'On St George's day 1377,
'two young boys stood before the altar in the chapel at Windsor Castle
'to be inducted into the Order of the Garter
'the highest order of chivalry in the land.
'The 10-year-old Richard was heir to the throne.
'The 11-year-old Henry Bolingbroke was his cousin
'and heir to the most powerful aristocratic family in England.
'The ceremony marked their entrance onto the public stage.
'The future of the English monarchy seemed assured
'as the two boys swore never to take up arms against each other.
'It was a promise they couldn't keep.'
Instead, cousin clashed with cousin
as Henry usurped Richard
and made himself king, as Henry IV.
The usurpation triggered the worst crisis in the English monarchy
since Magna Carta.
Over the next 100 years, there were seven kings
and only three of them died in their beds.
Three were murdered one was killed on the field of battle
and three followed Henry IV's own example in violently usurping the throne.
These bloody civil wars formed the background
to Shakespeare's series of great history plays and their royal stars:
the overweening Richard II,
the heroic Henry V
and the pathetic Henry VI.
In these wars, the whole basis of the English monarchy
was questioned and upturned
and the royal house tore itself apart in a slow, painful suicide.
'In England, in 1370,
'the old and feeble-minded Edward III was king,
'a shadow of his mighty younger self.
'The hope for the future lay with Edward's eldest son and heir,
'the Black Prince.
'But then, in 1376
'disaster struck.
'Aged 45, he died.
'In his place, his son, the nine-year-old Richard, became heir to the throne.
'Honours and titles were now showered on the boy.'
, He was made Earl of Chester
Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales.
He sat above his royal uncles at a banquet.
He even opened Parliament on the old king's behalf.
But, a year later, Edward III was dead,
and Richard, aged only 10,
became king.
At his coronation, he was anointed with holy oils.
He was crowned with Edward the Confessor's crown
and the greatest bishops and earls knelt at his feet to pay him homage.
'One of the boy's toys was a set of dice,
'loaded so that he always won,
'and life must have seemed just as rosy for the lad,
'who grew up with the sense of his absolute, untrammelled right to power.
'In reality, royal power relied on the support of the English nobility.
'Chief amongst them was the Duke of Lancaster
'the father of Richard's childhood friend Henry Bolingbroke.
'The House of Lancaster had 30 castles scattered across England.
'The jewel in their ducal coronet was Kenilworth
'which far outclassed most royal castles in scale and in grandeur.
'Extravagances like Kenilworth
'were hugely resented by the common people of England.
'In the last 50 years,
'the Black Death had swept through the country three times,
'wiping out half the population.
'Rents had collapsed, and now Iandowners and the government
'were trying to recoup their position.
'In 1380, they introduced a new poll tax.
'Not for the last time it triggered a revolt.
'The rebels' target was not Richard but the noble clique around him.
'The rebels even flew the banner of St George,
'and, as they marched on London,
'they swore loyalty to their young king.'
As the rebels looted and burned in the city and suburbs,
Richard, his mother and a handful of councillors
took refuge in the Tower.
The revolt was, of course a terrible threat
but it was also an opportunity for the young king.
The lords who had hitherto ruled England in his name
were suddenly powerless and directionless
in the face of the triumphant mob.
On the other hand, that same mob was crying enthusiastically
for Richard as their true king.
Richard took them at their word.
Aged only 14,
and with a courage that was fully worthy of his father the Black Prince
he met the rebels three times
and, proclaiming that he was now their captain,
he led them to safety outside the city.
'Having tasted real power, Richard was reluctant to give it up,
'but the nobility stood in his way.
'For they had grown even more rich and powerful in the French wars.
'From their castles across the country,
'these lords could call upon large bands of armed retainers.
'The Duke of Lancaster alone had 4,000 men at his command.
'Richard was determined to beat them at their own game
'and formed his own private army.
'They wore his badge, the White Hart, as a sign of their loyalty.'
This beautiful painting is known as the Wilton Diptych.
It's a work of private devotion
and it takes us to the heart of Richard's obsessive, solipsistic view of kingship,
which raised him gloriously above his subjects
and dangerously cut him off from them.
Richard was born on the 6th of January, the Feast of the Epiphany,
when the three wise men, or kings, knelt in adoration
before the Christ child and his Virgin mother.
So here, in the centre of the picture,
is Richard, repeating that act of homage.
The 6th of January
is also the date on which the Church commemorates Christ's baptism
by John the Baptist,
who appears here, beside the two English royal saints,
Edward the Confessor
and the Anglo-Saxon martyr monarch, Edmund.
Even the angels surrounding the Virgin belong to Richard's dream world,
as, like his earthly trustees, the Cheshire Archers
they wear his badge of the White Hart.
With the heavenly host in his pocket, Richard thought,
who could stand against him?
'The answer in the real world was the men who actually held power,
'the nobility.
'And one of their natural leaders was Henry Bolingbroke,
'son and heir of the Duke of Lancaster.
'Only ten years had passed since Richard and Henry had sworn
'never to take up arms against each other,
'but in the ten years the two boys had grown into very different men.
'Henry had turned into a man of action.
'He excelled at jousting and blood sports and he had a soldier's harsh piety,
'but Richard had created a glamorous and luxurious court,
'of which he was the glittering centre.
'Here, style was everything.
'Richard commissioned the first royal cookery book
'and he invented the handkerchief.
'But this was more than style wars.
'It was a clash of political values.
'Richard believed that a king was God on earth,
'Henry, that he was a first amongst equals.
'The result was real war -
'Richard and his court favourites against the nobility.
'On the 19th December 1387
'the two sides met at Radcot Bridge, just outside Oxford.
'Richard himself did not fight.
'Instead, his army was led by his friend and favourite, Robert De Vere.
'Henry led the rebel forces into battle.
'De Vere was defeated and fled into exile.
'Henry was victorious.'
With Henry's defeat of his troops, Richard was powerless.
News of the defeat was brought to him here at the Tower
where he was spending Christmas 1387.
Soon, the rebel lords arrived and mercilessly browbeat the king,
threatening him with force and even with deposition.
There was nothing for it but a complete and humiliating surrender.
Richard's friends were executed or driven into exile.
The kingdom was to be ruled by a committee of the lords
and even Richard's personal affairs
were put into the hands of a board of guardians,
as though he'd been a child,
or insane.
'Richard was left only with the title of king,
'but it was enough.
'Slowly and painstakingly, he rebuilt his position and power.
'Adversity had taught him patience and cunning
'and he'd decided that revenge was a dish best eaten cold.
'The depth of festering hatred was clearly illustrated
'when his beloved favourite Robert De Vere died in exile.
'In 1395, Richard arranged a funeral for him.
'All the sometime rebel lords were obliged to attend,
'the very men who'd fought against De Vere at Radcot Bridge.
'Richard placed a ring on the dead man's finger,
'and, in this quiet gesture,
'he signalled that vengeance would be his.
'By 1397, Richard was strong enough to strike,
'and, one by one,
'those lords who'd rebelled against him met with his revenge.
'On trumped-up charges of treason, they were either executed or exiled.
'No one was safe. Amongst the victims was one of his own uncles
'the Duke of Gloucester.
'Richard's was a triumph of divide and rule
'but the king saved a special revenge for his cousin Henry.
'When Henry was involved in a quarrel with another noble, Thomas Mowbray,
'Richard ordered that the two men fight to the death in a judicial combat.
'God would be on the just man's side.'
Richard's behaviour in the affair shows him at his most malign and vain.
He deliberately played up the quarrel between Henry and Mowbray
and he'd chosen the means of settling it
that showed off his own glory to the uttermost.
'But this was the pageantry of the Colosseum
'for Richard would preside like a Roman emperor in the amphitheatre
'as the defeated man was stripped of his armour,
'dragged at a horse's tail from the field
'and strung up on the gallows, which stood ready.'
But in the event
Richard behaved more like a royal conjuror than a Roman emperor,
for, just as the combatants were ready to charge,
Richard, in a dramatic gesture, threw down his staff
stopping the fight and resuming judgement himself.
Henry, the king ruled, would go into exile for 10 years, and Mowbray for life.
Thus, King Richard, like a demigod, struck down his remaining foes.
'In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke was exiled, here in Paris.
'Within the year he received a double blow -
'his father, the Duke of Lancaster, died
'and Richard seized all of Henry's vast inheritance for himself.
'Henry was left with nothing.
'But Richard had overreached himself.
'All landowners in England
'now had cause to fear for their own property.
'22 years had passed
'since Henry had been made a Knight of the Garter with Richard,
'but now, any vestige of cousinly feeling had gone,
'and Henry determined to reclaim what was rightfully his by force.'
En route on this make-or-break journey back to England,
Henry paused here, at the great royal abbey of Saint-Denis.
Saint-Denis was where the kings of France were buried.
It was also where they came to receive the sacred banner of the Oriflamme
the standard of Saint-Louis on their way to battle.
Henry was on the way to his battle
and he needed all the help, human and divine, that he could get.
But he made sure that God, at least was on his side
by a single revealing gesture.
Before he left the abbey,
he promised the abbot that he would restore to Saint-Denis
the revenues of the little priory of Deerhurst in Gloucestershire
given to the abbey long, long ago by Edward the Confessor
and purloined, like so much else, by Richard.
Already, therefore, before he even left France
Henry saw himself as true king of England,
fully able to redress Richard's wrongs.
'With a fleet of only ten ships,
'Henry sailed round England to the Yorkshire coast.
'Luck was on his side as Richard was away in Ireland.
'Yorkshire was the heartland of his confiscated estate.
'As Henry moved from castle to castle,
'they surrendered easily to their rightful master.
'As Henry marched south, his army swelled,
'reinforced by the great northern earls.
'Richard, back home, now sought safety in Edward I's great Welsh castles,
'but Henry lured him out, with the promise that he came
'only to claim his inheritance of Lancaster
'but had no intention of threatening the crown itself.
'It was a lie, but it was a successful one.
'As Richard emerged,
'an ambush of Henry's men lay in waiting.
'The king of England was Henry Bolingbroke's prisoner.
'For it was clear Henry wanted far more than just the Duchy of Lancaster.
'He would settle for nothing less than the crown of England itself.'
But how to justify dethroning Richard and replacing him with Henry?
The neatest solution would be
to show that Richard had never been true king by hereditary right anyway,
but that Henry was.
Conveniently, a story to this effect
was an article of faith in the House of Lancaster.
Henry and Richard were both descended from King Henry III.
Richard from the eldest son Edward who'd succeeded as King Edward I,
and Henry from the second son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster
surnamed Crouchback.
According to the story, however, Crouchback was really the eldest son,
but he'd been shunted aside in favour of Edward
on account of his supposed deformity.
If this story were true, it was the perfect solution for Henry.
So Henry referred the story to a specially convened panel of historians
and constitutional experts.
The panel was supposed to meet in secret
but then, as now constitutional experts are a garrulous lot,
and one of the panel, Adam of Usk,
recorded their deliberations in his chronicle here.
Like all good historians,
the panel went back to the sources, as Adam reports.
Unfortunately for Henry,
these unanimously confirmed that Edward was indeed the eldest son.
Eduardus Primogenitus Regis Henrici.
The Crouchback story was indeed too good to be true.
Henry would have to think again.
'Richard, for his part, put up a brief struggle,
'but, faced with the threat of force he abdicated his throne to God.
'For the first time since the conquest,
'the continuity of the legitimate succession
'had to be deliberately broken.
'Only one body could do that - Parliament.'
Henry moved quickly and a parliament was summoned
to meet here, in Westminster Hall.
The hall had been splendidly rebuilt by Richard
as a monument to his own glory,
but now it was to witness his final humiliation.
First, the terms of the king's abdication were read out.
Then followed a long list of the charges against him.
Finally, he was declared dethroned and deposed
and his subjects renounced their allegiance.
All this had taken place in Richard's absence.
'The royal throne, under its great canopy of cloth of gold, had remained empty.
'But now, Henry, in a theatrical gesture worthy of Richard himself,
'moved to lay claim to that vacant throne.'
He descended, he said
of the true royal blood of good King Henry III.
Thanks to the help of God and his friends
he'd been able to reclaim that right,
and, in so doing, he'd saved the realm from ruin
by the bad government of his predecessor Richard.
Put like that, Henry's claim sounds logical and convincing.
In fact, it was a mere ragbag,
for, in reality, he had only a single compelling claim -
he was the man of the hour.
'In 12 weeks, Henry Bolingbroke had transformed himself
'from a landless exile to Henry IV, king of England.
'But, to prove that he was more than a usurper,
'he needed God's blessing as well as Parliament's.
'So, at his coronation
'Henry was anointed
'with an opportunely rediscovered vial of holy oil,
'reputedly given to Thomas Becket by the Virgin Mary.
'Divine oil would surely wash away the sins of his past.
'But Henry was about to commit the greatest sin of all.
'Richard may have been deposed by law before Parliament
'but he was still an anointed monarch.
'However, Henry would have no security so long as Richard lived,
'so Henry decided to kill the former king.
'But secretly, and without leaving marks on the body.
'Richard was left, slowly to starve to death in Pontefract Castle.'
(Door slams)
'Edward II, of course, had been murdered even more nastily,
'but none of the blame attached to his successor, Edward III.
'In 1399, however, the king had indeed murdered his predecessor king.
'The taboo was broken.
'What was there to stop others doing the same to Henry or his descendants?
'Only a year after Henry's coronation, in 1400
'the Welsh rose up against English rule.'
But the greatest threat to Henry came from within England
and from the family which had been his own strongest supporters.
The Percys, whose head was the Earl of Northumberland
were the most powerful family in the north of England,
with vast estates, strong castles and a multitude of armed followers.
They had been the first to back Henry, in 1399,
and it was their support which had carried him to victory.
But, having made Henry king, why should the Percys stop there?
Especially as Henry refused to behave as an obedient puppet.
Perhaps they could do even better by backing another claimant.
Perhaps a Percy could become king himself.
Henry recognised the threat and did his best to conciliate them
but in 1403, he learned that Hotspur,
the son and heir of the Earl of Northumberland
had joined the Welsh rebels and was invading England.
'Hotspur rode south to join up with the Welsh.
'On 21st July 1403, the joint army arrived just outside Shrewsbury.
'From here, Hotspur sent a defiant message to Henry,
'challenging his right to the throne.'
(Shouting and horses neighing)
'Henry too was eager for a fight to the finish.
'The sides were evenly matched
'and the battle raged from midday to nightfall.
'The hardest fighting was around the king and Hotspur.
'In the end, it was a personal battle between the two men.
'Henry was victorious.'
(Battle cries)
About 1,600 men were killed in the battle.
Hotspur's own body was taken to Shrewsbury,
where, as the corpse of a traitor, it was quartered.
But the low-ranking slain of both sides were buried on the spot, in a mass grave.
In commemoration the site was renamed Battlefield
and this church, complete with an armed statue of Henry IV,
was built as a monument to his victory.
'But Henry's victory brought him no security,
'for no sooner had he cut down one enemy than another arose.'
Moreover, the king himself, doggedly though he fought,
harboured private doubts.
And if Henry doubted,
why should anybody else believe the Lancastrian title?
'Henry IV's last years were a sad contrast to the promise of 1399.
'Gone was the vigorous crusading youth who'd won a country to his cause.
'Now he developed a disfiguring skin disease -
'perhaps leprosy, perhaps a psychosomatic acute dermatitis.
'Whatever the diagnosis,
'to many contemporaries the disease seemed proof of God's displeasure
'at the usurper king.'
In March 1413 Henry came to Westminster
with the hand of death already on him.
On the 20th, whilst praying at the Confessor's tomb
he had a seizure and was brought to this chamber here, in the abbot's lodging.
The crown was placed beside his pillow.
He seemed to cease breathing and his face was covered.
Thinking, like everybody else, that his father was already dead,
his son and heir Prince Henry took the crown.
Suddenly, the old king roused himself
and demanded of Henry by what right he took the crown,
since he himself had none to it.
Coolly, Henry replied,
"As you have kept it by the sword, so will I keep it whilst I have life."
It's a good story and is an insight into the prince's character.
It's shrewd, for, whatever doubts Henry IV might have harboured
about his right to the throne,
Henry V had none at all.
Prince Henry might not have been born to be king
but no heir to the throne has served a more distinguished apprenticeship.
He was created Prince of Wales immediately after his father's accession
and, though he was only in his early teens,
he quickly became his right-hand man.
He fought bravely against Hotspur at the Battle of Shrewsbury
and led the English to victory
in the hard-fought campaign against the Welsh.
But mere military glory wasn't enough for Prince Henry.
He wanted the reality of power as well.
His father was disfigured, diseased
and hopelessly tainted by the usurpation.
Henry, in contrast,
was the great white hope for his father's enemies as well as for his friends.
'Henry V's first task was to unite the fractured realm
'that his father had bequeathed to him.
'As the son of a usurper, Henry knew, from personal experience,
'the importance of letting bygones be bygones.
'So Henry pardoned his father's enemies and Richard's supporters.
'He even restored the Percys.
'By and large, the policy paid off
'and former bitter enemies became Henry's loyal lieutenants.
'Only one thing remained.'
Henry's smartest move was to make his peace
with the unquiet ghost of Richard II.
Henry IV had accorded Richard the dignity of a public funeral
but he'd refused him burial here in the abbey.
The result was that Richard's memory continued to plague his successor.
Miracles took place at his modest tomb.
His name was constantly invoked to justify rebellion.
Many refused to believe that he was dead at all.
So when Henry V became king
he moved to tackle the problem with his characteristic decisiveness
and, in December 1413
only eight months after his own coronation
Richard's body was brought to Westminster Abbey
in a magnificent procession
and reburied amongst his fellow kings,
here, in the tomb which Richard had commissioned for himself.
The stain of 1399 was wiped out
and Henry was able to benefit from the usurpation
without incurring the stigma or the bad conscience of his father.
'Having settled domestic politics,
'Henry was able to turn his attention
'to the project that would dominate his reign -
'the War of Conquest with France.
'Henry needed war.
'The reign of the peace-loving Richard II
'had shown that the English war monarchy of the Edwards
'was ungovernable in peace.
'Better that the English nobles should fight the French
'than each other or their king.
'But Henry's claim to France was also, for this intensely religious man,
'an article of faith.'
For Henry, the war was essentially about justice.
From his ancestor Henry II,
he'd inherited claims to the whole of the Angevin empire,
of Normandy, Anjou and of Aquitaine.
Whilst from his other ancestress Isabella of France
the Queen of Edward II
he claimed the throne of France itself.
Only let these claims be conceded, Henry announced,
and there would be no war.
'From the French point of view, this was an outrageous demand and they refused.
'Denied his legitimate claim, Henry's conscience was now clear.
'The French had refused peace with justice,
'so the god of battles must decide.
'Henry set sail for France on 11th August 1415.
'His first campaign is the stuff of legend and drama.
'"For Harry, England and St George!"'
'This was the battle cry that Shakespeare gave the English soldiers
'on the field at Agincourt.
'Here, Henry showed himself everything that an English king should be -
'resolute, heroic and a born leader of men.
'The English soldiers were far outnumbered by the French,
'perhaps by three to one,
'but, fired up with loyalty to their king and country,
'they won an astounding victory.
'It seemed proof positive that Henry V was God's chosen king.
'It was also proof that Henry's war policy could work.
'Within two years Henry was back. This time his aim was conquest.
'The English army swept through Normandy,
'systematically besieging and capturing the greatest cities -
'Caen, Falaise and Rouen.
'But the key to France was Paris.
'Rather than risk reuniting the French by attacking the capital,
'Henry, who was a subtle politician as well as a dashing general,
'decided to exploit the profound divisions within the French court.
'He made, apparently, enormous concessions.
'He would no longer claim Western France as heir of Henry II.
'The present king of France could even keep his title.
'The ploy worked.
'By a treaty, signed here at Troyes, Henry seemed to have won the prize
'that had eluded even Edward III.'
By the terms of the treaty,
Henry was recognised as the legitimate heir
of the present king of France, Charles VI,
whose daughter Catherine he married a few days later.
In other words, Henry was seeking to apply in France
that same model of traditional kingship
which had served him so well in England.
He would rule France not as a conqueror but as a legitimate king.
'And above all, he promised he would bring peace with justice.
'On 1st December 1420
'Henry entered Paris in triumph as heir and regent of France.
'He was warmly received and the French Parliament ratified the Treaty of Troyes.
'It remained, it seemed only to mop up opposition.
'But suddenly, at the age of only 35,
'Henry caught dysentery and died.
'In only nine years, Henry V had reunited England and taken France
'and he'd done it all as a consciously English king,
'speaking and writing English, even for official documents.
'For the first time since the Norman conquest,
'England was a nation-state once more.'
This is the upper storey of the splendid funerary chapel of King Henry V.
The king's image below was originally covered in silver gilt,
while amongst the rich sculptures are two coronation scenes
representing Henry's two kingdoms - of England and of France.
But what really impresses is the sheer scale
and the magnificent location of the chapel
directly at the east end of the abbey.
Here, they say, is the apogee of the medieval English monarchy
and the monument of the perfect medieval king.
The institution could scarcely go any higher.
Could it even survive at its present high-water mark?
Everything would depend on Henry's son,
the nine-month-old infant
who, in his cradle was heir of England and of France.
'On the 1st of September 1422,
'Henry V's infant son became the new king of England, as Henry VI.
'If this was not enough, two months later his French grandfather died
'and Henry was also named king of France.
'The new king was a nine-month-old baby,
'but the polished machinery of English government adapted easily.
'The nobility made arrangements for the cradle king.
'The government of England and France
'was divided between the king's two uncles,
'each assisted by a council.
'This enabled the English to hold on to the conquests of Henry V,
'but French resistance couldn't be suppressed.
'In 1431, Henry's council decided
'that the time had come for the 10-year-old Henry VI
'to take possession of his second kingdom of France.
'Henry was taken to Notre Dame, where he was crowned
'but he stayed in Paris for less than a month.
'This was his first and last visit to France.
'Henry VI was very different from his father.
'Whilst Henry V had spent over half his reign fighting in France,
'Henry VI showed no interest in war at all.
'Instead, his passion was religion.'
How a king wishes to be remembered takes us to the heart of his kingship,
and this is the chosen monument of Henry VI,
son of the warrior king, Henry V.
But it's not a battlefield or a great castle.
Instead, it's the chapel of Eton College.
Nowadays, we think of Eton as perhaps the most famous school in the world
but the school was incidental to Henry's purpose.
Instead, he was interested in size.
He wanted this chapel to become
one of the biggest, richest and holiest churches in England,
as long as Lincoln Cathedral, as wide as York Minster
his very own Westminster Abbey.
'But, thanks to constant changes of plan,
'which led him to demolish parts already built and start again,
'only this fragment was finished at the time of his fall from power.
'It's an apt symbol of a reign that began with high hopes
'and a magnificent inheritance
'and ended in failure and disaster.
'But not merely was Henry unwarlike -
'once he took government into his own hands
'he pursued an active peace policy.
'He was even prepared to surrender parts of his father's conquests.
'This was hugely unpopular with the English nobles,
'who'd done so well out of the war.
'The most dramatic signal of Henry's intentions came when, at the age of 22,
'he married a French princess, Margaret of Anjou.
'Margaret was the symbol of the controversial peace policy with France.'
After she came to England and married her impressionable husband,
Margaret became more than the symbol of the peace party.
She became its most effective partisan,
and the English always distrusted politically active queens,
especially when they were foreign
and especially when, like Margaret,
they looked suspiciously like a French secret agent
at the heart of the English court.
'Soon, the worst English fears had come true.
'By the time Henry was 30, he'd lost everything that his father had won.
'Only Calais remained in English hands.
'Thanks to Henry, 100 years of war with France had yielded nothing.
'The prestige and the glory of the English crown were destroyed.'
But most lethal for the monarchy
was the fact that the war like most unsuccessful wars
had been marked by vicious quarrels between the English generals.
The most dangerous was the feud between Richard, Duke of York
and Edmund, Duke of Somerset.
Both were members of the royal house,
whilst York, arguably, had a better claim to the throne than Henry himself.
In the aftermath of defeat
their quarrel had translated itself into English domestic politics
when Somerset became Henry's chief minister
whilst York set himself up as the leader of an increasingly disloyal opposition.
'In 1450, the antagonism turned into open conflict
'and a popular revolt temporarily seized control of London.
'Two years later, York himself took up arms,
'claiming he was not rebelling against the king,
'but against his evil councillors, principally Somerset.
'York won little support
'and surrendered when Henry promised to dismiss Somerset.
'But the king broke his word
'and Somerset and his ally Queen Margaret seemed impregnable.
'Then suddenly, Henry had a fit of madness.'
Three months after the onset of Henry's illness,
his wife Queen Margaret gave birth to a son.
After nearly eight years of childless marriage
the future of the Lancastrian dynasty seemed secure
but Henry acknowledged his son only with a flickering of his eyes
and he could not even raise a finger in the government of his kingdom.
But without a king as a final decision maker
England was paralysed.
'Who would act in his name?
'Queen Margaret,
'her position immeasurably strengthened as mother of the heir
'put herself forward as Queen Regent.
'But Margaret commanded little support amongst the lords,
'who instead nominated the Duke of York
'the man that Margaret most feared,
'as protector and defender of England.
'And Margaret had good reason to fear York.
'Based in his stronghold at Ludlow,
'York was head of the most powerful family in the country
'and, as a relation of the king, he also had a blood claim to the throne.
'Events of the usurpation 50 years previously were about to be replayed.
'In 1399, Henry's grandfather Henry IV had shown that a blood claim and force
'were all that were needed to seize the crown.
'Now York would turn the tables on the house of Lancaster.'
In 1460, his followers defeated and captured the king,
and in the ensuing Parliament, York formally laid claim to the throne.
The claim was greeted with a shocked silence
because no one not even York's followers
wanted a repetition of the usurpation of 1399.
So York was forced to accept a compromise.
Henry would remain king whilst he lived
and York would succeed only after his death.
But everybody reckoned without Queen Margaret's ferocious mother love.
'Margaret refused to see her son's inheritance forfeit
'and broke the truce when she led her forces against York.
'Margaret was victorious, York killed in battle
'and his head displayed on the walls of York.
'But the feeble-witted Henry VI was held in widespread contempt.
'Margaret was unpopular, especially in the south,
'where London shut its gates against her.
'This gave York's son Edward
'the opportunity to avenge his father's death.
'He seized the throne and ruled as King Edward IV.
'Henry was captured and Margaret fled into exile.
'It took Edward three years to put down the Lancastrians of the north
'but then his own followers started to quarrel over the spoils.
'Even Edward's brother turned against him.
'These divisions within the House of York
'handed the House of Lancaster a last chance.
'lts hopes were pinned on one young man.
'In 1471, Henry VI and Margaret's son, Edward of Lancaster
'was 18, energetic and courageous.
'He'd inherited his grandfather's drive and his mother's will.
'Was he to be another Henry V
'and would he revive the Lancastrian cause?'
The two Edwards - the Lancastrian prince and the Yorkist king -
met here, at Tewkesbury.
The result was a total and, it turned out, final defeat
for the House of Lancaster.
Prince Edward was butchered on the battlefield and buried here in the abbey.
A fortnight later, his father, King Henry VI,
was dispatched with a heavy blow to the back of the head in the Tower.
Even 400 years later, the hair could still be seen matted to the skull.
With their deaths the male line of the House of Lancaster
which had promised to revive the monarchy, was extinguished.
The House of York made similar even more extravagant promises.
Would it be able to keep them
or was it more than a matter of mere personalities?
Would the institutions of English kingship,
fashioned under the Anglo Saxons
and perfected under the Henrys and the Edwards, have to change as well?
Was England on the threshold not merely of a new dynasty
but of a new monarchy?