Overview

Henry V died suddenly on 1 September 1422 and was succeeded by his nine-monthold son, Henry VI. It was fortunate that Henry V had had good counsellors and the kingdom was well-run during his son's minority, with almost complete continuity being assured in church affairs. Lollard trials, in particular, went on with even greater determination, and were extended to the northern province in the early years of the reign. Convocations continued to meet on an almost annual basis, but it was very difficult for the government to persuade them to grant even a minimal subsidy. Henry V's French wars had bled the country white and brought no economic benefit in return, with the result that the lower clergy (in particular) were increasingly unwilling to pay for maintaining his useless empire.

Even so, there was no serious difficulty until Henry VI came of age and (after considerable delay) was finally allowed to assume direct responsibility for public affairs. He turned out to be an incompetent simpleton, and within a few years not only his father's conquests but all his ancestral possessions in France were lost. The expense of trying to stop this was enormous, and failure produced a national crisis. The effect of all this can be seen in the convocation records, in that from about 1437 convocations were summoned almost exclusively by royal writ. This was not because of any attempt on the part of the king to bring them under his control, but because the financial needs of the state were so pressing that they had to be summoned with increasing frequency. Everything came badly unstuck in 1453, when the last possessions in France were lost, and the convocations did not meet from then until 1460, by which time Henry VI's days on the throne were clearly numbered. On 4 March 1461 he was deposed by his cousin, who became king as Edward IV.

Internally, the reign of Henry VI saw some important developments of convocation as an institution. The most enduring of these occurred in 1425, when the first permanent prolocutor was appointed in Canterbury. This was William Lyndwood, the archbishop's official and soon-to-be author of a digest of provincial constitutions which, although it was never to be officially recognized by any church authority, remains a primary source for the canon law of the Church of England to this day.