PROLOGUE
Forty-nine-year-old Henry VI (1421-1471) knelt in prayer at Wakefield Tower in the Tower of London when, on 21 May 1471, he was struck and killed. In 1910, King George V of England (1865-1936) authorized the exhumation of Henry's body, hoping that the remains would reveal the cause of death. Blood matted hair on the damaged skull suggested that the man was the victim of a homicide.
ORPHAN KING AND HIS MOTHER
The image is that of Catherine of Valois, Henry VI's mother. While Parliament recognized the infant as King Henry VI, the early years of Henry's reign were about the aristocratic power brokers and their attempts to manage Catherine's royal affairs.
Henry V was on a military mission in France when back home in England, Catherine of Valois gave birth to a son on 6 December 1421. Henry V died suddenly and unexpectedly on 21 August 1422. The next day, Parliament recognized the infant Henry as King Henry VI. The boy was nine months old.
English nobles swore an oath of loyalty to Henry, who was yet to see his second birthday on 28 September 1423. They called a Parliament in young Henry's name to establish a Regency Council. Henry's uncle John, Duke of Bedford, became Senior Regent. Another uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, took on Lord Protector and Defender of the Realm responsibility. A third governing personality, young Henry's great half-uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, held a prominent position on the council. During young Henry's minority, these men ruled England in Henry's name.
Henry VI, aged seven, was crowned King of England on 17 July 1429, at Westminster Abbey. At Notre Dame de Paris, ten-year-old Henry received the crown as King of France on 16 December 1431. Henry was the only monarch to be crowned King of England and King of France. When he came of age in 1437, sixteen-year-old Henry assumed his royal powers as King of England.
Upon the death of her husband, Henry V, in 1422, Catherine of Valois accompanied the formal funeral procession to England, where she reunited with her son. Catherine participated in customary public affairs with Henry. Still, she had little control over her life or that of the young King. Humphrey, Lord Protector, and Defender of the Realm saw to that.
The young widow, a woman in her early twenties, became involved with Edmund Beaufort, a grandchild of the John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford union. In 1428, Humphrey urged Parliament to pass legislation that prohibited Catherine from remarrying until her son reached his or without the Regency Council’s approval. Henry was seven-years-old at the time.
Catherine was not to be denied. She secretly married a member of her household staff, and a Welshman named Owen Tudor (c. 1400-1461). Catherine bore four children to Tudor, three boys and a girl. Tudor and Catherine kept the secret union from Humphrey and the Regency Council until the summer of 1436 when Catherine was in poor health. Thirty-five-year-old Catherine died on 3 January 1437. Upon her death, the Regency Council arrested Owen Tudor and incarcerated him until 1439. Seventeen-year-old King Henry VI, true to his core values, pardoned Tudor and released the man from custody. Fond of his half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, Henry invested Edmund as Earl of Richmond, and Jasper as Earl of Pembroke.
Edmund Tudor married Lady Margaret Beaufort, the great-granddaughter of the Gaunt- Swynford union. Margaret bore a son named Henry to Edmund Tudor. Tudor died of the bubonic plague in late 1456 and never saw his son born in January 1457. Henry Tudor, the nephew of Henry VI, defeated Richard III at the 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field to become Henry VII, the first King in the Tudor line.
Catherine of Valois was the wife of Henry V, the mother of Henry VI, and the grandmother of Henry VII.
Next up: Henry VI - Part Two, Henry and Margaret.
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