dying of disease, at a young age, leaving his succession questioned as his empire descended into civil war. Regular readers will be unsurprised that I am of course referring to Alexander the Great. I put this to Jones (though not the Sunak/Johnson comparison) when I met with him recently.
“Well, in so far as England’s had an Alexander, let alone even a Napoleon. The closest thing that the Plantagenet dynasty, with maybe the exception of Richard the Lionheart, [also] a difficult relationship with his father. Yes, I think it’s perfectly fine to make those kind of parallels.” I got the sense he didn’t really think my comparison was particularly useful, so I pressed him on this point.
“I think that we historians are often very wary about doing this sort of thing. But why should we be? All we’re doing is discussing the past. Yes, insofar as the Plantagenet dynasty ever creates someone who conquers at scale, yes, this is your English Alexander. There is no other candidate who comes close.”
Jones’s assessment gets to the heart of the issue. The English kings of this era had two objectives, both inter-connected which acted as the twin foundations of their reign. Stability at home, and war with France. Henry’s cousin, Richard II, deposed by his father, never understood this. Henry IV had too many problems with Owain Glyndŵr and Harry Hotspur to be able to have either. His eldest son understood this as Henry V illustrates.
“The job of a medieval king is simple, not easy, but simple, you have to provide justice at home and be good at fighting, mainly the French. Henry V was excellent at both of those jobs.”
It was Henry’s political skill that I had not appreciated. His military prowess is well-known, but before those great victories in France, he had managed to unite the kingdom behind him, no small feat after such tumult under his both his father and Richard II’s reign.
“Henry V, although temperamentally very different and with a far deeper and better understanding of kingship than Richard II, i think learns from Richard how to display kingship and in his case he displays it through public performances of piety. At his coronation, many [observers] mention that he seems to sort pull down this mask in front of his face on the day of his coronation and sit very sombre, very severe, very stern and from that day forth become intensely devout, such that a French spy records that he seems more like a monk than a king.
“After Agincourt, when Henry comes home to London, there are great triumphs through the streets of London. He is explicit that no matter how much people want to celebrate, and it’s right for them to celebrate, that he will be the focus of those celebrations. None of the glory is to be understood to be coming to him, but only through him as a conduit to God. I think Henry probably believes this, but I think he also compartmentalises to the degree that he can deploy this belief as a tool of political spectacle. He’s a very clever politician who understands how to project his core beliefs in a political and spectacular way to his people. I think that’s part of why he’s such an effective medieval king. It’s also a reason, in this sense I agree with his modern critics, why you would probably not want him to be your ruler today.”
Ah yes, modern day critics. One of the other questions the Honourable Member for the 19th century had put to me in that interview was whether Henry was a ‘warmonger’? This question was raised as a result of David Mitchell’s book on monarchy, Unruly, which had laid the charge at Henry’s door. All rather unfair really. It’s not as though France was a peace-loving utopia that declined to engage in conflict unless absolutely necessary. Now I’m reluctant to cast aspersions, particularly since Mitchell so kindly signed my copy of his book (I’m also a fan), and looking at his ‘Further Reading’ section, their sits Jones’s masterful The Plantagenets. Is this yet another example of us judging the past by the present?
“The long consensus on Henry V from pretty much his death until the mid to late 20th century was that this was the guy who was the acme of kingship…In more recent years, some scholars have taken issue with Henry, particularly for decisions such as his order at the end of the Battle of Agincourt to massacre many of the French prisoners that have been taken by the English at that point. He’s been criticised also for the scale and scope of his ambition and military achievement which left a legacy of extraordinary complexity and maybe an impossible legacy to his successors, his brothers and relatives who ran the show in England and France after he died. And then subsequently his son, Henry VI, when he became an adult king, having to deal with the dual kingdom of England and France was very problematic and arguably led to the Wars of the Roses in England.
“So though he’s criticized as a sort of callous, cold, cruel, not very nice person, a warmonger. Often I feel that he’s criticised for being a medieval king by people who just don’t like the thought of that job. One of my aims in writing this biography, which I was fairly sure as I started writing was going to be a positive book, rather than a hatchet job on Henry V, was to remind readers exactly what being King of England in the 15th century was thought to be about and to slightly readjust this sense that anybody who wouldn’t be a good candidate for the candidacy for the presidency of the modern United States, that’s not the same set of criteria as being a good medieval king. So that was one of my aims.”
I find Henry’s upbringing so interesting, inevitably because of Shakespeare’s plays when Prince Hal causes his father so much woe. He’s thrown into battle at such a young age, and so surely this needs to be taken into account?
“There are certain things that happened to Henry V, when he is a teenager as we’d now describe it, that would certainly have had him taken away by social services in the 21st century. He loses his mother when he’s young, but of course in the middle ages, that’s not wildly uncommon. Once his father, Henry Bolingbroke falls foul of Bolingbroke’s cousin, King Richard II in 1398, the young to-be Henry V is taken with Richard II off to Ireland on campaign and then locked in a castle once news of his father’s invasion of England breaks in 1399.
“From the age of about 13, he’s dragged around on military campaigns and then sent to Wales to deal with the insurrection led by Owain Glyndŵr. He’s leading a third part of his father’s army at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 when he’s grievously and nearly mortally injured by an arrow shot from a longbow…He survives a 30 day operation to save his life. All of this takes place before he’s 17 years old. It’s a hard upbringing, even by the standards of the early 15th century. He’s forged in fire, yes.”
All this leaves us with the inevitable question, was he the greatest king? If he can be mentioned in the same breath as Alexander, that surely means he should be considered as one of England’s finest commanders. As a king? That’s a different question.
“He had, has, certainly had and to a lesser extent has, the reputation of being the greatest of all the medieval kings of England. He was the one who did the job about as perfectly as possible to do the job. Henry V just seems to appear on the throne in 1413 and in nine short years get it as right as anybody ever gets it.”
We end with the question of who is our favourite, forget ‘the best.’ I plump for the fun-loving George IV, and I was rather surprised to hear Jones select Edward VII.
“A lot of fun, rolling around smoking cigars [taking] afternoon tea in his Japanese costume with someone else’s wife.”
About as far removed from the kingship of Henry V as it is possible to be.
Dan Jones is a historian, novelist and the author of Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England’s Greatest Warrior King.
