Zusammenfassung der Ressource
1 Henry VI: Personality
- Education
- He had received the best
tuition available at the time
- From Richard
Beauchamp, the Earl of
Warwick
- Governance
- John Capgrave - reported that the
naval + coastal security of the
kingdom was neglected
- Military leadership
- The first English king never to
command an army against a
foreign army
- Left the kingdom's military
leadership in the hands of others
- His uncles - Duke of
Bedford + Duke of
Gloucester
- Duke of Somerset, Duke
of Suffolk + Duke of York
- Even his wife, Margaret of
Anjou, showed a greater
inclination towards military
action
- Advisers
- According to Abbot John
Whethamstede, Henry could
'not resist those who led him
to unwise decisions'
- Henry was a man of weak
character, who relied too much on
the advice of those around him
- Clearly not a good judge
of character + those
around him knew how to
manipulate him
- Their manipulation of him
became decisive when he
began to suffer mental
problems that eventually led
to a temp lapse into insanity
in 1453
- According to John
Blacman, Henry VI was a
good man but a bad king
who became a 'fool of
God'
- Assessments of Henry
- Judgements of Henry in the 15th Cent
would have been distorted by the
propaganda of civil war + later opinions of
Yorkists/Tudors
- Polydore Vergil
- Henry 'preferred peace before wars, quietness
before troubles...there was not in this world a
more pure, honest and more more holy creature'
- Henry was a very pious man
- However, he had not won the support of the Pope,
Pius II
- J. R. Lander
- Wrote that, Henry had 'developed or degenerated into a
man who could hardly have been worse equipped to
meet the stresses' of governing a kingdom'