#henry v

[heartofstanding]

Thinking about Henry IV trying to weekend at Bernies his teenage son with an arrowhead lodged six inches deep into his face.

[une-sanz-pluis]

finally i have an academic source for my bullshit

(source: a. j. pollard, "events, personalities and reputations: the fifteenth century to 1485", the cambridge companion to late medieval kingship (2026))

[une-sanz-pluis]

Did the usurpation of Henry IV and the abnormal death of Richard II have a negative impact on his children's marriage?

The answer is "not substantially". The marriages of Henry IV's youngest sons, John and Humphrey, don't seem to have been considered at all during his reign, probably for similar reasons to his disinterest in elevating them to dukedoms - it kept them dependent on Henry and deprived of the independence and power that Henry, by the end of his reign, evidently resented his eldest son possessing. When John and Humphrey did marry at the very start of Henry VI's reign, they married prestigiously to Anne of Burgundy and Jacqueline of Hainault respectively. The marriage of Henry's other son, Thomas, was less prestigious for he married an English noblewoman, not the foreign noblewomen that John and Humphrey did, but it was in keeping with his status, though it was an abnormal marriage in other ways.

The marriage of Henry IV's daughters, Blanche and Philippa, were affected by their father's usurpation. They married were young and they married high-profile grooms in similiar situations to their father. This was likely done to bolster Henry's standing on the European stage. Philippa's husband, Erik of Pomerania, was the heir of Margarete of Denmark and first king of the new union of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Blanche married the son of, Rupert, King of the Germans, who had recently deposed and replaced Wenzel IV as King of the Germans. While these were prestigious matches, their youth at their time of the marriages should be noted: Blanche, at 10, is the youngest English princess ever to wed and the only English princess to marry below canonical age, while Philippa, at 12, wasn't much older.

It was the marriage of Henry's eldest son and heir, the future Henry V, that was impacted the most by Henry IV's status as an usurper and likely regicide. Shortly after succeeding to the throne, Henry IV began negotiations to marry Prince Henry to Isabelle of Valois, Charles VI of France's daughter and preteen widow of Richard II, but the French flatly refused to countenance it as part of their refusal to recognise Henry as king. This didn't affect the prince's prospects in the long term - from 1408, negotiations with the French regularly involved the prospect of Prince Henry marrying one of Charles VI's daughters - or outside of France. Henry V did marry late, in 1420 at age 33, but the delay was ultimately because negotiations for his marriage earlier had fell through on other issues such as disagreements on the terms. For example, the negotiations for Philippa's marriage to Erik of Pomerania initially began with the prospect of the prince marrying Erik's sister, Katharina, but this was dropped because Margarete of Denmark would not agree to Henry IV's demand that the children of Prince Henry and Katharina would inherit the Nordic throne if Erik died without issue.

[lipstickhamlet]

henry iv part 1

2 hen 2 ry

henry iv: london drift

henry & iv

henry v

[une-sanz-pluis]

Since you’ve been kindly posting excerpts from the Samuel Lane article, could I trouble you for your take (or the historical consensus, if there is one) on the situation with Fusoris and Le Gay? Was Courtenay not sending false information to Fusoris? (50k men, rations for six months, etc) Does that mean he expected Le Gay to be discovered? Or didn’t trust Le Gay and/or Fusoris? If it *was* a gambit of sorts to plant false intelligence among the French (a weird one, since surely the French could have easily disproved it via their own agents), does that mean Henry would have been involved in it? Or was Courtenay trying to “test” Fusoris in some way? Was Fusoris suspected of being a French agent? If Fusoris *was* working for the English, what good would info like that have done him? Could they have been trying to discredit him? *head explodes*

(Ngl, my intrigue re Fusoris is primarily due to *that* quote from him about Henry because historians throw it around like it was definitely a candid opinion and ignore the really ambiguous context surrounding it…)

Oh, man, the Fusoris situation is weird. I think Fusoris was passing information onto Courtenay, probably deliberately, but how much of his testimony is true, I don't know. I can write a lot of words about this and then basically sum my thoughts as to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For anyone who doesn't know: A priest, Raoul de Gay, was captured by the English at the siege of Harfleur. de Gay was passed into the custody of Richard Courtenay, who allowed him to go free in exchange for taking a message to Jean Fusoris, a French astronomer Courtenay had met while heading Henry V's previous embassies to Paris. To make a long story short, de Gay ended up going to the authorities with the letter and Fusoris was put on trial for passing information to the English. In his defence, Fusoris claimed that he had sold some astronomical instruments to Courtenay and basically had only stayed in communication with him to receive full payment. The records for his trial survived and include some detailed accounts of his interactions with Courtenay. Although the story looks damning, there wasn't enough evidence to convict Fusoris and rather than facing the death penalty, he was exiled from Paris

Most historians who mention Fusoris (and some don't) will say that he was or could have been a spy and was lucky to escape with his life. Ian Mortimer bucks the trend by presenting Fusoris as an innocent patsy fed a steady stream of disinformation by a "sly" Courtenay for Reasons. Seb Falk's assessment of Fusoris - either guilty or "at best, spectacular naive" in his dealings with Courtenay - feels about right to me. As for the information contained in Fusoris's testimony, there's no consensus on how much of it is true.

I think some of it probably was truthful, simply because there is so much detail and it seems to be one logical narrative with no obvious contradictions within it. I also think some of his story was dishonest simply because being on trial for treason gave him plenty of motivation not to tell the complete truth, whether he was guilty or innocent. If he was guilty, he likely would have tried to hide his guilt and avoid being executed. If he was innocent, he may have omitted some details or lied in some places to present himself in the most flattering or innocent light. His answers, also, may have contained disinformation he had been told by Courtenay or other sources but he believed to be true.

There is also the possibility that his testimony was given under significant pressure and he may have given answers designed to please or placate his interrogators. He was, after all, a potential source of reliable information about Henry V's court - his unflattering description of Henry as a man better suited to be a priest than a soldier or reports of Henry's ill-health and rumoured risings against Henry may have been designed to show himself to be a source of potentially valuable information about Henry V and his court that the French could exploit.

We can assess some of the details given in Fusoris's account. Sometimes his account is the only - or only major - source of information for his claims, such as the claim that Henry was in ill health or interested in astrology. Some of his claims do seem to be borne out by surviving evidence. For instance, he reported rumours of risings against Henry which are given some credulity by the revelation of the Southampton Plot. I can go into more detail if you'd like but I didn't want this ask to be too long.

As you note in your ask, the letter Courtenay sent to Fusoris about the number of English troops and supplies looks pretty damn dodgy. The English army was about 11,000-12,000 strong, well below the 50,000 Courtenay claimed and their supplies didn't last for 6 months - though that might have been because they rotted or were lost (according to the chronicler Monstrelet, some of the supplies had been damaged at sea).

We can only guess at the purpose(s) of Courtenay's letter to Fusoris. He may have hoped that it would inspire a rumour about the size of the English army in hopes of demoralising the French - probably not the French government, who (as you say!) would have their own spies and informants, but the regular citizenry who would make up the bulk of the French army. Fusoris could have been his unwitting accomplice in this endeavour - or, alternatively, Courtenay's willing accomplice. The apparent error may have been a code, which might be borne out by the fact the letter was accompanied by a list of items (namely, it seems, melons, almonds and "other fruits") that Courtenay wanted Fusoris to purchase from the prior of the Celestines in Paris and bring to him at Harfleur. Fusoris's interrogators seem to have believed it could be a coded message and the prior claimed they didn't even grow melons in their Paris house. To be honest, it feels way too bizarre to take at face value. Why would Courtenay to ask a French astronomer to buy a lot of fruit and then personally deliver the fruit to him while he's attending the siege of a French city?

However, through le Gay, Courtenay was also openly inquiring about the French army's composition in his message so he wasn't exactly being subtle. He may have trusted le Gay with the implication that Fusoris was an informant or felt he had little choice but to trust le Gay. Alternatively, he may have intended le Gay to reveal Fusoris as a spy for whatever reason - perhaps Fusoris was attracting suspicion from the French or had run out of usefulness.

I think that last one is the weakest explanation. I think it's more likely that Courtenay "trusted" le Gay and that the message was (possibly) a coded one. What the code meant, I'm not going to guess - Fusoris probably took the melons with him to his grave.

Whatever was going on, Henry V was almost certainly aware and involved in it. Courtenay (according to Fusoris) claimed that he and Henry often talked about Fusoris and in July, Fusoris had met Henry personally. though very briefly. Two of the French envoys, Bishop Fresnel and Jean Andre, claimed Fusoris had met Henry the day before Fusoris claimed to have briefly met Henry and spent about two hours with him, though Fusoris, perhaps naturally, denied this. Finally, as Samuel Lane notes, the letter itself warned Fusoris not to mention his own or Courtenay's name in reply because their communication was a secret to everyone but the king "who is most discreet, as you know", which certainly implies Henry was involved in some way.

Now, as for that quote (or at least what I assume you meant by "that quote"): Courtenay saying that Henry had not had carnal knowledge of women since his coronation ("non credebat quod cognovisset mulierem carnaliter, postquam ipse susceperat coronam"). I absolutely understand what you mean because I got whiplash from Ian Mortimer claiming that everything Courtenay told Fusoris was lies and disinformation apart from that bit, which he then uses to build 99.9% of his argument that Henry was an awful, awful misogynist and most importantly, Not A Fun Guy Who Would Have Totally Supplied The Lads With Prostitutes Like Perfect King Edward III Definitely Did.

However, it does seem to be legitimate because The First English Life of Henry the Fifth also records a variation of that claim:

I haue hearde of credible report, this noble prince, Kinge Henrie the Fifte, obserued so constantly that from the death of the Kinge his Father vntill the marriage of himself he neuer had knowledge carnally of weomen

The First English Life is ostensibly a 16th century translation of Titus Livius Frulovis's Vita Henrici Quinti but the anonymous translator also incorporated information from a "report" by James Butler, Earl of Ormond (1392-1452). This report is the source of the translator's claim that Henry did not have sex between his coronation and wedding. Ormond certainly knew Henry and served in the retinue of his brother, Thomas, Duke of Clarence - but I can't find any reason why both Ian Mortimer and James Wylie label Ormond as a close friend of Henry's. imho, it's possible Ormond recorded the general opinion about Henry's sex life but it's unlikely he, personally, knew whether or not Henry was having sex.

Courtenay, on the other hand, was a clearly intimate friend of Henry who spent a great deal of time with him and had his confidence and so it's very possible that his claim does reflect the truth - and the fact that it's supported by Ormond means we should take it seriously.

There is still room to doubt. Courtenay says something like to his knowledge Henry had not sex with women following his coronation, which leaves the door to the possibility that Henry had sex but Courtenay didn't know about it or Henry was having sex, just not with women. (I don't think Courtenay was subtly outing Henry as having sex with men but let's acknowledge there's a difference between "no sex with women" and "no sex"). Courtenay did spend some months apart from Henry while on embassy so maybe Henry was having sex when Courtenay wasn't there to know. Alternatively, perhaps Henry was having sex but so discreetly that very few people actually knew and those who knew pretended he wasn't as a way to bolster his reputation (as Katherine J. Lewis points out, chastity was not just "a generic moral quality, but as a guarantee of good rule").

I do think that this claim is true - at least as far it reflects a widespread belief about Henry's sex life. But it's one of the few things in the Fusoris testimony that can be verified.

In brief, the context of Fusoris's testimony means we have to very careful in taking what he says at face value. Some things he says can be backed up by other evidence (such as the claim Henry V wasn't having sex or rumours of plots), for others he's our only major source. Some of the things he says might be disinformation, possibly his own or possibly disinformation he had been unknowingly fed.

References

The First English of Henry V, ed. C. L. Kingsford, (Clarendon Press 1911)

Christopher Allmand, Henry V (Yale Monarchs 1992)

Juliet Barker, Agincourt: The King, The Campaign, The Battle (Abacus 2015)

Hilary M. Carey, Courting Disaster: Astrology at the English Court and University in the Later Middle Ages (Macmillan 1992)

Anne Curry, 1415 Agincourt: A New History (The History Press 2015)

Anne Curry, Henry V: From Playboy Prince to Warrior King (Penguin Monarchs 2015)

Seb Falk, The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery (Allen Lane 2020)

Samuel Lane, "The Adoption of the English Language by Henry V", The Fifteenth Century XX (The Boydell Press 2024)

Katherine J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (Routledge 2013)

 L. Mirot, Le procès de maître Jean Fusoris, dans Mémoires de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Île-de-France, Paris, 1900, t. 27, p. 137-297.

 Ian Mortimer, 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory (Vintage 2010)

Malcolm Vale, Henry V: The Conscience of a King (Yale University Press 2016)

James Hamilton Wylie, The Reign of Henry the Fifth: Volume 1 (1413-1415) (Cambridge University Press 1914)

James Hamilton Wylie, The Reign of Henry the Fifth: Volume 2 (1415-1416) (Cambridge University Press 1919)

[une-sanz-pluis]

What title should a biography of Joan of Navarre have? Wrong answers only.

She Could Have Stepped On Me, I Don't Care

The Witch Queen Who Wasn't (Probably)

Ermines and Eagles: The Romance of Joan of Navarre and Henry IV

Bottomless Brunch With The Queen

Bitch Better Get Her Money

RIP Joan, You Would've Loved An Excel Spreadsheet

How (Not) To Kill Your Stepson and Other Handy Household Hints

Jehanne, Juana, Jeanne, Joan, Jahanne, Joana or Joanna?

The Queen Who Chose Henry IV: A Bodice Ripper

What To Do (And What Not To Do) When You Have The Stepson From Hell

WICKED: The Life and Times of Joan of Navarre, Accused Witch

Local Woman Married Into This

Voting ended onJul 21

(some options derived from the tags on this previous poll)

[heartofstanding]

computer show me henry v bloody

computer show me henry v covered in blood

computer show me henry v completely and utterly drenched in blood

[ludovicus-ichabod]