What a King Should Know Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings

Somewhere out there in the 1420s,

a ship laden with war booty made its way slowly to the shore.

The great chests were unloaded carefully

and taken by cartload to London under heavy guard.

But these were no ordinary spoils of war.

This wasn't silver or gold, or even prisoners for ransom.

This was the physical theft of a nation's culture and history.

What was being landed was a cargo of manuscripts -

the greatest literary treasures of the French royal family

were now on their way to the English court.

After 80 years of war, England was victorious

and at the very heart of Europe.

We still have these captured manuscripts.

They are some of the most wonderful creations

of the late medieval period,

and they show England's ascendancy in Europe

during the Hundred Years War.

They also show a period of crisis from the 1320s to the 1450s,

when English kings had to triumph over rebellion and plague

to become worthy of the name "king".

For this series, I've been given unrivalled access

to the crown jewels of illumination -

the Royal Manuscript Collection at the British Library.

These books are miraculous survivors,

which few people have ever seen - apart from monarchs.

They were custom-made for kings, they're about kings,

and they were read by kings.

I'll be exploring the world which created these manuscripts.

I'll be going to the places where they were made.

And discovering what they reveal about the centuries of conflict

when England was forged.

It's the story of monarchy which spans six centuries,

from the Anglo-Saxons to the Tudors.

In this episode, I'm going to reveal how manuscripts were used

to create a model of kingship that was boldly English

and epitomised by the soldier king, Henry V.

I'm seeing where these captured French manuscripts ended up.

It's the first time I have seen the spoils

of the French royal library and I can't wait to set eyes on them.

Many of the French books became the personal property

of the English monarchy and have stayed locked away for centuries

in the Royal Manuscript Collection.

George II gave the collection to the nation in 1757

and now they are housed deep in the vaults of the British Library.

-Wow, it's a massive manuscript.

-Yes, it's quite heavy.

-Yes.

There's one in particular,

with an incredible history, that I've been dying to see.

This is the Grandes Chroniques de France -

the history of the French nation, a stupendous manuscript

written in the 1330s with over 400 images

detailing the great deeds of the French kings.

There are pictures of everything a king should be -

supreme military commander, law-maker,

dynast, and arbiter of the nation's taste.

It's a work that deliberately tells us

that only French kings are fit to rule.

In contrast, these shelves also contain

the history of the kings of England

by the chronicler Peter of Langtoft,

written just a few years earlier,

at the end of the reign of Edward II.

Like the Grandes Chroniques, albeit in its own small way,

it also tries to show everything a king should be.

Here we see real depictions of strong kings.

We have, at the front, King Arthur.

He's wearing a golden crown,

he has his shield emblazoned with an image of the Virgin,

and at his side, the famous sword Excalibur.

We can also see, beneath his feet,

crowns representing the kingdoms that he was the king of.

And as we go on, another strong English king,

Richard the Lionheart, also holding a sword - Excalibur again, in fact.

And as we go on, we find Edward I - hammer of the Scots and the Welsh.

But the last entry tells us something more

about the state of the English monarchy.

Something's happened to the manuscript -

it's where the official bit of praise would have been,

honouring the king, this has been scrubbed out,

it's damaged the manuscript quite badly, and in its place

we have some of the most abject words ascribed to an English king -

"Home m'appele roys abatu, e tout le secle me va gabaunt."

I'm going to discover what this extraordinary footnote is about

and what it meant for the English crown.

It's 1322 and the English monarchy has been defeated,

first in Scotland and then on the Welsh border.

Even worse is the loss of English lands in France.

But the most shocking event, at the heart of it all,

is that the English King, Edward II, has been deposed

and locked up here at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire

where he fears he will be murdered.

Never before has a divinely anointed reigning king

been knocked from power in this way.

These are dangerous times for the English monarchy.

This is the very cell where Edward II was incarcerated.

I can just imagine him in here, penning the poignant lines

we find at the end of Peter of Langtoft's chronicles

of the great deeds of the English kings.

They provide a unique window into his soul.

"Home m'appele roys abatu, e tout le secle me va gabaunt."

"I am called the tumbledown king, and all the world mocks me."

Whether Edward II wrote those lines himself

or whether they were added by his enemies for propaganda purposes,

it's clear that the governance of England is broken

and the country is racked with crisis.

The running of the country has been hijacked by Sir Roger Mortimer,

the queen's lover, and his supporters.

And with the king incarcerated,

the young prince, who will become Edward III, faces a fearful future.

His task will be to rebuild the power

and reputation of the English monarchy, if he possibly can.

But how?

Long before Machiavelli, there were manuals for princes.

One survives in the British Library

that was given to the young Edward by a noble, Walter Milmete.

I'm looking here at a wonderful manuscript

made around 1327 for the king-to-be, Edward III.

It's called the Secretum Secretorum, a mirror for princes.

This work was thought in medieval times

to have been originally written for Alexander the Great by his tutor,

the philosopher Aristotle.

It contains everything that a prince would need to know

in order to be a good ruler and follow in the example

of someone as magnificent as Alexander the Great.

Everything from statecraft to history, medicine to astrology.

It emphasises things like Christian virtue,

chivalric or knightly values.

And there's also images instructing the young king

on how he should best govern,

so here we have an enthroned king receiving the advice of his peers -

we've got knights and clergymen bringing him advice.

For me, one of the most exciting things about seeing a book like this

is the thought that it's imparting knowledge to a king,

it's telling him information about things he needs to know about.

To think that the young Edward III, only a boy of 14,

might have turned these very pages.

It reveals an awful lot about the moment at which Edward III

is going to be taking on the throne.

If we look at this image here, we can see the messenger

that's holding the book can be identified as Edward III,

he's wearing his coat-of-arms on his buckle.

He's there in this position, between philosopher and great ruler,

absorbing the knowledge that's contained within this work.

It really feels like a living document,

we can see these pages remain unfinished,

they're still being painted in,

and there's images of warcraft, weaponry,

and over the page, we have this very early image of a cannon.

This was added some time after the book was originally written.

It's an important clue to the young king's future mindset.

As are the next pages, which feature archers.

Incomplete, but significant.

But there's definitely a darker side to this manuscript.

As much as it's clearly intended for the young king

and it shows his coat-of-arms throughout,

there are other coats-of-arms also depicted alongside.

Here, those of his uncles, and over the page,

that of his mother, Queen Isabella,

who, along with her lover, Roger Mortimer and these uncles,

were responsible for removing his father, Edward II, from the throne.

What this says to me is, it's a warning, really.

It's saying to the young Edward III,

"Be careful, these same people can depose you too."

I've come to meet Ian Mortimer,

who's a biographer of Edward III and other late medieval kings.

So what's the situation

that Edward III finds himself in at the beginning of his reign?

If you want an image of him, picture a 14-year-old boy on a throne

clad in all the clothes of state,

the crown, the sceptre, the orb,

really quite terrified about all the people around him.

The court is populated by his enemies,

he can't stop them elevating their friends.

He can't stop Roger Mortimer, for example, in 1328,

giving up Scotland in the shameful Treaty of Northampton.

And he wants to do something about that.

He wants to re-impose regal authority and dignity.

He wants to create a new vision of kingship.

How difficult is it to be a successful medieval king?

Being a medieval king is enormously difficult.

Your basic job spec, if you want to use that term,

is to be a good law-giver.

To be fair to all your leading men, all your lords, all your bishops.

You have to be strong militarily

and that is not just strong against the French or against the Scots,

you've got to be strong in keeping all the rebels under control.

But everything's going to fail if you aren't strong militarily.

If you allow the rebels to fight and if you're defeated by the French,

you are going to fail as a monarch.

But it seems Edward already had a plan.

He gathered together a band of young, loyal knights -

a band of brothers, if you like - men he felt he could trust.

They captured Mortimer and he was brought to London,

tried, and executed.

The truth was, Edward already had his own model of kingship in mind.

I've come to the ancient city of Winchester to see the artefact

that gives witness to Edward's plan.

This is the symbol of kingship

that the young Edward III could most relate to -

King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

This is a 13th-century table

made of English oak by his grandfather Edward I.

And it's the perfect model for the relationship

between the king and his noblemen.

King Arthur's depicted at the top

and there are 24 place settings around the edge,

and the fact it's a circle

means that there's no precedence. Every nobleman is equal.

This was certainly a model of kingship

that appealed to the noblemen at the time.

Coming out of the chaos of his father's reign,

this offered a sense of stability to everyone.

The symbolism of the table, with the wise king at the head

and all the nobles seated around him, without order of precedence,

was born of a collective wish that things genuinely could be this way.

The Arthurian model crops up continuously in this period,

and that's why we saw Arthur

at the head of Edwards II's lineage of kings.

Although nowadays we see him as a semi-mythological figure,

in medieval times, Arthur was thought to have been a real king

and the architect of the perfect polity,

in which wisdom is shared

and each of the participants are aware of their own responsibilities

to each other in chivalric, or knightly, virtue.

But for Edward III, this wasn't just a symbol of kingship,

he made it a reality.

He spent lavish amounts on feasting, jousting, and tournaments.

All of this was designed to bring the noblemen around him

and create a training ground for them.

But the underlying reason for this

was to avoid the errors of his father's reign

and keep potentially rebellious factions close to hand.

A really brutal victory over the Scots at Halidon Hill in 1333

and the consolidation of peace at home

shows that Edward's new discipline is working.

He is proving a tough and wise young king.

On the other side of the English Channel,

the French also have cause for concern.

Their own king has died childless and the new Valois line

that has taken the French throne

is aware that Edward III has a rival claim

through his mother, Isabella of France.

The battle for dominance in Europe

between those ancient rivals, England and France,

was now to be fought not only on the battlefields of France,

but also in the pages of heavily illuminated manuscripts.

That's why I'm returning to the Grandes Chroniques,

one of the captured French manuscripts.

It was made in the 1330s

and commissioned by the heir to the French throne, John de Valois.

It has one single-minded purpose -

to establish the new Valois dynasty as rightful kings of France

over the competing claims of Edward III.

If we look at the frontispiece,

here we see a gallery of monarchs

whose succession is determined not by blood,

but by the right to occupy the pedestal of kingship.

It's one of the most heavily illustrated

of all 14th-century manuscripts, and it also tells me

that the French, too, are recreating the chivalric ideal.

The book is festooned with images of French knights

following their king in battle -

enough to overpower any English pretensions to greatness.

To me, this whole work is a powerful piece of PR.

It can be used as a propaganda tool

and I can imagine it being brought out to impress visiting dignitaries.

It's possible that Edward himself was aware of this manuscript

and would have been very impressed by its magnificence.

Let's not forget, Edward sees his claim to the French throne as valid,

and this heritage should be his

by dynastic and legal right.

We think of England as very separate from France,

it wasn't for a very long time,

and in fact many kings of England had more affinity with France

and their domains in France than they had in England.

So this is very natural, looking to the continent.

The Channel is not...

that sort of blockade, it's not a barrier.

It's very much a conduit between the two countries.

So, is there a French equivalent

of the Arthurian myth across the Channel?

Well, the Arthurian myth has a huge appeal on both sides,

partly because of the subject matter -

it appeals to the nobility on both sides,

and this idea of the Round Table

and this sort of brotherhood that support the king

is very critical both to Edward and to his French counterparts.

So there's a domestic agenda in how it applies to the own country,

but there's also a competition as well between them

as to which, in a sense, is the real Arthur.

-Absolutely.

-You know, who is the equivalent.

The war of words over Edward's claim to the throne of France

simmers for years.

In the back of his mind, he knows that as king, he has the moral duty

in front of all his subjects to assert his dynastic rights.

He will never fully consolidate his power

over the nobles until he does so.

In 1337, a long-standing land dispute in Gascony

gives Edward his opportunity,

and a series of campaigns in France begins.

But it's nine years before Edward delivers his knockout blow.

It was from here, Portchester Castle,

that Edward III sailed with 15,000 men in 1346.

But it wasn't Gascony he sailed for, it was Normandy.

He was going to challenge the French king head on.

Relations between the two nations would never be the same again,

and the Channel would act as a line of division rather than a conduit.

The English armies begin a trail of destruction and pillage

across northern France.

And when Edward meets the French king at the Battle of Crecy,

there's a legendary victory

ensured by the longbows of the English archers.

He has a smaller army and he has this very calculated thing.

With archers, with projectile weaponry,

and with a few cannon, he takes on this massive army

and wins in a very calculated fashion,

and shock waves run throughout Europe

and Europe's really never been the same since.

In the margins of the Secretum Secretorum, there's cannons.

This is technology that Edward's employing in the battle?

That is the earliest representation of a cannon,

which then shot bolts in those days,

but Edward is the person who changes what cannon are.

He has this vision, that a small, well-equipped,

well-financed army can take on a much larger one

and win through projectile warfare.

You don't attack people hand-to-hand,

you shoot them before they get to you. It's very simple, really.

One single order in 1341 is for three million arrows,

so it's down to him that this technology exists.

It took five years to make those three million arrows.

This is why Edward delayed so long.

After all the insecurity of his youth,

he needed to make sure there was no chance of defeat.

So he's really reached the height of his game at this point?

The height of all games!

He has created a new example of the heights that kingship can reach.

Even 300 years later, people were writing about Edward

as perhaps the greatest king there had ever been.

With such success,

you would have thought that Edward's use of the Arthurian myth

had finally solved the problem of controlling his barons.

Indeed, throughout his long reign,

his nobles emulated him by acquiring manuscripts

detailing the exploits of Arthur's knights.

But they also added their own pages.

Men like Humphrey de Bohun liked their king powerful

but not TOO powerful.

Wow, gosh! Look at that amazing illumination.

This is a copy of Lancelot du Lac,

it's a French manuscript made around 1320

and it's later acquired by Humphrey de Bohun,

who's one of the king's greatest earls,

and here, on this frontispiece that he's had added,

you can see the two coats-of-arms -

Edward III alongside the de Bohun's coat-of-arms,

showing their closeness at this stage.

And there's a wonderful scene depicted here,

of King Arthur and Guinevere surrounded by their noblemen,

feasting, holding these golden chalices

and having a really great time.

There there's this very intriguing little scene -

Arthur is obviously dealing with some matters of state.

He's interacting with two characters.

But behind him, Guinevere and Lancelot are in a secret exchange,

they're whispering to one another,

and this is intriguing.

In Arthurian legend, Lancelot's a really important figure,

he's one of the most trusted by King Arthur,

and he's probably most famous for seducing the king's wife, Guinevere.

This eventually brings about the collapse of the Round Table

and the demise of King Arthur.

So, in this character, Lancelot, we see the power struggle

that's constantly taking place between the nobility and the king.

It's interesting that texts like this were so popular

with noble patrons and noble readers,

because it shows how, in texts, the power of the king could be tempered.

But Edward would have a reply to these noble detractors.

One they would not be able to undermine so easily.

In 1348, the homecoming from Edward's triumphant French campaigns

was marked by the usual great feasting and tournaments.

But a far greater menace than war is beginning to sweep Europe -

the Black Death.

By the next year, it's raging in London

and claiming one life in three.

The chronicles tell of licentious behaviour at court

and, through them, we can guess

an apocalyptic and deeply frightened mood.

People think they are going to die.

The Day of Judgment has arrived.

What's notable is that despite this great terror,

there are no references to the plague

in the Royal manuscripts at the time.

It seems that the court would only see what it wants to see

and what it wants to be seen.

What we do know is that in April 1349,

here in the grounds of Windsor Castle,

Edward III organised a great tournament,

while, just ten miles away over there,

London was a charnel house overflowing with the dead.

And over there, in St George's Chapel,

on April 23rd, St George's Day,

he formulates a new chivalric order, the Order of the Garter.

Wow.

Following the example of the Round Table,

there are 25 members in addition to the king.

They are nearly all knights that Edward fought with at Crecy.

What's going on here?

To get a clue, here's Edward III in William Bruges' Garter Book,

written some 90 years later.

Over these pages are all his knights - his brothers-in-arms.

But there's something new here too.

Here is a king invested with almost religious authority.

His favourite saint, the warrior saint, St George,

has been appropriated into the majesty of monarchy.

The king is crowned, standing resplendent, dressed in a tunic

composed of the Arms of England quartered with France.

He wears a cloak emblazoned with the cross of St George,

within the new Garter symbol and motto.

At a single stroke, the monarchy has been sanctified,

purified and strengthened.

It's an incredibly powerful piece of propaganda.

In one of the worst catastrophes England's ever faced,

Edward seems to be saying, "It's business as usual.

"I'm in command and I'm not frightened."

To this day, the coats-of-arms of the original 25 knights,

and those of their successors,

are pinned to the back wall of the chapel stalls.

And the motto to the Order of the Garter's really enigmatic, too.

"Honi soit qui mal y pense".

I believe it relates to Edward's claim to the throne of France.

"Honi soit qui mal y pense" - "Shame on him who thinks evil of it".

The Garter itself is supposed to have been a small leather strap

used to join armour by the knights at Crecy.

Edward III would reserve membership only for those nobles

with the highest records of loyalty and military prowess.

Rather than the mythical figure of Arthur

and his Knights of the Round Table, this represents so much more.

It's like Edward's saying, "I represent religious integrity.

"My kingship is all about down-the-line Christian orthodoxy."

In a masterstroke of image-making,

Edward has bolstered his position as sanctified monarch,

secularised his own saint, and last but not least,

consolidated his power over the nobles.

The king's stamp of authority wasn't just seen in his own propaganda,

but also in the work of his humbler subjects too.

This is an encyclopaedia.

It's not the first encyclopaedia,

but it is the first that's arranged alphabetically.

It was written by a clerk to King Edward III.

It has the delightful name Omne Bonum - "All Good Things".

It has over 1,350 entries and it's illuminated throughout

with these images to illustrate the pieces that they accompany.

It's the huge amount of effort required to order

all these gobbets of good information

that I find so interesting.

So here we've got "Anetum", that's dill.

And this figure is holding up an image of dill.

And here, "Ancipiter", that's a bird of prey, so you can see

this wonderful illumination of the character holding up the bird.

And if we look at this entry for "Anglia", England,

we haven't got a map of the country, instead we've got an image of a king

in all his regalia.

Like king and saint, king and country are now inseparable.

Edward III has clearly done his job well.

These images are really showing us

that mankind is at the centre of everything,

everything is made for his use,

and he's at the very heart of God's creation.

What is also happening with Omne Bonum

is the secularisation of production.

Manuscripts are now not just the preserve

of royalty or religious houses.

Neither of these can now control the thirst for new knowledge.

Soon, the floodgates will be open.

Knowing Edward's enquiring mind,

there's every possibility that he saw Omne Bonum being written.

But what would have interested him much more

would have been the manuscript output from a noble family

that were among the greatest at court.

This great mound is all that now remains of one of the largest

and most important castles in medieval England.

Today, not a stone remains, but in the late 14th century

it was the seat of the de Bohun family,

one of the most powerful noble families in the land.

But late on in Edward III's reign, their lands were broken up.

I believe the Royal Manuscript Collection

holds the key to the mystery of what happened.

Within the walls of Pleshey Castle,

the family had a brilliant little manuscript factory,

employing scribes from the local monastery and so far as we know,

secular artists.

They would be continuously engaged in the painstaking task

of creating at least a dozen stunning manuscripts,

known to have come from Pleshey.

The de Bohun artists could spend years and years

on a single manuscript.

But the length of time an illumination would take to complete

was defined by the availability not just of the artists,

but the supply of its crucial ingredient - gold.

SHE BREATHES OUT HEAVILY

Patricia Lovett is one of only a handful of illuminators

who practise in a way virtually unchanged since medieval times.

Patricia, can you tell me a bit more about the illumination process?

First, the design has to be worked out very precisely.

it's not like watercolour or oil painting,

where you've got leeway and you can change things.

It's a very, very carefully thought-out procedure,

because you need to know exactly where the gold is going to go

before you even start, there's no changing once you've started.

And once the design has been transferred on to vellum,

then this pink compound is laid,

and this is gesso, a mixture of plaster of Paris and various glues.

This is laid as a liquid, with a quill, and allowed to dry

everywhere where there is going to be gold.

I'm going to breathe on the gesso

to reactivate the stickiness in the gesso.

Then the gold leaf is applied

and I have three seconds to get that gold to stick.

And now I'm working my burnisher over the gold leaf.

Gold was chosen for the most precious books

because it doesn't tarnish, unlike silver.

So there are all sorts of pluses for having gold in your book.

Not least that it was evidence

that you were a wealthy enough person to afford it.

To me, the thing that really sets the illuminations apart

from simple decoration is this application of gold.

It's almost like alchemy, isn't it? The changing of states.

Absolutely, you've got this pink powdery compound

which suddenly becomes metallic and brilliant and shiny,

and that's so attractive to us as humans.

Then the painting takes place.

If you can see this strip, these are the base colours.

Then the tones and the shades are added,

the white little highlights, very fine lines, and the black outlines.

And that completes it.

So how long would it take for a medieval scribe to execute

something like this?

This one took about a week.

It's amazing, all the effort that's gone into these

and so many of the artists, their names are lost. They're anonymous.

It wasn't the practice at the time to record who did the writing

and who did the painting.

We do have some names,

but there are some wonderful little notes at the backs of books

where a scribe wrote that he had done it, when and for whom.

And some of them are, "Thank goodness this is finished,

"now get me a drink,

"this was the most boring text I've ever had to write out in my life."

Sometime in the 1370s, the busy manuscript factory

at Pleshey Castle produced this Book of Hours.

Books of hours were small, portable manuscripts

designed to guide the individual through the prayers of the day.

They often contained scenes of moral instruction

derived from Biblical history.

But the de Bohun Hours may tell a different story -

about the demise of this most illustrious family.

The de Bohun family have chosen a fidelity story

from the First Book of Kings.

In it, the future King David is a fugitive,

but he proves his loyalty to a power-mad King Saul

by not killing him when he had the chance.

The first picture shows Saul entering the cave at Ein Gedi

in pursuit of David.

The second shows David cutting off the end of Saul's garment

as he relieves himself.

Then we see David showing the garment to Saul.

And finally, swearing allegiance to him.

This is an image of loyalty,

in which the earl assumes the David persona in order to stress

the faithfulness of the de Bohuns to the crown.

But this Biblical account may mask a terrible end to the family.

There's a story that Sir Humphrey, the last of the de Bohun earls,

was suspected of poisoning fellow Garter knight the Earl of Warwick

in one of Edward's French campaigns in 1371.

From that time, he seems to have been out of favour with the king.

One of the richest men in the land,

Humphrey is now vulnerable and his estates, a target.

Rumour has it that Edward III had Humphrey secretly hanged in 1373.

It's no coincidence that both his lands and his books

were then shared between the king's son and grandson

on their respective weddings to Humphrey's two young daughters.

The destruction of the de Bohun dynasty

may show Edward's ruthlessness in disposing of a noble,

however loyal, with such a prize at stake.

But that's not the end of the story.

Humphrey's younger daughter, Mary,

who was dragged from a convent into marriage,

was to be the mother of England's great warrior king, Henry V.

What Henry would do would eclipse everything

his great-grandfather Edward III had done,

and HIS strategy is clear from the start.

"High and noble prince excellent,

"my lord, the prince, oh, lord gracious,

"I humble servant and obedient unto your estate high and glorious."

Gosh, this is one of the most obsequious introductions

I've ever read to a manuscript.

The year is 1410 and the young Prince of Wales,

soon to be the great Henry V,

is standing in for his father, Henry IV, who was ill.

Thomas Hoccleve is a court clerk and a poet

and has written this for the future king.

It's called the Regement of Princes,

and it's a manual of instruction for the king-in-waiting.

Like the Secretum Secretorum before it,

it urges the king to rule according to the cardinal virtues -

justice, prudence, wisdom and mercy.

But it's all written in English.

Look here in the margins. There's an image here of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Chaucer was Hoccleve's inspiration and he actually says in the text

that Chaucer was "the first finder of our fair language".

For me, this is another stage in the break with France

and the forging of England's identity as a separate nation.

It's the use of English that's absolutely key

to understanding the significance of this manuscript.

By using English,

Hoccleve is stressing the Englishness of the Prince of Wales.

For the first time in three-and-a-half centuries,

we have a claimant to the throne

who has all four English-born grandparents.

Henry V will use his Englishness

as a rallying cry in a violent and explosive assertion

of England's long-standing claims to the French crown.

In 1415, the great victory at the Battle of Agincourt

paved the way for the English occupation of half of France.

By 1420, Henry V's armies are at the gates of Paris,

and he forces the French king to hand over the succession.

But Henry delivers an even greater blow, when the French royal palace,

the Louvre, and its treasures, including its library,

falls into the hands of the king's brother, John, Duke of Bedford.

So, in the 1420s, some of Europe's most valuable objects

cross these waters into the hands of the upstart nation.

This is a very good example of the high quality deluxe book

that the English were getting access to

by their being in charge in France.

Every single page has these gold borders,

and then it also has these magnificent illustrations

which are by some of the best artists of the time.

This is the top-end,

this is as good as you will ever get in a book of this nature.

There's as much gold on this page as you could possibly get on it.

Here, we have one of the most magnificent images in the book...

Oh, gosh, yeah, that's not an understatement! Look at the detail!

A wonderful depiction of the Virgin and Child,

with these beautiful angels, and then you've got the saint

presenting this young prince to the Virgin,

and then this banderol joining them,

this is their conversation, their sacred conversation that's going on.

God, it's heart-stopping, the background is absolutely exquisite.

Yeah, so you have this frame of sparkling gold

and imagine that with candlelight flickering

and catching the gold in different ways.

So it clearly looks royal. Who was it intended for?

Well, this little figure here is a young prince,

with the Arms of England and France ancient.

So it looks like an English prince,

but actually it started as a French prince.

What has happened is

that the artist has intruded over the repeated Fleur de Lys,

the Arms of England.

And so, this French prince has become an English prince.

The young prince is actually an infant, the future Henry VI.

Henry V has died in 1422, leaving his brother, John, Duke of Bedford,

to safeguard the education of a boy who would role both kingdoms.

The book was made for someone that's around eight, nine-years-old,

and then it is transferred to someone around the same age as this.

When we think that young aristocrats engaged with the psalms.

And it's also very relevant as well that it's the psalms,

because it's coming from King David,

there's this kingly authority all the way through this text.

Yes, well, if we turn to the beginning of the book, there he is.

-There's the singer of the psalms, as a king.

-As a king, yeah.

But then, above, you've got a thing that might have been more attractive

to an eight or nine-year-old,

which is this fight that's going on up at the top,

between David, who's really going to whack Goliath, who's facing him.

-It would appeal to a boy!

-I think so! I think it really would.

In terms of the skill and the artistry of this,

it seems far and away better than anything I've seen

coming out of England at this point.

It's unbeatable, it's just haute couture of its time, isn't it?

The colours, the naturalism, just the sheer beauty of the page.

France has the full ascendancy at this period and beyond.

It's wonderful to think about these books as treasures as well.

That they are the treasures of a realm.

By John, Duke of Bedford taking the library books,

-he's taking the treasure of that...

-He's very much taking the treasures,

and the one saving grace is that unlike the plate and the metalwork,

which could be boiled down when you ran short of cash,

the manuscripts couldn't, so they've come through as...

They were the same level of treasure, but you couldn't melt them down.

By the time he was nine,

the young Prince Henry would be reading and absorbing

one of the great masterpieces of medieval literature.

Nothing reflects more England's expectations

at the forthcoming coronation of Henry as King of France

than the famous Bedford Hours.

Oh, this is a moment for me!

Wow!

Oh gosh, right, I'm entering into the Bedford Hours.

It was given to the young king

by his aunt, Anne of Burgundy, and his uncle, John of Bedford,

and he received it on Christmas Eve, 1430,

this is just a year before his coronation as King of France.

This is the culmination of 80 years of English foreign policy,

and a hugely important event

that's just preceded by the gift of this manuscript.

The Duke of Bedford has again adapted a manuscript probably

intended for a French prince.

But the unknown artist has, from his Paris workshop,

created some of the most outstanding images of the age.

A remarkable sequence of full-page illuminations,

depicting scenes from the Book of Genesis.

They show the creation by an all-seeing God.

The birth of Eve from Adam.

Noah and the flood.

This, for me, in terms of its artistry, its skill,

it's a work of art.

And here's the creation of languages in the Tower of Babel.

These Biblical scenes are all scenarios

that a young Christian prince should know.

At great expense, the education of the young Henry continues.

If you look here, we have a portrait of the Duke himself,

kneeling before St George,

complete with an English flag emblazoned on his chest.

This is significant,

at this point England has conquered France,

so who better for John to be kneeling in front of

than the warrior saint of England?

The book also celebrates the marriage of Duke John

to Anne of Burgundy in 1423,

an alliance designed to protect the new dual monarchy.

Really, for the first time,

images of real people are becoming individual and recognisable.

The medieval framework of symbolism is beginning to take a back seat.

Whilst the treatment of the saint and the Duke inside the window

of the picture is modern and realistic,

the images of the sufferings of the saint

in the margins are still symbolic and medieval.

This is such a powerful present.

The Bedford Hours is more than just a prayer book,

it's bursting with status

and encapsulates the aspirations of an entire nation.

On his coming of age in 1437,

England's nobility hoped King Henry VI would do everything possible

to protect his dual inheritance on the battlefields of France

against resurgent French armies.

But Henry never goes to fight the war in France.

I'm with the historian John Watts to find out why.

So John, what do we know about Henry VI?

Henry VI comes to the throne at nine-months-old.

There's then a period of royal minority

where the realm is governed by a council.

The councillors wait eagerly for the king to take over,

but he shows no initiative, and they find themselves

having to hand authority to him, which he doesn't exercise.

So it's hard to know exactly what kind of a person Henry is,

whether he was a pious figure,

as positive legend suggests, or whether he was simply an idiot,

as a more negative views of his subjects tend to imply.

The king has to be an active and effective individual,

and what people don't realise is there's good blueprints for kingship

available in this time.

Advice-writers like Hoccleve, in his Regement of Princes,

are telling kings how to govern,

and central to Hoccleve's theory

is an idea of the four cardinal virtues -

so the king must be just, he must be prudent,

he must be wise, and he must show mercy.

And he must hear the advice of his councillors

and then take a decision and authorise that decision fully.

That's the blueprint for kingship, that's all a king needs to do.

But Henry simply doesn't.

He doesn't show the constancy that's involved in fortitude.

He isn't determined to do justice.

He won't fight to defend his rights or his realm.

Because he won't go to France -

and he's the only king in this period who doesn't fight in France -

nobody is willing to go and the English conquest unravels.

The medieval mind would understand the wheel of fortune.

But in throwing it all away, Henry exceeded the expectations

of even the most pessimistic of his nobles.

The king turned out to be one of the worst kings England had ever had.

In 1444, at a time his armies are losing in France,

Henry's bride-to-be, Margaret of Anjou,

was given an extraordinary wedding present.

This magnificent manuscript is the Shrewsbury Book.

It was made by the gentleman depicted here, Sir John Talbot,

he's the commander of the English troops in France,

and beside him is his symbol, the Talbot dog, that's now extinct.

He's handing this book over to Margaret of Anjou,

and this is designed as a wedding gift for her,

because she's going to marry King Henry VI.

But just opposite is what must be one of the most intricately

and elaborately decorated pages of any book ever written.

It's a powerful image that sets out

all Henry's claims to the French throne.

On the left-hand side is the long line of French monarchs.

And on the right, there's the genealogy of the English kings.

They join at the bottom, where Henry sits guarded by angels

and the insignia of the Garter.

And the whole edifice is propped up by Henry's guardians in chief -

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Richard, Duke of York.

And both royal dynasties are given a common ancestor -

St Louis, the 13th-century saint-king of France.

If ever there was a solid vision of the right of succession, this is it.

All the kings we've seen over the last 120 years are here -

Henry V, the warrior king, the great Edward III,

and even the tumbledown king, Edward II, has been restored to majesty.

But never was one man's fortune more wasted.

Behind this elaborate and somewhat optimistic fantasy

was a stark reality, that there was not a strong English king.

Even as the book was being written, the French,

united under the inspiration of their own champion, Joan of Arc,

were reclaiming English lands.

One by one, the remaining English dominions begin to disappear.

Normandy is lost by 1450, followed by Gascony three years later,

when the English project in France dies for ever.

I think that what all these manuscripts are telling us

is that in an ever-expanding

and ever more complex and literary world,

the institution of medieval kingship must constantly reinvent itself.

Power hinges on the strength and personality of the king,

and his ability to manipulate his noblemen through propaganda.

And the manuscripts themselves are changing.

On the dawn of printing, as books are becoming more commonplace,

manuscripts commissioned by and for the royalty are characterised

by being all the more elaborate and exquisite.

Royalty is now defined as much by its majesty as by its divinity.

Next time - the final flowering of illuminated manuscripts,

as the Tudors take over England and its church.

Subtitles by Evelyn Morrish, Red Bee Media Ltd

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