Kings and Peoples

This chapter argues that engagement in war vitally shaped his subjects’ relationship with the king and their sense of national identity. War affected attitudes to the king’s authority and those who rebelled against it, to his care for his subjects, to national religion and national history, especially when orders went out to arrest enemy aliens or to recruit men for armies from many different parts of the realm. The contrast between dire civil conflict in the Wars of the Roses and the glorious victories of the Hundred Years War was a staple of popular history and shaped attitudes to Henry’s own wars. Henry’s wars left his successors a paradoxical legacy of admiration for his victories, his ships, and his fortifications, but allergy to his taxes and his large-scale recruitment.