Henry the Sixth: A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir, with Translation and Notes

Here is a rare thing: a medieval king's inner life, revealed by the man who knew him best. John Blacman, a Carthusian monk who served in Henry VI's household, left behind this intimate memoir of England's Lancastrian king, and what emerges is not the weak monarch lost to history's defeats but a man of extraordinary piety, humility, and spiritual wrestling. Blacman presents Henry as a figure akin to Job, a ruler whose goodness only deepened his suffering a world that could not sustain his virtue. The memoir captures Henry's private devotions, his mercy toward enemies, his encouragement of virtue in others, and his quiet anguish at a kingdom tearing itself apart. Originally composed in the fifteenth century and reprinted in 1919, this is less a political history than a spiritual portrait: a king who seemed born for the cloister rather than the throne, and whose gentleness proved fatal in an age of brutal ambition. For anyone seeking to understand the human cost of the Wars of the Roses, or the strange tragedy of a saintly king who lost everything, Blacman's account remains indispensable.