Long live the King! But he didn’t. Henry V took the crown on April 9 of 1413, and by August 31 1422 he was dead of dysentery. Which isn’t even really the bad news.

The bad news is that this second monarch from the House of Lancaster wasn’t actually a good king. I know, I know, “We happy few, we band of brothers”. He could sure give a speech before a battle… if Shakespeare wrote the words. And Agincourt was a thumping English victory over the French and who doesn’t love that? Except perhaps Jean Chrétien, I guess. But for what?

Henry became king fairly late in the Hundred Years’ War, which had been raging ever since 1337 because the Norman kings of England claimed they were also the kings of France. Which they weren’t, and a good thing too.

Their claim was spurious in a technical sense. It arose because Edward III of England was the grandson of Philip IV and grand-nephew of Philip’s brother Charles IV, between them the last two monarchs of the senior line of the House of Capet. When Charles IV (incidentally known as “Charles the Fair” for his hair colour not his personality) died without male heirs in 1328, Philip’s daughter Isabella was unable to claim the crown because under the “Salic law” in force in France, formally asserted in 1316, women could not claim the throne, other senior feudal posts and much else besides. But Isabella figured she could pass on to her son a claim she could not make, and declared Edward king of France.

Got all that? Well, for a bit the English accepted the succession of Charles IV’s cousin Philip as the Valois king, Philip VI. But when Philip started messing around with Edward III’s war with Scotland, Edward suddenly realized he was king of France no matter who got killed in the process. Including, ultimately, Henry V, who died in France of dysentery or some such complaint contracted while campaigning. And while Edward and his successors won a lot of famous victories, including Crecy and Agincourt, none of it did England any real good though it did France much harm.

So here’s the non-spurious sense in which the English kings’ claim to France was spurious. It just didn’t make sense. France and England were not a natural unit. Nobody thought they were; nobody went around saying “I’m Anglo-French” except a few warlike nobles. It diverted the kings of England from the business of governing England. And if they had conquered France, and with it the capacity of French kings to tax without consent, it would have overthrown the English system unless the English had booted them out. Indeed, the need to fight the Hundred Years’ War helped establish the French monarchy’s independence from representative institutions which was very bad for France in the long run without being any use to England at all. Losing all their French territory except Calais just in time for the Age of Exploration was a boon to England, but the opposite of what its kings sought for a bloody century.

As for Henry V, he spent much of his reign fighting in France, winning hollow victories that did not prevent the ultimate English defeat in 1453. His success in forcing Charles VI to give him his daughter Catherine of Valois in marriage, and proclaim him his heir and regent of France, did nothing except prolong the paper claim of kings of England to the French throne, which was maintained until 1801, by which point there was no French throne for them not to occupy. And Henry’s early death, leaving an infant Henry VI as king, a role into which he never grew, precipitating the disastrous Wars of the Roses that ended with the scary Tudors in charge, followed by the alarming Stuarts. Henry would have been much better advised to stay home and mind his own business.

I have high praise of the constitution of England. And it was a monarchy. So it was usually a good monarchy. But that’s not because it had enlightened kings. Quite the reverse; it’s because it strapped them down so it didn’t matter if they were bad and, when it mattered anyway, they got rid of them.

Henry V wasn’t quite that bad. But for all my admiration for Shakespeare’s prose and the spirit of that great speech, his reign was misspent trying to conquer France while trouble brewed in England. His early death rather served him right. But even it served his country poorly.

On April 8, nearly a thousand years ago in 1094, the new Winchester Cathedral was consecrated. Which might seem uninteresting to an era in which going to worship in a cathedral is among our less likely activities, especially an historic Anglican one dedicated to the Holy Trinity and to Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and Saint Swithun, and the churches we do attend often appear to have been designed by militant atheists. But take a second look.

I mean that literally. For Winchester Cathedral is one of the stunning achievements of Gothic architecture under the Normans. Using hand tools and lumps of rock they created buildings of astonishing beauty, grace and uplift, airy and fantastical visions that defy physical gravity as the Church once inspired men and woman to seek to defy moral gravity instead of celebrating it. We sneer at the Dark Ages and use “medieval” as a crushing insult. Yet our schools look like insecticide factories, our high-rises are as soulless as our parking lots, and even our churches built with the latest materials, machinery and mathematics are squat and dismal beside marvels like Winchester.

One of the largest cathedrals in England, and the longest Gothic cathedral in all of Europe, Winchester soars toward the heavens and every nook and cranny is carved in loving, intricate detail. Moreover, most of it still stands nearly a millennium later. Do you think anything we build now, from our motels to our suburban housing developments to our airports, will still be there in 2938? Or should be?

To be fair, Winchester Cathedral’s original crossing tower did collapse in 1107, an accident medieval chroniclers ascribed to the burial of William the Conqueror’s dissolute son William II “Rufus” there. And frankly if the tower did collapse in protest at his bones, I cannot blame it. Many of our own buildings might appropriately consider doing too on aesthetic if not political grounds.

Incidentally I have been to Winchester Cathedral, though not inside it, because we were filming at the statue of Alfred the Great. It’s appropriate for a place so steeped in history that the “new” cathedral begun in 1079 replaced a building dating back to 642. And can I just mention in passing that it took some kind of guts to come to Anglo-Saxon England and try to convince these marauding maniacs who performed “blood eagles” on captives for fun that a dead Jewish carpenter was God? We pat ourselves on the back for our extraordinary courage in favouring social change today. Perhaps we are too easy on ourselves. But I digress.

Or do I? Is it really possible to gaze at such a place as Winchester Cathedral and deduce on the spot that we are so enormously superior to the people who built it that we can mock their aspirations, their dedication ceremonies and their architecture? Are we so certain we know which are the barbarians?

Well, the statue of Alfred, by the way, is now situated in a rather squalid car park. And if that’s progress, I say it’s clearly overrated.

On this date, April 7, back in 407 AD, Honorius issued a decree against pants. You can guess how that turned out.

OK, perhaps my last statement could stand a little clarification. First of all, Honorius was a Roman Emperor as the Western Empire approached its final agonies. And he is generally regarded as having been a worthless nit who did nothing to avert the calamity. Not that he could have done much, but you might at least try. (He’s also the guy who withdrew the legions from Britain, leading to the famous “Rescript of Honorius” exchange on the right of Britons to govern and arm themselves; for more on that see our forthcoming documentary on Canadians’ Right to Arms.)

Instead Rome was sacked for the first time in 800 years on his watch, in 410. Or lack of watch. Indeed, there’s a possibly apocryphal story of Honorius, in the new capital of Ravenna, being told Rome had perished and freaking out because he thought it was a favourite chicken. Gibbon rubbishes this story but it’s revealing that it stuck to the man, who was emperor for a surprisingly long time, 28 years (plus two as co-emperor with his father).

So what about the pants? Well, the thing is that in 407 he banned the wearing of “barbarian clothes” in Rome, namely pants. Later it would be men in skirts who were thought barbarian, as the Scots can testify. But back then if they were sewed together between your legs you were regarded as a menace.

Not entirely unreasonably, given that barbarians would start treating Rome like a torch a few years later, relighting it constantly. But by the time you’re really alarmed at how many people have come to live in your society who by their very dress as well as their manners indicate unmistakably that they consider you decadent, weak and ripe for the plucking, it’s likely that it’s too late to take a firm stand even if you are better equipped for such acts than Honorius evidently was.

In short, by the time you need that sort of law, it probably won’t work.

Och aye, mon. It’s April 6, the anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 proclaiming Scotland’s freedom from the no-good Sassenach English.

Its language is impressive, especially the much-quoted passage from Sir James Fergusson’s translation (from Latin, not Scots or Gaelic) that “as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”

Now such sentiments are all fine and good. And very probably found in all kinds of places variously phrased, with different enemies than the English depending on geography and history. Or not found; the Declaration itself was one of three letters sent to Pope John XXII in the aftermath of Bannockburn, the other two from Robert the Bruce and four Scottish bishops are lost. As is the original of the Declaration itself, but a copy survives. So who knows what else has vanished from history?

The thing is, the Declaration defines freedom in a very typical and yet very odd sense: Freedom from foreign rule. It has nothing to say about freedom from unjust rule imposed domestically. It rattles on about the Scots having shoved out various interlopers, and being particular favourites of Christ. But there’s nothing here about taxation without consent, property or any of that stuff.

Indeed, the Declaration is a rather narrow document. Its main purpose seems to have been cementing the position of Robert the Bruce as King Robert I, because the Pope had earlier recognized Edward I of England as overlord of Scotland in 1305 and had excommunicated “the Bruce” for such trivial things as hacking down his rival John Comyn at the altar of Greyfriars Church in 1306. (Incidentally if you’re wondering what a “Bruce” is, or why if he was Robert he was “the Bruce” and whether someone called Bruce could also be “the Robert”, it turns out it’s just a family name.) In this sense it was about making government mightier not limiting it.

Now of course if you want to govern yourselves the first thing you need to do is not be ruled by someone else outside your borders. But there’s a lot more to it than that. And if you contrast the Declaration of Arbroath, or any number of other such declarations, with the iconic Magna Carta, you see what’s missing. Magna Carta isn’t about how the English insist on being misgoverned by their own tyrant. It’s about how they won’t be misgoverned at all.

I happen to believe the Scots’ victory at Bannockburn on St. Jean Baptiste Day 1314 was good for English liberty. A union with Scotland then might well have required, and excused, methods of rule north of the border entirely at odds with the spirit and letter of Magna Carta. But when James VI of Scotland managed the trick of acquiring both crowns in 1603, over a century before the formal union including that of the Parliaments, he was stunned to find that England had an independent Parliament.

How he overlooked this is a puzzle; James was an odd mix of wisdom and folly. But certainly nothing in his experience of the Scottish Parliament prepared him for a realm in which citizens had rights against their governors. In that sense, the Declaration of Arbroath is very incomplete.

It sure sounds good, though.

Just how long is the shadow of Rome? Well, you could ask the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Or not, since he died on February 24 1558. But some years before that, on April 5 of 1536, he celebrated the last formal Roman triumph honoring his conquest of Tunis in 1535.

It would be easy to dismiss the performance as hollow theatrical kitsch, especially the bit with people dressed as ancient senators hailing this new Caesar as “miles Christi,” a soldier of Christ, as he passed the ruined triumphal arches of genuine Caesars long dead. Particularly because among his titles Charles included King of Spain as well as Duke of Burgundy. And by 1535 King of Spain was clearly the big enchilada, or taco, or whatever dish especially impressed in Madrid in that period.

Holy Roman Emperor might have meant something under Charlemagne, in the 8^th century. But there was something more than a little revealing about the triumphal arches being ruins by 1536 because the truth is that as a political and military entity Rome was long gone and Italy was not then a great power nor, frankly, would it ever be one even when given the honorific title from the late 19^th century until Mussolini’s military debacles in World War II. (Remember Churchill’s jibe when told Italy had entered the war on the Axis side that “it’s only fair; we had them last time.)

Still, the long shadow of Rome, or the penetrating light, makes Charles’s gesture something a great deal more than frippery. The inheritance of Rome, the rule of law, the creation of something that outlasted itself because of the power of its example, still commanded and deserved respect more than 1,000 years after the reign of Romulus Augustulus fizzled out.

Indeed, for all its apparent magnificence in the 16^th century, Imperial Spain not only lasted far less time than Imperial Rome, it left nothing comparable in terms of legacy. The only names we really remember, unless we study its history in obsessive detail or live in Spain, are those like Philip II who posed a vainglorious threat to England then came a right cropper.

It is true that following 1536 no one did a Roman triumph again. At least, not in Rome. Instead they held them in their own capitals. Including Louis XIII creating a triumphal arch for his entry in to Paris in 1628.

Modeled on the Roman kind, right down to a depiction of Pompey in commemoration of his own magnificent third triumph in 61 BC. Which went better than his first in 80 81 BC where the elephants drawing his chariot couldn’t get through the triumphal gate. The Romans were, after all, only human, and often all too human, including the way their leading men often dishonoured their heritage.

Still, they left a legacy rightly studied, admired and imitated for many centuries. And largely forgotten today not because they were unimpressive but because we increasingly are, and no longer care to recall deeds that, for all our fancy technology and exquisite sensitivity, we would not dare try to emulate.

On April 3, 1043, Edward the Confessor became King of England. I’m sort of in between on that nickname.

As a King you could do worse. Including the previous Saxon King (between them was the Danish interlude), Aethelred the Unready. As is fairly well-known, “Unready” in this context doesn’t mean “unprepared” but “ill-counselled” or “badly advised”, because “rede” in Anglo-Saxon meant “advice”; it’s also a knee-slapper because “Aethelred” means noble counsel.

On the other hand, “unready” isn’t that inappropriate because Aethelred was generally not up to whatever royal task was at hand, partly because he wouldn’t listen to good advice and partly because he was both weak and treacherous which is a really lousy combination. Hence the Danish conquest.

Now the king before Aethelred was Edward “the Martyr” which is kind of a nice and pious nickname but has that “killed suddenly and horribly” aspect to it which can be problematic in a ruler. Especially if you’re killed by knaves associated with your own half-brother Aethelred. Did I mention he was treacherous?

In many ways you’d rather be “the Peaceful” or “the Deed-Doer” or “the Magnificent” or even boring old “the Elder,” all titles born by various predecessors of Edward, than even “the Martyr” let alone “the Unready”. Edmund “the Deed-Doer” was also Edmund the Suddenly Murdered so I guess he should be happy with his name if not his fate.

I also like “Ironside”, the nickname of Aethelred’s son who either died in battle against the Danes or, in some tellings, was assassinated while on the potty which is just not going to cut it as a nickname. Of course it’s great to be “the Great” but only Alfred was that or, to hear some tell it, Alfred and Canute, one of the Danish interlopers. Sometimes you have to take what you can get.

Which brings me back to “the Confessor”. Edward the Confessor, the last crowned and reigning Saxon king, whose death in 1066 triggered the turmoil that brought William the Conqueror, was widely regarded as a good and pious man, so much so that he was canonized in 1161 and in that capacity straddles the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches despite having died peacefully in bed. But he is also generally held to have been an ineffective ruler.

When he also died childless, the relationship of which to his conception of piety remains a subject of historical debate, trouble erupted and invasions loomed. Perhaps a firmer hand on the tiller of state would have made him a better king, ideally without making him a worse man though it can be a difficult balancing act.

Oh, and speaking of nicknames, “the Conqueror” certainly has a distinguished ring to it. Moreover, William of Normandy’s previous informal moniker had been “the Bastard” though possibly not to his face, known to turn black with fury when crossed. So he at least came out of the whole business with a much cooler name than he went in with.

As for the Confessor, well, it’s nice. I guess.

On April 2, 1513, Ponce de Leon first sighted Florida, where he famously did not find the fountain of youth. Which he wasn’t even looking for.

Juan Ponce de Leon had quite an interesting life as a Spanish colonial administrator. Not necessarily an admirable one, being rewarded for ruthlessness against the aboriginal inhabitants of Hispaniola with land and slaves. He became governor of San Juan Bautista, later Puerto Rico, then lost a power struggle with Christopher Columbus’ son Diego in partial compensation for which he was given the right to go and take over whatever he could find north of existing Spanish possessions provided he paid for it himself. One of these was Florida.

The ups and downs of Spanish colonial policy saw him return to Spain to “report” and win friends, a trip that saw him knighted and become the first conquistador to be given a personal coat of arms, and sent back to assert control over Florida and whomp on the Carib Indians inexplicably resisting Spanish expansion on various Caribbean Islands. Unfortunately, six years after setting sail from Spain back to the New World with this renewed mandate, he achieved not immortality but its exact opposite when shot by a Calusa warrior in Florida using a poisoned arrow.

Somehow an account written 14 years after his death tagged him with seeking waters that would cure his aging, supposedly located on an island in the Bahamas due east of Miami. The story was repeated 16 years later and, 24 years after that, the search got transferred to Florida.

In fact he wasn’t even 50 when he died so he wasn’t really a candidate to go hobbling off in quest of such a fable if it was even being told. And I don’t know if he was a sufficiently superstitious sucker to fall for such a tale if it was. Mind you, colonial ventures were often so ill-planned, aiming at fabulous treasures not to be found like the fabled gold the English sought in Virginia, that it wouldn’t be that surprising.

Another explanation is that he was looking for a local aphrodisiac, which won’t make you younger but might temporarily restore certain youthful qualities including acting stupidly in quest of physical pleasure. Plenty of middle-aged would-be adventurers today are susceptible to similar blandishments from pharmaceutical firms about recovering their lost youth through Viagra or hair tonics, arguably proving that we don’t shed our youthful follies when we shed our youth.

On the other hand, it may all have just been made up, and somehow stuck to him forever in folklore. Given his actual life, maybe he’s better off just being remembered as a bold quixotic chump.

On April 1 the Sea Beggars captured Brielle during the Eighty Years War. And no, I’m not pulling your leg.

There really was an 80 Years War. Why not? I grant that it seems a long time to be fighting and you’d think you’d get tired. But if there can be a Seven Years’ War and a Nine Years War and a Thirty Years War and a Hundred Years War, then 80 is also plausible. And in fact it was the protracted war for Dutch independence against Spain.

As for Brielle, it was the Sea Beggars’ first conquest on the Dutch mainland at a low ebb in their fortunes. They were a group of Dutch nobles sworn to oppose Spanish absolutism in their homeland. And after losing a series of battles in the Netherlands they had been expelled from England in 1572 and, having nowhere else to go, decided to attack Brielle and to their surprise found it undefended, the Spanish garrison having been sent to cope with trouble further south.

The town duly sacked, gently as these were their countrymen with the exception of those loyal to Spain, they realized there was no particular reason to leave. They had nowhere else to go and liberating the country had to start somewhere so why not where they were?

Within nine years the rebels had secured control of the Dutch heartland. The Spanish imperialists being as stubborn as they were inept, fighting dragged on into the early 17^th century, then after a 12-year truce resumed with the outbreak of the Thirty Years War and didn’t stop until the Peace of Munster was signed as part of the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the latter horrifying conflict.

At this point you’re probably wondering who these Beggars are and why they matter unless you’re Dutch. And I would answer on the second point that the decay of Hapsburg Spain was a significant factor in the shaping of early modern Europe. But the first is secretly the point of this vignette.

The name originated with a solemn compact by minor Dutch nobles in 1566 to moderate the excesses of Spanish religious policy in the Netherlands, particularly the persecution of heretics under the infamous placards that made the teachings of Luther, Calvin and the Anabaptists capital offenses.

On April 5, 1566, some 300 signers of the anti-placard petition walked solemnly through Brussels to the court of the Regent, Spanish king Philip II’s half-sister Margaret of Parma. She found the whole thing extremely upsetting, which prompted a member of her Council of State to say N'ayez pas peur Madame, ce ne sont que des gueux” which translates to “Don’t be afraid, Madame, they are nothing but beggars”.

The Regent, recovering her bearings, promised the nobles she would send their petition to the King with her endorsement. They repaired to a banquet where they toasted the king and one of their number gave a speech in which he said if need be they would all become “beggars” in the service of their country which evidently elicited a hearty “Raaahr” of approval.

When the obtuse Philip II eventually responded with an imperious rejection of their request, the stage was set for rebellion and war. And in a process tediously dubbed “linguistic reappropriation” by sociological bores, the rebels adopted the name “geuzen”, Dutch for beggars. They even made trinkets of beggars’ symbols, wallet and bowl, and wore them on their hats and belts, and had a medal struck with Philip II on one side and two clasped hands on the other, reading “Fidèle au roy, jusqu'à porter la besace (“Loyal to the King, up to the point of carrying a beggar's pouch”).

They were promptly crushed in the early fighting. But Dutch patriots regrouped and reclaimed the name and ultimately prevailed so proudly that to this day the Dutch term for taking an insult as a badge of honour is “geuzennaam”.

It was the perfect riposte given the snobbish, arrogant insensitivity of the Spanish court. Well, along with actually winning the war. Benjamin Disraeli is famous for saying “A majority is the best repartee” though apparently he actually said “A majority is better than the best repartee.”

A victory is even better, or a series of same if facing an idiot as stubborn as the Spanish king. But it’s nice to do it in style, like those beggars.