There is something completely majestic about Henry V's tomb in Westminster Abbey. It kind of draws you in as you approach it, dark and aged and suitably sombre when viewed from the ground. What you don't see from there is Henry's effigy, lying on the top, out of sight.
In fact Henry's effigy alone has had a colourful past. Henry wrote his will in Southampton on 24 July 1415, in anticipation of his voyage to France for the battle of Agincourt. A popular and intelligent ruler, Henry embarked on a number of military campaigns, ruling decisively and crushing conspiracies against his power, such as the Southampton Plot of the same year. The port's Bargate, or medieval entrance, was the scene of vicious beheadings, as the king marched through Westgate towards his waiting ship.
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| Visiting the tomb of Henry V, (c) Jo Romero |
The king died on 31 August 1422, from an illness contracted while on military campaign in France, that left him fragile and emaciated. Just 34 years of age, the king breathed his last at the Castle of Bois de Vincennes near Paris and his body was brought back to England. Originally, an effigy of the king was placed on top of the coffin which had been draped with crimson silk. The effigy was made with boiled leather and dressed in an ermine-lined purple robe. Painted to represent Henry in life, it also bore in its hands a sceptre and orb and wore a crown. Prayers were said at each place the king's body stopped, as per medieval tradition, on its way through France and into London.
After resting at St Paul's, the funeral procession made its way to the king's final resting place of Westminster Abbey, accompanied by guards, nobles and the queen. One account states that five hundred men at arms walked with the coffin as it was drawn on a carriage by six horses, along with another three hundred mourners carrying torches and the king's banners, including a flag of St George.
Henry's tomb was finished in the first year of his son, Henry VI's reign, the permanent effigy of the king said to have been finished with brass and embroidery. Henry's widow, Katherine, had also ordered that a silver image of the king should be placed on the tomb, but this was already missing by the reign of Henry VIII. However a visitor in the early nineteenth century noted that the original oak effigy was by now headless, with the orb, sceptre, crown (with its head) all missing. It's believed that part of the effigy and its decorations were stolen, probably more as souvenirs than for their monetary value, by visitors before the late sixteenth century.
Near to Henry's tomb is that of his wife, Katherine of Valois. Katherine, the daughter of the French King Charles VI, was married to Henry in 1420 as part of negotiations to assert the king's power in France. Following Henry's death, she married Owen Tudor and they had two sons who birthed the Tudor era; Edmund Tudor and Jasper Tudor. Edmund Tudor later married Margaret Beaufort and were the parents of the future Henry VII; while Jasper played a crucial role in ensuring the young Henry Tudor's survival in the Wars of the Roses and supporting his later claim to the Crown.
Katherine died at Bermondsey Abbey in 1437, leaving Owen a widower. Owen was later executed in Hereford for his part in the Wars of the Roses, but his wife was interred in the fifteenth-century Lady Chapel of Westminster. Later, when Henry VII ordered building work to be done in construction his new chapel there, her body was removed and placed in a chest near Henry V's tomb, where it could be seen by visitors, who recorded that Katherine's corpse could be seen with the 'bones being firmly united, and thinly clothed with flesh'. There she remained throughout the Tudor and early Stuart periods, and it is even more unnerving that John Skelton wrote a poem during the sixteenth century praising her as queen that was inscribed onto a plaque and placed next to her remains. It is certainly strange that the woman who birthed the Tudors was not given the dignity of a permanent burial by her grandson, who owed his position to her. In 1669 the diarist Samuel Pepys was allowed, on a visit to the abbey, to lift the upper part of Katherine's body in his hands and kiss her on the mouth. 'That I did kiss a queen', wrote Pepys proudly, 'and that this was my birthday, thirty-six years old, that I did first kiss a queen'.
Eventually, in 1778 she was temporarily reburied, but her permanent burial was ordered by Queen Victoria in 1878 in Henry V's chantry, near to where her husband is buried. The helmet and saddle that once graced Henry V's tomb is (luckily) now safely deposited within Westminster Abbey and can be seen today if you take a ticket to view the upper gallery - definitely worth a visit. There, you can also see Katherine's wooden funerary effigy in a glass case with other medieval and later effigies alongside. Henry, by the way, received a new head in 1971 although obviously it cannot be used as an indication of his appearance.
The desecration of Henry's and Katherine's tombs make uncomfortable reading, not only for the respect that should be given to human remains but also the importance of protecting material items of cultural or historical significance. More heart-breaking is the realisation that different motivating factors led to the abuse of these symbolic and spiritual places. Henry, regarded a heroic warrior and popular ruler in his time, attracted thieves and souvenir hunters of the later medieval and particularly Tudor ages. For them, Henry was a role model for Tudor kingship, and historians have often commented on the king's own legendary effect on Henry VIII. The tomb was removed of its silver, brass and other ornaments - even the king's oak-carved head - most likely in excited fervour for what he represented as England's ruler. For Katherine however, she lay above ground for four centuries as an afterthought. Exhumed to make way for building works and placed in a chest where her remains were to be seen, touched, held and even kissed by visitors to the abbey is shocking. For Katherine, who lived her last years in an abbey and was a dignified and by all accounts pious queen, it represents a physical abuse of her form, along with a disregard for the highly spiritual and sacred medieval attitudes towards death and burial. It is even more shocking that this was allowed to take place under Tudor rule, the monarchs who owed their very existence to Katherine.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
You might also like Where was the trial for the Southampton Conspiracy held?, Beatrix of Portugal, Countess of Arundel and The Kings of the Wars of the Roses.
Notes and sources
https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/royals/henry-v-and-catherine-de-valois/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1669/02/23/
Bradley, E.W. The History and Antiquities of the Abbey Church of St Peter, Westminster. Volume 2, London. 1823
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