The Coronation of King Henry V

The Coronation of King Henry V

“There was a great fall of snow on this day.
Everybody was surprised by the severity of the weather.
Some people connected the climatic harshness, with the fate that awaited them at the hands of the new king”
~ Thomas Walsingham.

The young Prince Henry was a lusty young pup, who enjoyed the company of women, as much as he did a drink…or ten.
The man who would one day become the legendary Henry V, was notorious in his youth for carousing and fornicating.

Such was Henry’s reputation that Shakespeare wrote his famous play about the Monarch.
Shakespeare’s fictionalised version of the prince as a drunken layabout, who idles away his time in the company of other drunken layabouts, is not far from reality.

Henry’s young life was spent mostly drunk, and indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, with a bevvy of obliging beauties.
There were plenty of people around him to get drunk with, and that suited the thirsty young prince, down to the ground.
Mostly hungover, or drinking to curb the effects of a hangover, all that dramatically changed when he became king on the 21st March 1413.

Henry was crowned as King Henry V on 9th April 1413, at Westminster Abbey.
Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Arundel, conducted the ceremony ~ the same archbishop who had crowned the king’s father in 1399.
The Coronation was held on Passion Sunday, so the banquet afterwards held in Westminster Hall was with a Lenten fare.
All the dishes were of fish, rather than meat.

The coronation was marked by a terrible snowstorm, but people were undecided as to whether it was a good omen, or a bad one.
Many worried that Henry would carry on being the drunken lout of his youth ~ but becoming king transformed Henry in quite unexpected ways.

Henry became a devout Christian, a brilliant military commander and a loyal husband to his French wife, Queen Catherine de Valois.
In 1422, Henry died suddenly at the age of thirty-five from dysentery.
He is now seen as one of the greatest kings ever to sit on the English throne.

Not bad considering he spent a large part of his youth, so drunk he could hardly stand up…….

? Portrait of Henry V by Benjamin Burnell c.1820
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