Just how saintly was Henry?

Was the tragic monarch truly above worldly sin?

A child dragged from the Thames halfdrowned; a girl impaled on a pitchfork; a prisoner rescued by angels; an epileptic nun. These were among 300 people who reported being miraculously preserved by King Henry VI (pictured below) after his death. Their stories were painstakingly recorded by the monks of Windsor as proof of the late king’s sanctity.

The cult of ‘Saint Henry’ took off within years of his murder: embarrassingly for the Yorkist Edward IV, his namesake northern city was among its earliest proponents in the 1470s. Henry’s suffering during deposition, and violent death, made him seem a sympathetic intercessor to his former subjects. During life he had been famously pious and generous, concerned for education and, according to a papal collector who visited England in 1437, “more religious than a man of religion”.

But was Henry really the holy innocent he was cracked up to be? Many of our ideas about this ‘Second Job’ come from his confessor and biographer, John Blacman, who wrote when Henry’s cult was in full force. Blacman was determined to present the king as a latter- day saint, claiming that Henry only wore farmer’s boots and black clothes, that he lived chastely, and that he despised “vain sports and pursuits” like plays and hunting.

In truth, however, Henry had recognised the importance of dressing magnificently, once meeting French ambassadors in a tapestry-bedecked chamber, wearing a floor-length goldembroidered crimson gown. He also showed a worldly concern for his potential wife’s appearance, insisting that three possible foreign brides should be painted in “their kirtles simple” – that is, half- dressed, so he could determine which one he fancied best (in the end, none of them).

And while he never took a mistress, Henry wasn’t celibate, producing an heir with Queen Margaret: Edward of Lancaster. There is also ample evidence that, although Henry avoided human bloodshed, he enjoyed hunting, and the occasional play.