2 - Henry V’s Funeral Achievements in the Context of Westminster Abbey : ‘Trophies of this Warlike Prince’

Summary

This chapter examines evidence for the provenance of the helm, shield, saddle and sword in the collections of Westminster Abbey which have collectively been described, not necessarily correctly, as the funeral achievements associated with Henry V’s exequies at Westminster Abbey on 7 November 1422. It explores the history of the location of these objects within the abbey and challenges the ‘creeping association’ which deepened with every new museum label, thereby perpetuating the myth that these objects were used by Henry V himself, even perhaps at the battle of Agincourt (Fig. 2.1).

The earliest likely date on which any of these objects could have arrived at Westminster Abbey is the day of Henry’s funeral itself. As Chris Given-Wilson discusses in more detail elsewhere in this volume, Henry V died in France on 31 August 1422 and his body was subsequently transported to London. Contemporary accounts explain how the king’s chariot, which carried his coffin and effigy, was drawn by horses up the Nave of the Abbey as far as the Choir. The coffin was then removed from the chariot and laid on a hearse in the Presbytery (now known as the ‘Sanctuary’). Subsequently, mounted knights were led up to the high altar, where the weapons and arms they bore were offered up. One contemporary account in the records of the Brewers’ Company described how ‘iiij stedes trapped rially, with a knight full and hool armed with the kings cote armour and a croune upon his hede sitting upon one of the said stedes rially’ progressed to the altar, where the knight was despoiled of his arms.

In 1914, the antiquarian scholar William Henry St John Hope published accounts and payments for Henry V’s funeral and tentatively identified the objects in the Abbey’s collection as Henry V’s funeral achievements. A contemporary review, responding to the pair of lectures delivered by Hope to the Society of Antiquaries, noted that ‘these interesting objects … were exhibited by kind leave of the Dean of Westminster Bishop Ryle’.