The Cult of Henry VI: Medieval Memory, Sainthood and Kingship

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Contemporaries widely regarded the reign of Henry VI as a disaster. Subject to mental debilitation, overpowered by the French, and twice deposed, he died a prisoner in the Tower. Yet despite his woeful record as a ruler, for a time he became the most popular saint in late medieval England; such veneration of the worst king in living memory is both greatly surprising and anomalous. The large number of pilgrim badges bearing his image is the only collection to come close to that of St Thomas Becket. A contemporary collection of miracle stories (miracula) records 166 accounts of people invoking the name of the dead king to help with their problems. This project will examine the cult of Henry VI and the reasons why his popularity rose so dramatically amongst all strata of society after his death in 1471. In doing so it seeks to examine both the nature of late medieval religiosity and its relationship with notions of kingship. There is ample scholarship on his religiously focused life and his abjectly poor record as king yet, comparatively, very little work has been devoted to Henry's cult. Moreover, those scholars who have written on the subject have explained it narrowly in terms of the patronage of Henry Tudor came to power in 1485. The rise of Henry's cult is a much more intriguing and layered phenomenon than has been acknowledged.