How did HENRY VI die? | Digging up Henry VI | brutal royal murders | where did Henry VI die?

how did henry vi die was it natural causes or was he the victim of one of the many brutal royal murders which took place in england during the wars of the roses in today's video from history calling we are going to study the rumors that henry was slaughtered whilst praying on this very spot in the tower of london and that his murderer was none other than the future richard iii we'll also look at his lying in state in the old saint paul's cathedral think about what the gruesome details of what happened to his body while he was there might or might not tell us about his cause of death and look at the discovery made when his skeleton was examined here at st george's chapel in windsor in 1910 which convinced one onlooker that the former king must have met a violent end [Music] [Music] as always please remember to give this video a like subscribe to the channel with notifications switched on so you never miss one of my uploads and follow me on instagram there's a link for that in the description box below along with links to some additional sources all about henry and the wars of the roses henry vi has gone down in history as one of england's weakest kings though pious and kind he wasn't cut out for medieval kingship and having inherited the throne as a baby he was long in the habit of letting other men rule for him his marriage to margaret of anjou took eight years to produce the child their son prince edward of wheels and by the time this little boy arrived in 1453 king henry had suffered a complete mental breakdown and was in a catatonic state though he recovered his weak rulership and the claims of his cousin richard duke of york on the throne ultimately led to the conflict known as the wars of the roses as these two branches of the plantagenet family battled it out for the crown the duke was killed on the 30th of december 1460 but his son another edward quickly took up the yorkist cause and in march 1461 king henry was deposed and edward became edward iv henry spent the next nine and a half years either fleeing from edward or in his custody but eventually in october 1470 he was restored to the throne thanks to the tireless efforts of his wife and divisions within edward iv's family for a much more detailed look at the wars of the roses see my videos linked below on the lives of margaret of bonjour and edward's mother cecily neville henry's restoration known as his redemption didn't last long in april 1471 edward retook the throne and imprisoned his rival queen margaret and the noise 17 year old prince edward of wales attempted to get the crown and henry back but at the battle of chukesbury on the 4th of may that year prince edward was killed and his mother was shortly afterwards taken prisoner we now come to the death of henry himself the former king had been locked up in the tower of london and the official story of his demise comes from a tract written shortly after the events it describes by an anonymous author calling himself only a servant of the kings meaning a servant of edwards it is entitled history of the arrival of edward iv in england and the final recovery of his kingdoms from henry vi a d 1471. in this publication which states that henry had occupied the throne unlawfully we are told that upon learning of the death of his son who he hadn't seen since 1463 he quote took it to so great despite ire and indignation that of pure displeasure and melancholy he died the 23rd day of the month of may if true this was remarkably convenient for edward iv within days the prince of wales had been defeated and killed queen margaret had been captured and now henry vi had dropped dead right away though there were rumors that henry's death had nothing to do with natural causes on the 17th of june the milanese ambassador at the french court a man named sforza dipatini reported to his master the duke of milan that king edward has not chosen to have the custody of king henry any longer although he was in some sense innocent and there was no great fear about his proceedings the prince his son and the earl of warwick being dead warwick was one of king edward's cousins but he defected to margaret of anjou as well as all those who were for him and had any vigor as he has caused king henry to be secretly assassinated in the tower where he was a prisoner they say he has done the same to the queen king henry's wife he has in short chosen to crush the seed dibitini wasn't in england and his information about queen margaret was certainly wrong as she actually lived on until 1482 and was ultimately sent back to france but his report shows what the rumors were in europe's courts just a few weeks after henry's death these rumors then persisted over the following years and decades the historian and priest john roose who wrote his book historia regum anglia meaning history of the kings of england between about 1480 and 86 reported that after he had again been locked up henry was quote crimed with martyrdom a phrase which can only mean murdered another chronicle dating to the mid-1480s and once thought to have been written by a john warkworth though its authorship is now in doubt says that the same night that king edward came to london this is edward returning from his victory at the battle of chukesbury king harry which i take to be a 15th century spelling of harry being inward in prison in the tower of london was put to death the 21st day of may on a tuesday night betwixt 11 and 12 of the clock being then at the tar the duke of gloucester brother to king edward and many other and on the morrow he was chested and brought to poles and his face was open that every man might see him and in his lying he bled on the pavement there and afterward at the blackfriars was brought and there he bled new and fresh and from thence he was carried to chertsey abbey in a boat and buried there in our liddy chapel this chronicle is interesting for a couple of reasons first it's the only source which says that henry bled in his coffin we have official expenditure records called issue rules which show payments made to mr hugh bryce after henry's death quote for wax linen cloth spices and other ordinary expenses by him appointed and spent about the burial of the said henry of windsor who died within the tar of london if henry was properly embalmed and wrapped up in these linens we wouldn't necessarily expect to see bleeding a day later but then again perhaps the liquid was embalming fluid or he wasn't embalmed well and the weather in late spring contributed to rapid decomposition if you've seen my video linked on screen and below on whether henry viii's body exploded in his coffin you'll know that bodies leaking fluids even after being embalmed and placed in a closed coffin during winter was far from unheard of never mind an open coffin in may the other point of interest in this chronicle is that it might be taken to insinuate that edward iv's brother richard duke of closter the future richard iii was in some way responsible for henry's death it stopped short of actually saying this however as did the kreweland or kroyland chronicle written in about 1486 which reported that i shall say nothing at this time about the discovery of king henry's lifeless body in the tar of london may god have mercy upon and give repentance to him whoever it might be who dare to lay sacrilegious hands on the lord's anointed and so let the doer merit the title of tyrant and the victim that of glorious martyr the body was put on view for a few days in saint paul's church in london and then carried along the thames in an illuminated barge solemnly equipped for the purpose to the monastic church of chertsey in the diocese of winchester 15 miles from the city to be buried in fact as regards the murderer some historians have argued that the kreweland chronicle actually exculpates both edward iv and richard iii because they were both dead by 1486 and the writer hopes that the murderer will gain repentance suggesting that they were still alive at that point others were not so reticent about blaming richard the chronicles of london have this to say on the matter also upon ascension evening king henry was brought from the tar through cheap onto poles upon a beer that's the kind of framework you can carry a body or a coffin on and about the beer more glevis which is an old word meaning spears or lances and which i may not have pronounced correctly and staves than torches who was slain as it was said by the duke of gloucester but how he was dead there he was brought dead and in the church the corpse stood all night and on the mourn was conveyed to chertsey there he was buried annoyingly i'm not completely sure about the dates these chronicles were written up as they were authored by different people over the years but in this case it's at least the late 15th century next we have the memoirs of the french chronicler and diplomat philippe comings who worked at the court of king edward and richard's brother-in-law charles the bold jig of burgundy these memoirs were written up during the 1480s and 1490s he said that quote king henry was a very ignorant prince and almost an idiot and if what was told me be true after the battle was over the duke of gloucester who was king edward's brother and afterwards called king richard slew this poor king henry with his own hand or caused him to be carried into some private place and stood by while he was killed comings isn't without his problems as a source even aside from writing long after the events he was describing he wasn't living in england in 1471 he's light on details of how henry was actually killed and he admits that he is simply repeating an unsourced rumor he's also made a noticeable error in his account for the battle he refers to in this quote is actually the battle of barnet which occurred on the 14th of april 1471 whereas we know henry died after chukesbury which occurred on the 4th of may what else could he be wrong about we might wonder another french writer bernard andre came to england after henry vii accession in 1485 and was a tutor to the latter son prince arthur he was therefore not present during the events of 1471 and was certainly relying on the information of others when he wrote his history of henry vii in around 1500 to 1502 quite a feat by the way given that he was apparently blind he said of henry vi death that richard thirsty for human blood was sent by edward iv to slaughter the former king and proceeded to do so though he then leaves a gap in his book where details of how the murder was accomplished should have been placed which doesn't suggest that he had a very good source for his information the english writer robert fabian who died in 1513 and whose book the new chronicles of england under france was first published posthumously in 1516 claimed that then upon ascension evening next ensuing meaning the 22nd of may the corpse of henry vi late king was brought unreverently from the tar through the high streets of the city onto paul's church and they're left for that night and upon the morrow conveyed with here's this word again in clevis and other weapons as he before the there was brought onto chertsey where he was buried of the death of this prince diver's tales were told but the most common theme went that he was sticked with a dagger by the hands of the duke of gloucester which after edward iv usurped the crown and was king here we get the accusation against richard again but this time with the added detail that he supposedly stabbed henry to death with a dagger note though that while fabian was in england was writing within living memory of these events and was presumably able to speak to people who could recall them he too says that he is merely reporting the most common gossip about the king's death and admits that many tales were circulating about what happened to henry still if we choose to believe that the dead king bled in his coffin a stab wound might help to account for this if the embalming hadn't been done well fabian is also thought by some to be the author of the great chronicle of london possibly written about 1501-1502 and which closely follows the sequence of events laid out in the new chronicles just quoted stating that upon ascension eve the corpse of king henry vi was brought through cornhill from the tar with a great company of men of that place bearing weapons as if they would have led him to some place of execution and so they conveyed him to saint paul's where that night he was set in the body of the church who were against the image of our lady of grace open visaged that he might be known and upon the morrow with a few torches as he was brought thither so was he thence conveyed onto the waterside and from thence to chertsey and they're buried for him shortly afterwards god showed sundry miracles of whose death the common fame then went that the duke of gloucester was not all guiltless again he is sure about the details surrounding henry's lying in state and burial minus the bleeding but calls the accusations against richard iii no more than the common fame meaning the most popular gossip and he doesn't say outright that the duke of gloucester killed the king moving forward to around 1512 to 13 the italian writer polydor virgil was then in england and drafting his work anglicastoria which would eventually be published in the 1530s drawing on the earlier sources he had been able to get his hands on and the story still floating around england about the events of 40 years earlier he wrote that henry vi deposed a little earlier was put to death in the tar a persistent rumor has it that duke richard of gloucester killed him with a sword to free his brother of all fear from his enemies but whoever was the murderer of this most pious man it is quite clear that both the murder and the men responsible were adequately punished for afterwards when they had no enemies on him to vent and slake their savagery they exercised their cruelty on each other and polluted their hands with their own blood as will be shown at the appropriate place below this is probably a reference to the execution of edward and richard's brother george duke of clarence which i already have a video on and to richard iii killing the princes in the tar allegedly then henry's body was removed without any honor from the tar to saint paul's cathedral and lay in its coffin for an entire day and on the following day it was taken to the benedictine monastery in the village of chertsey 15 miles from london and buried there but not long afterwards it was transferred to windsor castle and placed in a new tomb in the chapel of st george like fabian virgil suggests that henry was stabbed to death notes the rumors of richard iii's involvement and says that henry's body wasn't treated with enough honor though the expenses which we know from the issue rules were paid to have him embalmed laid in state and buried suggest a respectable enough internment virgil also gives us the extra and accurate detail that henry's remains didn't stay at chertsey instead in 1484 he was moved here to st george's chapel in the grounds of windsor castle where irony of ironies he now lies directly across the aisle from his usurper edward iv also writing in the 1510s was henry viii's future minister thomas murr who was preparing his history of king richard iii between about 1513 and 1518 though it would only be published in 1557 i've discussed the problems of murr's work in other videos so i'll just summarize here by saying that it's full of errors clearly biased in favor of the tudors and on the whole not a great source nevertheless it's interesting for gaining a further understanding of how the story of henry vi death had evolved very helpfully as you can see here the british library have actually digitized the exact ph from the first edition in which murr describes henry's death he says that richard iii quote slew with his own hands king henry vi being prisoner in the tar as men constantly say and that without commandment or knowledge of the king which would undoubtedly if he had intended that thing have appointed that butcherly office to some other than his own born brother this neatly gets edward iv off the hook which was handy as he was the maternal grandfather of the then current monarch henry viii but i question how likely it is that anyone even edward's own brother would have killed a high status prisoner like henry vi without the king's knowledge and agreement even murr says this story is just something men constantly say and is unable to offer any proof how likely is it in fact that richard had anything to do with henry's death in may 1471 richard duke of gloucester was just 18 years old and the events for which he is best remembered were still 12 years away by which i mean the mysterious disappearance in 1483 also from the tar of london of his young nephews edward v and richard of shrewsbury and his own seizure of the crown at the same time if you'd like to know more about that incident see my video on the princes in the tar linked on screen and below whether richard was also to blame for henry the sixth death has caused great disagreement amongst historians and many of their arguments revolve around henry's date of death the anonymous tract which as i've noted is the only contemporary source we have give the 23rd of may as the correct day the so-called warkworth chronicle gave the night of the 21st of may and didn't actually blame richard for the death while fabian gave the 22nd there are some other sources which very briefly mention henry's death as well and which i haven't included in detail here because they don't really add anything to the sources i have cited however they too give one of these dates writing in 1906 clemens markham said that the anonymous tract should be trusted because it's the only source that dates to 1471 and that richard couldn't have killed henry because he wasn't at the tar on the 23rd of may having already been sent away by his brother to deal with rebels for him markham also cited payments made for henry's maintenance which appear to show expenditures for him all the way up to the 24th of may and says that henry must therefore have died that day or perhaps late on the 23rd anyone who says it was earlier than that he claims was writing during the tudor period and had been influenced by the tudor's desire to blacken richard iii's name and by the scandal surrounding the disappearance of the princes in the tar another historian w h white points out that the way in which the dating of the payments made was recorded the original document says the money was quote for 14 days the first day being the 11th of may last past may simply reflect what white calls a convenient end to the accounting period concerned rather than a literal day of death this may well be true and i would add that while the anonymous tract is indeed the only truly contemporary source its writer was an unabashed supporter of edward iv and his family and we should also consider that that writer pushed the date of death forward by a couple of days in order to create an alibi for richard of course if that is possible then it is also possible that later pro tutor writers backdated the death slightly in order to frame the duke of cluster such as the joys of trying to study historical records the sources are also in disagreement about what was done with the body after death as we've seen only workworth reports it bleeding though other writers agree that henry was in an open coffin with his face fully visible so that no one could doubt he was dead as i've already mentioned this would have enabled the decomposition process to proceed more quickly so bleeding or leaking of embalming fluids isn't out of the question this open coffin is also going to become very important when we get to the examination of henry's bones in 1910 but you'll have to keep watching to find out why warkworth and the 1471 tract which he likely read also claim that henry was taken to the blackfriars in between the lying and state in saint paul's and burial in chertsey abbey but this is not worn out by other records the issue rules make no mention of it and instead only record payments quote for wages and rewards of diver's men carrying torches from the aforesaid tar to the cathedral church of saint paul london and thence to chertsey with the present body and also for diver soldiers of calais watching about the body and for the higher of barges with masters and sailors rowing by the thames to chertsey if the detour to blackfriars didn't happen how trustworthy is the rest of the 1471 publication you'll note too that none of these sources describe the exact location of henry's death within the tar yet if you go there you'll see this little side chapel in a room in the wakefield tar cited as the place of his death with a plaque in the floor marking the spot where he was supposedly slain whilst at prayer i've seen nothing in the primary sources to support this and in fact there are other stories that he more likely died in the land thorne tar which you can see here though it was actually rebuilt in the 19th century as the wakefield tar wasn't being used for prisoners in 1471. the truth is we don't know precisely where he met his end but every year since 1923 on the 21st of may the ceremony of the lilies and the roses is held in the wakefield tar during which representatives of eaton college and king's college cambridge both founded by henry lay these flowers in the chapel in memory of the king we now come to the examination of henry's remains in 1910 this was carried out on the 4th of november that year by a dr a mcallister a professor of anatomy in cambridge university the bones were found piled into an unmarked lead and box which had apparently been placed within a long since rotted away coffin despite the lack of a coffin plate there has never been any real doubt as to their identity as they were in exactly the position they were expected to be based on descriptions of the re-burial and 17th century floor plans of the chapel and its graves mcallister wrote up the following account the next day which was published in 1911 and which said the bones are those of a fairly strong man aged between 45 and 55 henry was 49 who was at least 5 feet 9 inches in height he may have been an inch taller but i give the minor limit the bones of the head were unfortunately much broken but as far as they could be pieced together they were thin and light and belong to your skull well formed but small in proportion to the stature some of the roof bones occipital and temporal frontal and parietal had become ossified together at the sutures the few teeth found second bowler upper right and first molar upper left second bicuspid lower right had their crowns very much worn down the portion of the one side of the lower jaw find had lost its teeth some time before death there were nearly all the bones of the trunk of both legs and of the left arm but i found no part of the right arm from the relative positions occupied by the bones as they lay in the lead and casket when opened it was certain that the body had been dismembered when it was put in if the body had been buried in the earth for some time and then exhumed it would account for their being in the condition in which we find them it might also account for the absence of the bones of the right arm as well as for the accidental enclosure of the left humerus of a small pig within the casket i am sorry that i can add nothing more the state of the bones was so unsatisfactory that i could not make any trustworthy measurements when this report was published in 1911 the author of the article in which it appeared who was called wh sinjin hope and who had also been present at the disinterment added some further details saying professor mcallister does not mention that the contents of the box were still somewhat moist possibly on account of the spices used to emband the body at its first burial one other feature was noticeable that to one of the pieces of the skull there was still attached some of the hair which was brown in colour save in one place where it was much darker and apparently matted with blood hope then concluded that the body had to be henry's based on all available evidence regarding his burials and appearance and the fact that there was no one else interred in that location in the chapel whose skeleton this could have been he added that the bones belong to someone who may have died of violent death as is shown by the blood clotted hair how far can we trust these conclusions though as others have since pointed out hope had no medical training and no way of knowing that the substance the hair was matted in was blood his conclusion that the deceased must have died of violent death because of this is therefore doubtful and the report made by the actual expert present dr mcallister was far more cautious coming back to the open coffin henry leyen had his head suffered sufficient trauma to have the hair soaked in blood even 440 years later the fact would surely have been obvious to onlookers during his lying in state and it certainly would have been mentioned by the chroniclers of the day yet even when his bleeding and his coffin is described we get no indication of where the blood was coming from and no suggestion that it stemmed from a massive and fetal headwound such an injury also would have been inconsistent with the official story being put out that he had died of grief and would lead us to wonder why he was ever displayed in an open coffin at all if he'd evidently suffered violence as for the fact that the skull was in pieces in 1910 this also doesn't mean much when it comes to cause of death again it would have been obvious and commented on by those who saw him in 1471 if the former king's head was this badly damaged and if you believe the story that richard killed henry blunt force trauma to the head doesn't tally with tales of being stabbed with a dagger or sword what seems much more likely is that the skull being thin and light as described by dr mcallister was broken up perhaps deliberately during the removal of the remains from chertsey to windsor in 1484. this seems all the more likely to me given mcallister's conclusion that the body had been dismembered and some parts of it most notably an arm removed and replaced with a pig bone i don't believe as heated that the pig bone was enclosed accidentally as i think it was more likely added in to try to cover for the removal of the real arm as a relic who brings a pig bone to a body disinterment unless they intend to use it for something the small number of teeth found in 1910 also makes me wonder if some of those were also taken too and if the skull was broken up as a way to extract them but i admit i am just surmising here based on what happened to other historical figures pieces of queen catherine parr's body were taken as souvenirs during the many times she was disentered for instance and some of amberlynn's teeth were missing when the victorians dug her up in the 1870s those present noted that she'd clearly been dug up at least once before given that her bones were piled in a heap rather than laid out in their correct anatomical order in short there is no reason to doubt that the remains examined in 1910 were henry's but that examination really doesn't tell us anything about his death so to come back to the question i started this video with was henry vi murdered for my money i think he probably was although a sudden heart attack or stroke isn't beyond the realms of possibility the idea that he dropped dead without even a brief illness at the very moment edward iv had won back the throne and eliminated henry's son is just too much for me to swallow i also think that the killing was done on edward's orders as it would have constituted a serious breakdown in the chain of command for something this monumental to be done without his permission but the actual cause of death and the identity of the perpetrator are very much open to to be it the stories about richard iii killing him appear much later and seem to be influenced by the princes in the tar episode however there are arguments both for and against the idea that he could have done it even aside from the uncertainty around the death of death clemens markham found it hard to believe that king edward would have had his brother commit this crime rather than some other lackey yet other writers including matthew lewis in his book on richard iii contend that allowing a commoner or even a noble to do it would set a dangerous precedent for regicide a brother of the king who was in a position of complete trust might have been one of the few people able to carry out the act lewis also notes that as lord high constable of england richard was responsible for protecting the king and quote might have been the natural choice to oversee the killing of the former king even if he didn't deliver the fatal blow himself the display of the body with its face uncovered throws the idea of death by a gruesome head injury into doubt though a single blow to the back of the head and stabbing are still possible and might account for the body possibly bleeding on the floor of simp paul's cathedral as would natural decomposition as always though i'm keen to read what you make of all this let me know in the comments below if you think henry was murdered and if so how do you think the deed was done and by whom i'll be back next week with a new video and until then keep learning

Channel: History Calling

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Keywords: where did henry vi die, how did henry vi die, brutal royal murders, digging up henry vi, What happened when royalty died, the king who lost the wars of the roses, British royal funerals, weakest ever kings, shocking corpse mutilation, the life of henry vi, the body of henry vi, old st paul's cathedral, a murdered king, the death of henry vi, who killed henry vi, was henry vi murdered, how edward iv took the throne, shocking royal deaths, History Calling

Id: E_tWkpAv878

Length: 30min 2sec (1802 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022