3 - Henry V and the Scots: A Study in Failure

Summary

THE title of this article rather gives away one of its chief conclusions: Henry V (1413–22) made a mess of relations with Scotland. Some of the blame for this failure can certainly be laid at the feet of the king himself. His preconceptions and personality traits did not equip him well to deal with what might fairly be called an English governmental problem with the Scots throughout the later middle ages. But the reasons for Henry's difficulties are far more than just personal. He is not, after all, generally thought to have been a stupid man. He might be expected to have found a way of coming to grips with the challenges posed by the Scots. That he did not sheds interesting light not just on the king himself, but on the constraints under which his foreign policy, if such a term is appropriate for medieval rulers, had to be conducted. It is fitting that an article in tribute to Sandy Grant explores such themes. The honourand has already shown, in his discussion of Richard III (1483–85) and Scotland, the multiplicity of insights that can arise from examining English rulers in the light of their Scottish policies. Dealing with a king who has received much scholarly (and even more popular) attention, Sandy showed that the Scottish angle could provide abundant illumination on the workings of Anglo-Scottish relations, naturally; on Richard III himself, both the king and the person; and on broader contexts in which we can seek to understand interactions between states in the later middle ages. I hope that the current article makes its own contribution to these themes.

Little scholarly attention has been paid to Henry V's relations with Scotland. On one level this is quite understandable. Given that Henry, and most other English kings, attached scant weight to the Scots, it is not surprising that his-torians primarily interested in English government and politics should do like-wise. So we find, for instance, that the collection of essays on Henry's kingship edited by Gerald Harriss gives little place to Scotland, which does not merit a mention in Maurice Keen's chapter on diplomacy. The Scottish angle also impinges tellingly little in Keith Dockray's volume on the king, an overtly his-toriographical work. The Scots do, of course, feature more than this in many other approaches to Henry's reign.