The Reign of King Henry V

Summary

Coronation of the new king

In the same year Henry [of Monmouth], the eldest son of the dead king, was crowned in London at Westminster by the hands of Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, on 9 April, Passion Sunday. There was a great fall of snow on this day. Everybody was surprised by the severity of the weather. Some people connected the climatic harshness with the fate that awaited them at the hands of the new king, suggesting that he too would be a man of cold deeds and severe in his management of the kingdom, while others who knew of a gentler side to the king took the unseasonable weather as the best of omens, suggesting that he would cause to fall upon the land snowstorms which would freeze vice and allow the fair fruits of virtue to spring up, so that his subjects would truthfully be able to say of him:

Winter is now past

The rains are over and gone [Song of Songs 2: 11]

And indeed as soon as he was invested with the emblems of royalty, he suddenly became a different man.His care now was for self-restraint and goodness and gravity, and there was no kind of virtue which he put on one side and did not desire to practise himself. His conduct and behaviour were an example to all men, clergy and laity alike, and those to whom it was granted to follow in his footsteps accounted themselves happy.

After the Easter feast [23 April] the king held a solemn parliament in London, at which he asked for and received a subsidy, both from the clergy and the laity.

About the present time Thomas, duke of Clarence, the brother of the king, returned from the lands of Gascony. As I have said, he had been sent there to help the duke of Orléans against the duke [John the Fearless] of Burgundy.

During these days a sudden conflagration, starting inside the city, burnt down a great part of Norwich, including the whole house and property of the preaching brothers of the order of St Dominic. Two of the brothers of the order also died in the fire.