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Portrait of Henry VI

Monarchs · Lancaster & York

Henry VI

1421–1471

House of Lancaster — the pious king who lost France and the crown

In office: 1422–1461, 1470–1471

He became king at nine months old, the youngest ever to succeed in England, and was crowned king of France in Paris at ten. Gentle, devout and wholly unfit to rule, he collapsed into catatonic illness in 1453, lost every French possession except Calais in the same year, and became the prize in the dynastic war between Lancaster and York. Deposed in 1461, briefly restored in 1470, he was put to death in the Tower in 1471. He founded Eton and King's College, Cambridge.

How to spot them

  • ▸The youngest person ever to succeed to the English throne — under a year old
  • ▸The only English king also crowned king of France, at Notre-Dame in 1431
  • ▸Clue words: 'readeption', 'Margaret of Anjou', 'Eton', 'King's College', 'Lilies and Roses'
  • ▸Two reigns separated by a deposition; bouts of catatonic mental illness from 1453
  • ▸Cross-reference: the collapse of his kingship set off the Wars of the Roses

In the reign

A king of nine months at his accession, still the youngest ever to inherit the English throne (1422)

He succeeded on 1 September 1422, aged about eight months and twenty-six days.

The only English king to be crowned in Paris, at the cathedral of Notre-Dame in December 1431 (1431)

A riposte to the crowning of Charles VII at Reims in 1429 after Joan of Arc's campaign.

A school founded beside Windsor in 1440 and a college at Cambridge the year after, its great chapel finished by his enemies' heirs (1440–1441)

Eton College and King's College, Cambridge; the chapel was completed under Henry VIII.

A collapse into speechless, motionless illness in August 1453 that lasted some eighteen months (1453)

He did not recognise his newborn son; Richard, Duke of York, was made Protector in 1454.

A marriage of 1445 that bought a truce by secretly surrendering the county of Maine to France (1445)

Margaret of Anjou; when the cession leaked it helped destroy his government.

The loss of Bordeaux in 1453, leaving only Calais of an empire won a century earlier (1453)

The defeat at Castillon ended the Hundred Years' War; the news may have triggered his breakdown.

A restoration engineered by the Earl of Warwick in October 1470 that lasted about six months (1470–1471)

Known as the readeption: taken out of the Tower, restored, and put back in it the following spring.

A death in the Tower on the night of 21 May 1471, marked every year since by lilies from one foundation and roses from another (1471)

The Ceremony of the Lilies and Roses at the Wakefield Tower, with flowers from Eton and King's.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born at Windsor on 6 December 1421, the only child of Henry V and Catherine of Valois.
  • •He succeeded to England in September 1422 and, by the Treaty of Troyes, to France on Charles VI's death that October.
  • •His minority was run by his uncles: John, Duke of Bedford, as regent in France, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, as protector in England.
  • •He was crowned at Westminster in 1429 and at Notre-Dame in Paris in 1431.
  • •He married Margaret of Anjou in 1445; their only child, Edward of Westminster, was killed at Tewkesbury in 1471, the only Prince of Wales to die in battle.
  • •His mental illness may have been inherited from his maternal grandfather Charles VI of France, who at times believed he was made of glass.
  • •He was deposed after Towton in 1461, captured in 1465, restored in October 1470 and deposed again in April 1471.
  • •He was buried first at Chertsey Abbey; Richard III had him moved to St George's Chapel, Windsor, in 1484.
  • •Attempts to have him canonised reached Rome under Henry VII but lapsed; he was nonetheless venerated in England as a saintly king.
  • •Shakespeare gave him three plays — the only English monarch with a trilogy to himself.

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