Henry V (16 September 1386 – 31 August 1422), also called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine from 1413 until his death in 1422. His victory at Agincourt in 1415 and his conquest of Normandy gave England the upper hand in the Hundred Years' War and led, by the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, to his recognition as heir and regent of France. This was the high-water mark of the English cause in the war. Celebrated in William Shakespeare's Henriad as one of the greatest warrior-kings of medieval England, Henry was also a forceful ruler at home, restoring public order, working closely with Parliament, and enforcing a strict religious orthodoxy.
Henry of Monmouth was the eldest son of Henry IV, and became heir apparent and Prince of Wales after his father seized the throne from Richard II in 1399. During his father's reign, he gained military experience in Wales against the Glyndŵr rebellion and in fighting the powerful Percy family of Northumberland, and played an important part at the Battle of Shrewsbury when only 16. As his father's health declined, Henry took an increasingly central role in government, though disagreements between the two men led to political conflict. Henry succeeded to the throne after his father's death in March 1413 and revived the long-standing English claim to the French throne.
In 1415, Henry renewed active warfare with France, opening the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War (1415–1453). His first campaign successfully besieged Harfleur and won a celebrated victory at Agincourt, which strengthened his position in England and lent weight to his claim. A second expedition from 1417 set out to conquer Normandy, recovering for the English crown a duchy lost two centuries earlier; by 1419, his army stood before Paris. Exploiting the civil war that divided France, and allying with Burgundy after the murder of Duke John the Fearless, Henry was able to impose the Treaty of Troyes on Charles VI. The treaty made him regent and heir to the French throne, disinherited the king's own son, the Dauphin Charles, and provided for his marriage to Charles's daughter Catherine of Valois. It envisaged a union of the two crowns in Henry's person on Charles's death. But Henry died in August 1422, seven weeks before the ailing Charles VI, and was succeeded by his only son, the infant Henry VI.
At home, Henry restored order after the turbulence of his father's reign, strengthening the enforcement of justice and working closely with Parliament. He promoted the use of English in royal government and upheld a strict orthodoxy, crushing the Lollard movement and helping to end the Western Schism at the Council of Constance. His later fame has rested above all on his military prowess, on which there has been near-unanimity since his own day. Contemporary French and Burgundian verdicts ranged from admiration for his discipline and prudence to portrayals of a vainglorious tyrant. Modern scholars are divided in their assessments, some condemning Henry as a warmonger whose ambition bankrupted his realm, others reckoning him the greatest of England's kings. Much of the debate turns on his French conquests and how far he was to blame for their loss under his son. His biographer Christopher Allmand concludes that Henry's gifts as a ruler showed most clearly not on the battlefield but in the governing of England, and that the fuller the reckoning of his reign, the higher he stands.
Henry was born on 16 September 1386 in the tower above the gatehouse of Monmouth Castle in Monmouthshire, and so was sometimes called Henry of Monmouth. He was the eldest son of Henry of Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, and Mary de Bohun. Both his parents were young: Bolingbroke was nineteen when his son was born, and Mary, married to him as a child in 1380, was sixteen or seventeen. Henry's grandfather was John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III, and his father was a cousin of the reigning king, Richard II. Because he was not close to the line of succession, Henry's birth was not formally recorded, and for many years it was disputed whether he had been born in 1386 or 1387. Modern scholarship finds a birthday of 16 September 1386 most likely.
Little is known of Henry's early years. As an infant he was looked after by a nurse, Joan Waring; Henry remembered her after he came to the throne, granting her an annuity of £20 a year for life in 1415. He spent his early childhood with his mother Mary until she died in 1394 aged only twenty-four, having already borne six children. With his father often abroad, he then passed into the care of his maternal grandmother, Joan, Countess of Hereford, at Bytham Castle in Lincolnshire, perhaps under a governess, Mary Hervy. He and his brothers also spent time on their father's estates, among them Kenilworth Castle, for which Henry developed a lasting affection.
In 1398 a quarrel between Henry's father and the Duke of Norfolk led Richard to order a trial by combat, only for the king to banish both men before the duel could be fought. With Bolingbroke in exile, Richard took the boy into his own household and treated him generously, granting him an income from the royal revenues after his grandfather John of Gaunt died in early 1399. In May of the same year, Richard took Henry on an expedition to Ireland – the prince's first experience of campaigning, in the course of which Richard knighted him – perhaps also keeping him as surety for his exiled father's conduct. Bolingbroke nevertheless seized on the king's absence to invade England in the Lancastrian usurpation; Richard had Henry confined at Trim Castle in County Meath while hurrying back to England.
Richard was ultimately deposed by the newly styled Henry IV, who recalled his son from Ireland as heir apparent in October 1399. To shore up his untested dynasty, Henry IV invested his son with a wider range of titles than any previous heir to the English throne, including Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester, Duke of Aquitaine, and Duke of Lancaster, and he was the first heir to the throne known to have been formally invested as Prince of Wales in Parliament, which acknowledged him as his father's successor.
Henry's formal schooling appears to have begun around the age of eight, when books of Latin grammar were bought for him. He may have been tutored by his uncle Henry Beaufort, Chancellor of the University of Oxford and later Bishop of Winchester. The old claim that he went on to study under Beaufort at Queen's College, Oxford is rejected by modern scholarship, both because he would have been too young, and because his father's household accounts place him elsewhere. He grew into a relatively bookish king, with a good command of Latin and fluency in French, and he learned to read and write English, the first English monarch literate in the vernacular. He was also musical: harp strings were bought for him as a boy, and he may have composed two pieces for the royal chapel.
Early military career and role in government
From 1400 to 1404 Henry served as High Sheriff of Cornwall. In April 1403, he was additionally made royal lieutenant for the whole of Wales, a military appointment during which he led his own forces against Owain Glyndŵr.
At the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403, the sixteen-year-old Henry fought alongside his father against the rebel forces of Henry "Hotspur" Percy. During the engagement he was struck in the face by an arrow that penetrated six inches into his skull, lodging near the left cheekbone and narrowly missing vital arteries and the brain. Henry was given the best available care: royal physician John Bradmore treated the wound with honey, which acted as a natural antiseptic, and designed a specialised mechanical screw-tool to extract the arrowhead without causing further damage. Bradmore later recorded the procedure in his Latin manuscript Philomena, describing how he widened the wound, inserted the instrument, and gradually withdrew the arrowhead while flushing it with white wine to prevent infection. The operation was successful but may have left Henry with permanent facial scars.