Henry V as Prince of Wales and John Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk (?), BL MS Arundel 38, f. 37
[Mowbray] ... had just received his lands within a few days of the late king’s death. He was thus able to take his place of honour [as Earl Marshal] at the coronation ceremonies of the new king, where his presence would be an indication to the country that the bitter feud that had caused the banishment of both their fathers . . . had been appeased in the persons of the sons and that the great family of Mowbray had at length tacitly acknowledged the usurpation of the house of Lancaster as a fact beyond recall. The miniature in Arundel 38 presents a visual translation of this idea. It constitutes Mowbray’s lavish assurance of his loyalty, offered to his sovereign as preface to the earliest copy of Hoccleve’s major poem, a copy ‘uncommonly careful’, and probably made under the poet’s supervision. In the spring of 1413, at the time of the coronation and the first parliament, the prince was twenty-five, Mowbray twenty-two. The two young men in the miniature may be read, following Wylie’s suggestion, as ‘sons’, their energies jointly devoted to the new order — a promise which was redeemed in Mowbray’s case by his subsequent ‘judicious and axduous’ service to Henry V. Whether the moment it depicts occurred in 1412, the year or so before Henry V’s accession, or more narrowly, between 20 March and 9 April 1413 when Mowbray did homage to the new king, in this image the two men face each other in an oddly parallel relation. Close in age, allied in blood and in arms, their paternity transcended, poised for fresh beginnings, they extend their hands to each other over Hoccleve’s presented book.
Mary Erler, "Hoccleve's portrait? in British Library manuscript Arundel 38", The Ricardian,vol. 13 (2003)
