King Henry VI - death and legacy

Today is the generally accepted anniversary for the death in 1471 of King Henry VI in the Tower of London.

YouTube has two recent videos about the King’s death and legacy.

The first from History Calling sets out the evidence for the events of those days in late May and attempts to assess what might have happened to him. It appears balanced and well researched, and can be seen at How did HENRY VI die? 

Those who look at the comments section appended to it may spot a couple of observations I contributed. 

The second is a recent lecture by David Starkey which concentrates on the legacy of King Henry VI in the foundation of Eton and, more especially, of King’s College in Cambridge. In particular the Cambridge educated Dr Starkey looks at the revival of the King’s College project by King Henry VII at the end of his reign, and the part the cult of King Henry VI as a Saint-in-the-making appears to have played in that. The talk is very much Starkey at his forceful, rumbustious, stimulating best. One might not agree with everything he says - Dr Starkey is not very sound on medieval Catholicism, or indeed perhaps on the last Lancastrian king - but the lecture has some really excellent insights into the history of Cambridge both physically and institutionally, and into the piety and patronage around the two Kings Henry and the formidable Lady Margaret Beaufort and her confessor, the future St John Fisher. Very well worth watching the lecture can be found at Henry VI's Legacy: Was he that bad? David Starkey Lectures

Henry is described in a review by Patrick Marmion for the Daily Mail of the the current RSC production of the Shakespeare’s trilogy about his reign in which he writes of Mark Quartley’s performance as the King who “turns out to be the melancholy conscience of a play where all around him are dogs of war, hunting his - and each other’s scalps.” In that sentence he perhaps captures what it was that made people see King Henry VI as an intercessor for his less fortunate subjects ( as well perhaps, per Dr Starkey, for King Henry VII ) and as a good and pious man.

There are online articles about the popular cult of King Henry as a saint at The miracle of Henry VI: how the weak medieval king became a 'saint', and at The miraculous afterlife of Henry VI

Round about 1500 no Rood Screen in East Anglia seems to have been deemed complete if it did not include a painted panel, however crude, with a representation of the King. On these he is often shown alongside the regional martyr King St Edmund, to whom he is known to have had a strong devotion arising from a long stay at the abbey whilst still a boy. A fine example is that in the church at Ludham in the Norfolk Broads which is described by the Norfolk Churches website at Ludham

A unique survival, which is alas damaged, of this devotion is a print showing the King surrounded by votaries whom he had miraculously assisted. This high quality woodcut survives as a paste-down in the Bodleian Library in MS Bodley 30. 

My reflections from last year on the 550th anniversary of the King’s death, with various illustrations and links, can be seen at King Henry VI - a royal failure?, a royal martyr?