Dan Jones
speaker
338 appearances
6 recordings
5 series
first heard Aug 2024
last heard 1 Jul
Dan Jones’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 2.
Appearances
That's in the late 1380s. And by the time we get to the late 1390s, Richard has proven himself time and time again to be a complete failure as a king. He's got a cousin. His first cousin is called Henry Bolingbroke. Henry is also a grandson of the great King Edward III via his father called John of Gaunt. And they're of approximately the same age.
They grew up parallel lives, but their characters are very different and their paths through life are very different. But there comes a crisis in 1390, 789, where Richard the King accuses his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, of treachery and treason effectively, forces him to fight a duel against another lord, banishes him from the kingdom and takes away all his lands.
That provokes Henry Bolingbroke, the cousin, into a rebellion, gathers some forces in France, comes back and deposes Richard II. By now, the hero of our story, a second Henry, to be Henry V, has been born. And so his experience as a young child is also not seeing functional kingship. It's seeing his first cousin once removed, Richard II, making a complete balls-up of being king.
And it's seeing his father struggling to come to terms with that and then rebelling. So cut to 1400, Richard's been kicked off the throne and murdered. Henry Bolingbroke is King Henry IV, and his eldest son, to be King Henry V, is now the next in line to the throne. It's much easier if I draw you a family tree on paper. I realize I'm speaking this out loud, but that's the nuts and bolts.
Yeah. So Henry IV, Henry Bolingbroke, becomes Henry IV in 1399-1400, this revolution, and is then a very difficult situation, as any usurper king always is. You take the throne, you're automatically reliant on...
generally a small group of people who've helped you do it to expect undue rewards king makers um and it's it's always a difficult situation so henry the fourth becomes king he's got four sons henry thomas uh john and humphrey and the eldest three of those he starts deploying quite quickly as his kind of lieutenant because the theory is you could
You might not be able to trust many people in this country he's taken over, but he's going to be able to trust his family. These boys are also teenagers, and they're given a lot of responsibility as a means of military and political training. Henry, to be Henry V, the eldest, is made Prince of Wales. That's still typically the title that's given to the male heir to the now British, crown.
And he sent off to Wales at the age of about 13 to deal with the rebellion of a Welsh kind of firebrand rabble-rouser known as Owain Glyndwr, or Owen Glyndwr in Shakespeare. Glyndwr has claimed that he is the native rightful Prince of Wales, and he's raised the whole of that principality in rebellion against English rule. He's in contact with France, who are England's foreign enemies.
He's in contact with would-be rebels within the Kingdom of England, Scotland, and so on. Young Henry is sent to cut his teeth as a military commander with mentors, with people to help him who are experienced soldiers, but he's got to learn on the job. Fortunately, he takes to this task with a high degree of enthusiasm.
There's a great letter, which I quote in the book, which he writes about the age of 15 to his father. Young Henry is in Wales. Henry IV, the king, is in London. And young Henry, 15 years old, writes back to report what's been going on with Englander. And it's in French, and I'll paraphrase it into English. He says, dear dad, hope all's well. You sent me here to deal with this Englander.
Well, the guy's been putting it around that he wants a fight. So I went out looking for him to have this fight he says he wants. I couldn't find him anywhere, so I went around his house. He wasn't in, so I burned it down. And then I went round his other house, and he wasn't there either.
But one of his friends was and begged me to spare his life and offered me all this money, so I cut his head off. Hope was well, praise be to God, lots of love, Henry. It's astonishing. And I mean, yeah, of course I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not really paraphrasing that much.
I mean, this letter just like bursts with kind of youthful bravado, with brio, with just genuine love and enthusiasm for the business of warfare. So here... the Lancastrian family, as we call Henry IV and his kids, have lucked out effectively because this boy, to be Henry V, absolutely loves war. He really, really takes to it. And he's just got an innate taste for it.
And in the early 15th century, that's a good thing in your ruler. It's not necessarily the total skill set we always want today, but then this is good. It's good news.
yeah look he has this really really intense on the job training as prince of wales and uh it serves him in very good stead you know from age 13 through 18 19 20 he learns the ropes and you mentioned his injury we should say in 1403 when he's 16 he fights this battle he takes an arrow in the face uh the arrowhead gets lodged in the back of in the back of his skull he has to have
major surgery to remove it, and he's incredibly lucky to survive. But he's hardened, he's toughened in war. He then, you know, as you rightly say, his father becomes very ill. From 1406 onwards, Henry IV is suffering from a series of different interconnected maladies. And his health is very poor, but it takes a long time, it takes seven years effectively to die.
So, yeah, you get to this point, 1410, 1112, where Henry dies. to be Henry V, Henry, Prince of Wales, is really doing the job of king. He's held it down militarily. He's effectively president of his father's council. He's taking a lot of the major decisions with regard to domestic and foreign policy. But he's not the king. And he makes a serious error by basically asking his father to abdicate.
And he's got a lot of support in making this request, but it is a very stupid thing to do because the one lesson of his father's reign is it is so difficult to rule as king if you haven't inherited the throne fair and square. And there should be no ambiguity about that. And Henry V kind of misses this, tries to take the throne before his time.
And he's slapped down very, very heavily and very, very hard by his father. who leads him to believe that he's made such a grievous error that he's now, he may have forfeited his right to become king. And Henry the fourth starts like shifting his attention, his favor towards his second son, Thomas, uh, makes him Duke of Clarence.
And I don't think he's totally serious, but he lets Henry believe he's totally serious. And it's a, it's a, it's a valuable lesson. Um, In 1413, Henry IV eventually dies in the Jerusalem Chamber in the Palace of Westminster. And at that point, it's clear that this was never a serious proposition that Thomas, the second son, was going to take over the throne.
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