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00:00On St. George's Day, 1377, two young boys stood before the altar in the chapel at Windsor
00:18Castle to be inducted into the Order of the Garter, the highest order of chivalry in the
00:24land. The 10-year-old Richard was heir to the throne. The 11-year-old Henry Bolingbroke
00:35was his cousin and heir to the most powerful aristocratic family in England. The ceremony
00:44marked their entrance onto the public stage. The future of the English monarchy seemed
00:52assured as the two boys swore never to take up arms against each other. It was a promise
01:00they couldn't keep. Instead, cousin clashed with cousin as Henry usurped Richard and made
01:07himself king as Henry IV. The usurpation triggered the worst crisis in the English monarchy since
01:15Magna Carta. Over the next 100 years, there were seven kings and only three of them died
01:22in their beds. Three were murdered, one was killed on the field of battle, and three followed
01:28Henry IV's own example in violently usurping the throne. These bloody civil wars formed
01:35the background to Shakespeare's series of great history plays and their royal stars.
01:41Overweening Richard II, the heroic Henry V, and the pathetic Henry VI. In these wars,
01:49the whole basis of the English monarchy was questioned and upturned, and the royal house
01:56tore itself apart in a slow, painful suicide.
02:11In England in 1370, the old and feeble-minded Edward III was king, a shadow of his mighty
02:38younger self. The hope for the future lay with Edward's eldest son and heir, the Black Prince.
02:48But then, in 1376, disaster struck. Aged 45, he died. In his place his son, the nine-year-old
03:00Richard, became heir to the throne. Honours and titles were now showered on the boy. He
03:09was made Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, and Prince of Wales. He sat above his royal
03:16uncles at a banquet. He even opened Parliament on the old king's behalf. But a year later,
03:24Edward III was dead, and Richard, aged only 10, became king. At his coronation, he was
03:32anointed with holy oils. He was crowned with Edward the Confessor's crown, and the greatest
03:39bishops and earls knelt at his feet to pay him homage. One of the boy's toys was a set
03:46of dice, loaded so that he always won. And life must have seemed just as rosy for the man who
03:54grew up with a sense of his absolute untrammelled right to power. In reality, royal power relied
04:10on the support of the English nobility. Chief amongst them was the Duke of Lancaster, the
04:16father of Richard's childhood friend, Henry Bolingbroke. The House of Lancaster had 30
04:22castles scattered across England. The jewel in their ducal coronet was Kenilworth, which far
04:29outclassed most royal castles in scale and in grandeur. Extravagances like Kenilworth were
04:39hugely resented by the common people of England. In the last 50 years, the Black Death had swept
04:46through the country three times, wiping out half the population. Rents had collapsed, and now
04:57landowners and the government were trying to recoup their position. In 1380, they introduced
05:05a new poll tax. Not for the last time, it triggered a revolt. The rebels' target was not
05:17Richard, but the noble clique around him. The rebels even flew the banner of St. George,
05:23and as they marched on London, they swore loyalty to their young king. As the rebels
05:34looted and burned in the city and suburbs, Richard, his mother, and a handful of councillors took
05:41refuge in the tower. The revolt was, of course, a terrible threat, but it was also an opportunity
05:49for the young king. The Lords, who had hitherto ruled England in his name, were suddenly powerless
05:56and directionless in the face of the triumphant mob. On the other hand, that same mob was crying,
06:03enthusiastically, for Richard as their true king. Richard took them at their word. Aged only 14,
06:11and with a courage that was fully worthy of his father, the Black Prince, he met the rebels three
06:17times, and, proclaiming that he was now their captain, he led them to safety outside the city.
06:25Having tasted real power, Richard was reluctant to give it up, but the nobility stood in his way.
06:38For they had grown even more rich and powerful in the French wars. From their castles across
06:47the country, these lords could call upon large bands of armed retainers. The Duke of Lancaster
06:55alone had 4,000 men at his command. Richard was determined to beat them at their own game and
07:07formed his own private army. They wore his badge of the White Heart as a sign of their loyalty.
07:19This beautiful painting is known as the Wilton Diptych. It's a work of private devotion and it
07:33takes us to the heart of Richard's intense, obsessive, solipsistic view of kingship, which
07:41raised him gloriously above his subjects and dangerously cut him off from them. Richard was
07:50born on the 6th of January, the Feast of the Epiphany, when the three wise men or kings knelt
07:57in adoration before the Christ Child and his Virgin Mother. So here, in the centre of the
08:04picture, is Richard repeating that act of homage. The 6th of January is also the date on which the
08:11Church commemorates Christ's baptism by John the Baptist, who appears here beside the two English
08:19saints, Edward the Confessor and the Anglo-Saxon martyr monarch, Edmund.
08:27Even the angels surrounding the Virgin belong to Richard's dream world, as, like his earthly
08:34trustees, the Cheshire Archers, they wear his badge of the White Heart.
08:40With the heavenly host in his pocket, Richard thought, who could stand against him?
08:48The answer in the real world was the men who actually held power, the nobility, and one of
08:56their natural leaders was Henry Bolingbroke, son and heir of the Duke of Lancaster. Only ten years
09:04had passed since Richard and Henry had sworn never to take up arms against each other.
09:10But in the ten years, the two boys had grown into very different men.
09:18Henry had turned into a man of action. He excelled at jousting and blood sports.
09:24He had a soldier's harsh piety.
09:27But Richard had created a glamorous and luxurious court, of which he was the glittering centre.
09:35Here, style was everything. Richard commissioned the first royal cookery book, and he invented
09:42the handkerchief. But this was more than style wars. It was a clash of political values.
09:50Richard believed that a king was God on earth, Henry that he was a first amongst equals.
09:58The result was real war. Richard and his court favourites against the nobility.
10:05On the 19th of December, 1387, the two sides met at Radcliffe Bridge, just outside Oxford.
10:13Richard himself did not fight. He was a man of action, a man of love, a man of courage.
10:20Instead, his army was led by his friend and favourite, Robert de Vere.
10:27Henry led the rebel forces into battle.
10:33De Vere was defeated and fled into exile. Henry was victorious.
10:43With Henry's defeat of his troops, Richard was powerless. News of the defeat was brought to him
10:50here at the Tower, where he was spending Christmas 1387. Soon, the rebel lords arrived and mercilessly
10:59browbeat the king, threatening him with force and even with deposition. There was nothing for it
11:06but a complete and humiliating surrender. Richard's friends were executed or driven into exile.
11:13The kingdom was to be ruled by a committee of the lords, and even Richard's personal affairs
11:19were put into the hands of a board of guardians, as though he'd been a child or insane.
11:31Richard was left only with the title of king, but it was enough. Slowly and painstakingly,
11:38he rebuilt his position and power. Adversity had taught him patience and cunning, and he decided
11:46that revenge was a dish best eaten cold. The depth of festering hatred was clearly
11:54illustrated when his beloved favourite, Robert de Vere, died in exile.
12:03In 1395, Richard arranged a funeral for him. All the sometime rebel lords were obliged to attend.
12:11The very men would fought against de Vere at Radcliffe Bridge.
12:21Richard placed a ring on the dead man's finger,
12:24and in this quiet gesture, he signalled that vengeance would be his.
12:30By 1397, Richard was strong enough to strike, and one by one,
12:35those lords who'd rebelled against him met with his revenge.
12:42On trumped-up charges of treason, they were either executed or exiled.
12:48No-one was safe. Amongst the victims was one of his own uncles, the Duke of Gloucester.
12:54Richard's was a triumph of divide and rule, but the king saved a special revenge for his cousin,
13:01Henry. When Henry was involved in a quarrel with another noble, Thomas Mowbray, Richard ordered
13:08that the two men fight to the death in a judicial combat. God would be on the just man's side.
13:18God would be on the just man's side.
13:24Richard's behaviour in the affair shows him at his most malign and vain. He deliberately played up
13:31the quarrel between Henry and Mowbray, and he'd chosen the means of settling it that showed off
13:36his own glory to the uttermost. But this was the pageantry of the Colosseum, for Richard would
13:45preside like a Roman emperor in the amphitheatre, as the defeated man was stripped of his armour,
13:51dragged at a horse's tail from the field, and strung up on the gallows which stood ready.
13:59But in the event, Richard behaved more like a royal conjurer than a Roman emperor, for just as
14:06the combatants were ready to charge, Richard, in a dramatic gesture, threw down his staff,
14:12stopping the fight and resuming judgment to himself. Henry, the king ruled, would go into exile
14:19for 10 years, and Mowbray for life. Thus, King Richard, like a demigod, struck down his remaining foes.
14:32In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke was exiled here in Paris. Within the year,
14:40he received a double blow. His father, the Duke of Lancaster, died, and Richard seized all of
14:47Henry's vast inheritance for himself. Henry was left with nothing. But Richard had overreached
14:55himself. All landowners in England now had cause to fear for their own property.
15:0322 years had passed since Henry had been made a Knight of the Garden with Richard,
15:08but now any vestige of cousinly feeling had gone,
15:12and Henry determined to reclaim what was rightfully his by force.
15:23En route on this make-or-break journey back to England, Henry paused here at the great royal
15:30abbey of Saint-Denis. Saint-Denis was where the kings of France were buried. It was also where
15:36they came to receive the sacred banner of the Oriflame, the standard of Saint Louis, on their
15:43way to battle. Henry was on the way to his battle, and he needed all the help, human and divine,
15:50that he could get. But he made sure that God at least was on his side by a single revealing
15:57gesture. Before he left the abbey, he promised the abbot that he would restore to Saint-Denis
16:03the revenues of the little priory of Deerhurst in Gloucestershire, given to the abbey long,
16:09long ago by Edward the Confessor, and purloined, like so much else, by Richard. Already, therefore,
16:17before he even left France, Henry saw himself as true King of England, fully able to redress
16:25Richard's wrongs. With a fleet of only ten ships, Henry sailed round England
16:35to the Yorkshire coast. Luck was on his side, as Richard was away in Ireland.
16:44Yorkshire was the heartland of his confiscated estate. As Henry moved from castle to castle,
16:51they surrendered easily to their rightful master.
16:55As Henry marched south, his army swelled, reinforced by the great northern earls.
17:07Richard, back home, now sought safety in Edward I's great Welsh castles.
17:14But Henry lured him out with the promise that he came only to claim his inheritance of Lancaster,
17:20and had no intention of threatening the crown itself. It was a lie, but it was a successful one.
17:27As Richard emerged, an ambush of Henry's men lay in waiting. The King of England was Henry
17:34Bolingbroke's prisoner. For it was clear that Henry wanted far more than just the Duchy of Lancaster.
17:42He would settle for nothing less than the crown of England itself. But how to justify
17:50dethroning Richard and replacing him with Henry? The neediest solution would be to show
17:56that Richard had never been true king by hereditary right anyway, but that Henry was.
18:03Conveniently, a story to this effect was an article of faith in the House of Lancaster.
18:10Henry and Richard were both descended from King Henry III. Richard from the eldest son, Edward,
18:18who'd succeeded as King Edward I, and Henry from the second son, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster,
18:25surnamed Crouchback. According to the story, however, Crouchback was really the eldest son,
18:32but he'd been shunted aside in favour of Edward on account of his supposed deformity.
18:38If this story were true, it was the perfect solution for Henry. So Henry referred the story
18:44to a specially convened panel of historians and constitutional experts. The panel was supposed to
18:50meet in secret, but then as now, constitutional experts are a garrulous lot, and one of the panel,
18:58Adam of Usk, recorded their deliberations in his chronicle here. Like all good historians,
19:05the panel went back to the sources, as Adam reports. Unfortunately for Henry, these unanimously
19:12confirmed that Edward was indeed the eldest son, Edwardus Primogenitus Regis Henrici.
19:24The Crouchback story was indeed too good to be true. Henry would have to think again.
19:34Richard, for his part, put up a brief struggle, but faced with the threat of force, he abdicated
19:41his throne to God. For the first time since the conquest, the continuity of the legitimate
19:48succession had to be deliberately broken. Only one body could do that, Parliament.
19:56Henry moved quickly, and a Parliament was summoned to meet here in Westminster Hall.
20:03The hall had been splendidly rebuilt by Richard as a monument to his own glory, but now it was
20:10to witness his final humiliation. First, the terms of the King's abdication were read out,
20:17then followed a long list of the charges against him. Finally, he was declared dethroned and
20:24deposed, and his subjects renounced their allegiance. All this had taken place in Richard's
20:31absence, and the royal throne, under its great canopy of cloth of gold, had remained empty.
20:38But now Henry, in a theatrical gesture worthy of Richard himself, moved to lay claim to that
20:45vacant throne. He descended, he said, of the true royal blood of good King Henry III.
20:53Thanks to the help of God and his friends, he'd been able to reclaim that right, and in so doing,
21:00he'd saved the realm from ruin by the bad government of his predecessor, Richard.
21:07Put like that, Henry's claim sounds logical and convincing. In fact, it was a mere ragbag,
21:15for, in reality, he'd only a single compelling claim. He was the man of the hour.
21:27In 12 weeks, Henry Bolingbroke had transformed himself from a landless exile to Henry IV,
21:35King of England. But, to prove that he was more than a usurper,
21:40he needed God's blessing as well as Parliament's.
21:47So, at his coronation, Henry was anointed with an opportunely rediscovered vial of holy oil,
21:54reputedly given to Thomas Becket by the Virgin Mary. Divine oil would surely wash away the
22:01sins of his past, but Henry was about to commit the greatest sin of all.
22:09Richard may have been deposed by law before Parliament, but he was still an anointed monarch.
22:16However, Henry would have no security so long as Richard lived,
22:21so Henry decided to kill the former king.
22:24But, secretly, and without leaving marks on the body,
22:29Richard was left slowly to starve to death in Pontefract Castle.
22:38Edward II, of course, had been murdered even more nastily,
22:42but none of the blame attached to his successor, Edward III.
22:47In 1399, however, the king had indeed murdered Richard.
22:52However, the king had indeed murdered his predecessor king.
22:56The taboo was broken.
22:58What was there to stop others doing the same to Henry or his descendants?
23:05Only a year after Henry's coronation, in 1400, the Welsh rose up against English rule.
23:14But the greatest threat to Henry came from within England and from the family
23:19which had been his own strongest supporters.
23:22The Percys, whose head was the Earl of Northumberland,
23:25were the most powerful family in the north of England,
23:28with vast estates, strong castles, and a multitude of armed followers.
23:34They had been the first to back Henry in 1399,
23:38and it was their support which had carried him to victory.
23:41But, having made Henry king, why should the Percys stop there,
23:46especially as Henry refused to behave as an obedient puppet?
23:51Perhaps they could do even better by backing another claimant.
23:55Perhaps a Percy could become king himself.
24:00Henry recognised the threat and did his best to conciliate them.
24:04But, in 1403, he learned that Hotspur, the son and heir of the Earl of Northumberland,
24:10had joined the Welsh rebels and was invading England.
24:17Hotspur rode south to join up with the Welsh.
24:20On the 21st of July, 1403, the joint army arrived just outside Shrewsbury.
24:27From here, Hotspur sent a defiant message to Henry,
24:31challenging his right to the throne.
24:37Henry, too, was eager for a fight to the finish.
24:40The sides were evenly matched and the battle raged from midday to nightfall.
24:45The hardest fighting was around the king and Hotspur.
24:49In the end, it was a personal battle between the two men.
24:57Henry was victorious.
25:10About 1,600 men were killed in the battle.
25:14Hotspur's own body was taken to Shrewsbury,
25:17where, as the corpse of a traitor, it was quartered.
25:22But the low-ranking slain of both sides were buried on the spot in a mass grave.
25:28In commemoration, the site was renamed Battlefield.
25:33And this church, complete with an armed statue of Henry IV,
25:38was built as a monument to his victory.
25:41But Henry's victory brought him no security,
25:44for no sooner had he cut down one enemy than another arose.
25:49Moreover, the king himself, doggedly though he fought, harboured private doubts.
25:55And if Henry doubted, why should anybody else believe the Lancastrian title?
26:03Henry IV's last years were a sad contrast to the promise of 1399.
26:10Gone was the vigorous, crusading youth who'd won a country to his cause.
26:15Now he developed a disfiguring skin disease,
26:18perhaps leprosy, perhaps a psychosomatic acute dermatitis.
26:23Whatever the diagnosis, to many contemporaries,
26:26the disease seemed proof of God's displeasure at the usurper king.
26:32In March 1413, Henry came to Westminster with the hand of death already on him.
26:40On the 20th, whilst praying at the Confessor's tomb,
26:43he had a seizure and he was brought to this chamber here in the abbot's lodging.
26:49The crown was placed beside his pillow.
26:52He seemed to cease breathing and his face was covered,
26:56thinking, like everybody else, that he had been poisoned.
27:01Like everybody else, that his father was already dead.
27:04His son and heir, Prince Henry, took the crown.
27:08Suddenly, the old king roused himself and demanded of Henry
27:12by what right he took the crown, since he himself had none to it.
27:18Coolly, Henry replied,
27:20as you have kept it by the sword, so will I keep it whilst I have life.
27:26It's a good story and as an insight into the prince's character,
27:31for whatever doubts Henry IV might have harboured about his right to the throne,
27:36Henry V had none at all.
27:41Prince Henry might not have been born to be king,
27:45but no heir to the throne has served a more distinguished apprenticeship.
27:50He was created Prince of Wales immediately after his father's accession
27:55and, though he was only in his early teens,
27:58he quickly became his right-hand man.
28:01He fought bravely against Hotspur at the Battle of Shrewsbury
28:04and he led the English to victory in the hard-fought campaign against the Welsh.
28:10But mere military glory wasn't enough for Prince Henry.
28:14He wanted the reality of power as well.
28:18His father was disfigured, diseased and hopelessly tempted by the usurpation.
28:24Henry, in contrast, was the great white hope
28:27for his father's enemies as well as for his friends.
28:35Henry V's first task was to unite the fractured realm
28:39that his father had bequeathed to him.
28:42As the son of a usurper, Henry knew from personal experience
28:46the importance of letting bygones be bygones.
28:50So Henry pardoned his father's enemies and Richard's supporters.
28:54He even restored the purses.
28:58By and large, the policy paid off
29:00and former bitter enemies became Henry's loyal lieutenants.
29:05Only one thing remained.
29:08Henry's smartest move was to make his peace
29:12with the unquiet ghost of Richard II.
29:15Henry IV had accorded Richard the dignity of the throne
29:19and had given Richard the dignity of a public funeral.
29:23But he'd refused him burial here in the abbey.
29:27The result was that Richard's memory continued to plague his successor.
29:32Miracles took place at his modest tomb.
29:36His name was constantly invoked to justify rebellion.
29:40Many refused to believe that he was dead at all.
29:44So when Henry V became king,
29:47he settled the problem with his characteristic decisiveness.
29:51And in December 1413, only eight months after his own coronation,
29:57Richard's body was brought to Westminster Abbey
30:00in a magnificent procession
30:03and reburied amongst his fellow kings
30:06here in the tomb which Richard had commissioned for himself.
30:12The stain of 1399 was wiped out
30:16and Henry was able to benefit from the usurpation
30:20without incurring the stigma or the bad conscience of his father.
30:32Having settled domestic politics,
30:34Henry was able to turn his attention to the project that would dominate his reign,
30:40the war of conquest with France.
30:46Henry needed war.
30:48The reign of the peace-loving Richard II
30:51had shown that the English war monarchy of the Edwards
30:54was ungovernable in peace.
30:57Better that the English nobles should fight the French
31:00than each other or their king.
31:04But Henry's claim to France was also, for this intensely religious man,
31:10an article of faith.
31:14For Henry, the war was essentially about justice.
31:19From his ancestor, Henry II,
31:21he'd inherited claims to the whole of the Androvan Empire,
31:25of Normandy, Anjou and of Aquitaine,
31:28whilst from his other ancestress, Isabella of France,
31:32the Queen of Edward II,
31:34he claimed the throne of France itself.
31:38Only let these claims be conceded, Henry announced,
31:41and there would be no war.
31:44From the French point of view, this was an outrageous demand,
31:48and they refused.
31:50Denied his legitimate claim, Henry's conscience was now clear.
31:54The French had refused peace with justice,
31:57so the god of battles must decide.
32:01Henry set sail for France on 11th August 1415.
32:07His first campaign is the stuff of legend and drama.
32:15For Harry, England and St George.
32:19This was the battle cry that Shakespeare gave the English soldiers
32:23on the field at Agincourt.
32:25Here, Henry showed himself everything that an English king should be.
32:31Resolute, heroic and a born leader of men.
32:35The English soldiers were far outnumbered by the French,
32:38perhaps by three to one,
32:40but fired up with loyalty to their king and country,
32:44they won an astounding victory.
32:50It seemed proof positive that Henry V was God's chosen king.
32:57It was also proof that Henry's war policy could work.
33:02Within two years, Henry was back.
33:05This time, his aim was conquest.
33:11The English army swept through Normandy,
33:14systematically besieging and capturing the greatest cities,
33:19Caen, Valais and Paris.
33:22Rather than risk reuniting the French by attacking the capital,
33:27Henry, who was a subtle politician as well as a dashing general,
33:31decided to exploit the profound divisions within the French court.
33:36He made, apparently, enormous concessions.
33:40He would no longer claim western France,
33:42but he would take it upon himself to conquer it.
33:46He made, apparently, enormous concessions.
33:49He would no longer claim western France as heir of Henry II.
33:54The present king of France could even keep his title.
33:59The ploy worked.
34:01By a treaty signed here at Troyes,
34:04Henry seemed to have won the prize that had eluded even Edward III.
34:12By the terms of the treaty,
34:14Henry was recognised as the legitimate heir
34:18of the present king of France, Charles VI,
34:21whose daughter Catherine he married a few days later.
34:25In other words, Henry was seeking to apply in France
34:29that same model of traditional kingship
34:32which had served him so well in England.
34:35He would rule France not as a conqueror,
34:38but as a legitimate king,
34:40and, above all, he promised he would bring peace with justice.
34:49On 1st December 1420,
34:52Henry entered Paris in triumph as heir and regent of France.
34:57He was warmly received
34:59and the French Parliament ratified the Treaty of Troyes.
35:03It remained, it seemed, only to mop up opposition.
35:11But suddenly, at the age of only 35,
35:15Henry caught dysentery and died.
35:21In only nine years,
35:23Henry V had reunited England and taken France,
35:28and he'd done it all as a consciously English king,
35:32speaking and writing English even for official documents.
35:38For the first time since the Norman conquest,
35:41England was a nation-state once more.
35:47This is the upper story
35:49of the splendid funerary chapel of King Henry V.
35:53The king's image below was originally covered in silver gilt,
35:58while amongst the rich sculptors are two coronation scenes
36:03representing Henry's two kingdoms of England and of France.
36:08But what really impresses is the sheer scale
36:11and the magnificent location of the chapel
36:14directly at the east end of the abbey.
36:17Here, they say, is the apogee of the medieval English monarchy
36:22and the monument of the perfect medieval king.
36:26The institution could scarcely go any higher.
36:30Could it even survive at its present high-water mark?
36:34Everything would depend on Henry's son,
36:38the nine-month-old infant,
36:40who, in his cradle, was heir of England and of France.
36:50On 1st September 1422,
36:53Henry V's infant son became the new king of England
36:58as Henry VI.
37:00If this was not enough, two months later,
37:03his French grandfather died
37:05and Henry was also named King of France.
37:11The new king was a nine-month-old baby,
37:14but the polished machinery of English government adapted easily.
37:21The nobility made arrangements for the cradle king.
37:25The government of England and France
37:27was divided between the king's two uncles,
37:30each assisted by a council.
37:35This enabled the English to hold on to the conquests of Henry V,
37:40but French resistance couldn't be suppressed.
37:46In 1431, Henry's council decided that the time had come
37:51for the ten-year-old Henry VI
37:53to take possession of his second kingdom of France.
37:58Henry was taken to Notre-Dame, where he was crowned,
38:02but he stayed in Paris for less than a month.
38:05This was his first and last visit to France.
38:13Henry VI was very different from his father.
38:16Whilst Henry V had spent over half his life in France,
38:20and had spent over half his reign fighting in France,
38:23Henry VI showed no interest in war at all.
38:27Instead, his passion was religion.
38:34How a king wishes to be remembered
38:36takes us to the heart of his kingship,
38:39and this is the chosen monument of Henry VI,
38:43son of the warrior king, Henry V.
38:47This is not a battlefield or a great castle.
38:51Instead, it's the chapel of Eton College.
38:55Nowadays, we think of Eton
38:57as perhaps the most famous school in the world,
39:00but the school was incidental to Henry's purpose.
39:04Instead, he was interested in size.
39:07He wanted this chapel to become one of the biggest,
39:11richest and holiest churches in England,
39:14as long as Lincoln Cathedral, as wide as York Minster,
39:18his very own Westminster Abbey.
39:21But thanks to constant changes of plan,
39:24which led him to demolish parts already built and start again,
39:29only this fragment was finished at the time of his fall from power.
39:34It's an apsemble of a reign that began with high hopes
39:38and a magnificent inheritance,
39:40but ended in failure and disaster.
39:50But not merely was Henry unwarlike.
39:53Once he took government into his own hands,
39:56he pursued an active peace policy.
39:59He was even prepared to surrender parts of his father's conquests.
40:05This was hugely unpopular with the English nobles,
40:09who had done so well out of the war.
40:15The most dramatic signal of Henry's intentions
40:19came when, at the age of 22,
40:22he married a French princess, Margaret of Anjou.
40:27Margaret was the symbol of the controversial peace policy with France.
40:33After she came to England and married her impressionable husband,
40:38she became more than the symbol of the Peace Party.
40:42She became its most effective partisan.
40:45And the English always distrusted politically active queens,
40:50especially when they were foreign,
40:53and especially when, like Margaret,
40:55they looked suspiciously like a French secret agent
40:59at the heart of the English court.
41:03Soon, the worst English fears had come true.
41:07By the time Henry was 30, he'd lost everything that his father had won.
41:12Only Calais remained in English hands.
41:16Thanks to Henry, 100 years of war with France had yielded nothing,
41:22and the prestige and the glory of the English crown were destroyed.
41:29But most lethal for the monarchy was the fact that the war,
41:33like most unsuccessful wars,
41:36had been marked by vicious quarrels between the English generals.
41:40The most dangerous was the feud between Richard, Duke of York,
41:44and Edmund, Duke of Somerset.
41:46Both were members of the royal house,
41:49whilst York arguably had a better claim to the throne than Henry himself.
41:54In the aftermath of defeat,
41:56their quarrel had translated itself into English domestic politics
42:01when Somerset became Henry's chief minister,
42:04whilst York set himself up as the leader
42:08of an increasingly disloyal opposition.
42:15In 1450, the antagonism turned into open conflict
42:19and a popular revolt temporarily seized control of London.
42:23Two years later, York himself took up arms,
42:27claiming he was not rebelling against the king
42:30but against his evil counsellors, principally Somerset.
42:37York won little support and surrendered
42:40when Henry promised to dismiss Somerset.
42:44But the king broke his word
42:46and Somerset and his ally, Queen Margaret, seemed impregnable.
42:50Then, suddenly, Henry had a fit of madness.
42:57Three months after the onset of Henry's illness,
43:00his wife, Queen Margaret, gave birth to a son.
43:04After nearly eight years of child-rearing,
43:07Henry's wife, Queen Margaret, gave birth to a son.
43:11After nearly eight years of childless marriage,
43:14the future of the Lancastrian dynasty seemed secure.
43:18But Henry acknowledged his son only with the flickering of his eyes
43:23and he could not even raise a finger in the government of his kingdom.
43:27But without a king as the final decision-maker,
43:31England was paralysed.
43:33Who would act in his name?
43:35Queen Margaret, her position immeasurably strengthened
43:39as mother of the heir, put herself forward as queen regent.
43:43But Margaret commanded little support amongst the lords,
43:47who instead nominated the Duke of York,
43:50the man that Margaret most feared
43:53as protector and defender of England.
43:59And Margaret had good reason to fear York.
44:03Based in his stronghold at Ludlow,
44:06Henry was head of the most powerful family in the country
44:09and, as a relation of the king,
44:12he also had a blood claim to the throne.
44:17The events of the usurpation 50 years previously
44:20were about to be replayed.
44:23In 1399, Henry's grandfather, Henry IV,
44:27had shown that a blood claim and force
44:30were all that were needed to seize the crown.
44:33So York turned the tables on the House of Lancaster.
44:41In 1460, his followers defeated and captured the king
44:45and, in the ensuing Parliament,
44:48York formally laid claim to the throne.
44:51The claim was greeted with a shocked silence
44:55because no-one, not even York's followers,
44:58wanted a repetition of the usurpation of 1399.
45:02So York was forced to accept a compromise.
45:06Henry would remain king whilst he lived
45:09and York would succeed only after his death.
45:13But everybody reckoned without Queen Margaret's ferocious mother love.
45:22Margaret refused to see her son's inheritance forfeit
45:26and broke the truce when she led her forces against York.
45:31Margaret was victorious, York killed in battle
45:35and his head displayed on the walls of York.
45:41But the feeble-witted Henry VI was held in widespread contempt.
45:46Margaret was unpopular, especially in the south,
45:50where London shut its gates against her.
45:55This gave York's son Edward the opportunity to avenge his father's death.
46:00He seized the throne and ruled as King Edward IV.
46:04Henry was captured and Margaret fled into exile.
46:10It took Edward three years to put down the Lancastrians in the north.
46:17Then his own followers started to quarrel over the spoils.
46:22Even Edward's brother turned against him.
46:26These divisions within the House of York
46:29handed the House of Lancaster a last chance.
46:33Its hopes were pinned on one young man.
46:36In 1471, Henry VI and Margaret's son, Edward of Lancaster, was 18.
46:43Energetic and courageous, he'd inherited his grandfather's drive
46:48and his mother's will.
46:50Was he to be another Henry V?
46:53And would he revive the Lancastrian cause?
46:59The two Edwards, the Lancastrian prince and the Yorkist king,
47:04met here at Tewkesbury.
47:06The result was a total, and it turned out,
47:10final defeat for the House of Lancaster.
47:13Prince Edward was butchered on the battlefield
47:16and buried here in the abbey.
47:19A fortnight later, his father, King Henry VI,
47:22was dispatched with a heavy blow to the back of the head in the tower.
47:27Even 400 years later,
47:30the hair could still be seen matted to the skull.
47:34With their deaths, the male line of the House of Lancaster,
47:38which had promised to revive the monarchy, was extinguished.
47:42The House of York made similar, even more extravagant promises.
47:47Would it be able to keep them?
47:49Or was it more than a matter of mere personalities?
47:53Would the institutions of English kingship,
47:56fashioned under the Anglo-Saxons
47:59and perfected under the Henrys and the Edwards, have to change as well?
48:04Was England on the threshold, not merely of a new dynasty,
48:09but of a new monarchy?