True, plus she was pretty brutal in crushing the Rising of the North. Not to mention the Richard Topcliffe stories.
Henry V Greatest English King?
- Thread starter hasdrubal barca
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True, plus she was pretty brutal in crushing the Rising of the North. Not to mention the Richard Topcliffe stories.
If you get your life's work undone by the efforts of a peasant girl, then you're definitely not the greatest English King. 
I'd put Liz second behind Alfred. Had Alfred failed what is now England would essentially be Scandanvian country, speaking a realitive of Danish. The Angle Saxons legacy could be essentially a footnote on why the Welsh are in Wales.
And Alfred came within a hairs breath of failing.
A Spanish held England would still be England in many ways that mattered and many of the Spanish conquerers would have probably been fairly "English" in a couple of generations.
Alfred stopped a migration which would have altered the very character of the British Isles. Elizabeth stopped a military conquest that might be reversed in some fashion at a latter date.
She's generally understood to have provided the stability that allowed the forging of a national identity. Plus, she provided the foundations of the Empire and led the defence of the nation against the superpower of the day - her Tilbury speech is the eras equivalent of the never surrender from WW2. Also, the flourishing of English culture (Shakespeare, Marlowe etc), although how much she can be credited for that is open to question.
TFSmith121
Banned
Fair, but it seems E I deserves some additional credit simply
Fair, but it seems E I deserves some additional credit simply by having to do everything while dancing backwards and in high heels, so to speak.
That's pretty rare in Western history...most of the time, female monarchs had no ability to exercise power.
And E I did it without becoming - essentially - offered for sale; true, she had no direct heir, but she used that reality to circumvent umpteen potential arrangements that, presumably, would have simply complicated what was already an extremely complicated geo-strategic and political situation.
Best,
Fair, but it seems E I deserves some additional credit simply by having to do everything while dancing backwards and in high heels, so to speak.
That's pretty rare in Western history...most of the time, female monarchs had no ability to exercise power.
And E I did it without becoming - essentially - offered for sale; true, she had no direct heir, but she used that reality to circumvent umpteen potential arrangements that, presumably, would have simply complicated what was already an extremely complicated geo-strategic and political situation.
Best,
That's just it, none of it can be attributed to her. Not the cultural flourishing, not the empire, and not the stability.
The cultural flourishing was going on all over Europe at the time, as a result of economic growth, which was itself brought about by forces far beyond Elizabeth's (or even England in general's) control. She could possibly have strangled English cultural growth with war or court austerity, but she had no reason to do so deliberately (she almost did so accidentally with her belligerent foreign policy, but that's beside the point), and not killing it doesn't make her responsible for it.
As for the Empire, Elizabeth oversaw no successful attempts at colonization, and didn't personally do anything other than allow her lords to lead expeditions, rather than sponsoring expeditions herself. She was responsible for tightening the English grip on Ireland, but her methods were brutal and not particularly effective, and England had held nominal (and sometimes actual) control over the island for over three hundred years prior to her reign, so that's hardly a great showing. I also wouldn't call her responsible for uniting England and Scotland, since they would have been united anyways even if she had died before reigning.
The stability was mostly her father and grandfather's doing, with a little bonus thrown in because she was the only Protestant candidate for the throne, but nothing due to her abilities. If anything her decision to state sponsor the renaissance equivalent of terrorism (privateering) nearly destroyed that stability by making England a pariah state and calling down the wrath of the Habsburgs.
Elizabeth inherited a very successful kingdom and just barely managed to not destroy it with ill conceived foreign ventures, over reliance on under-qualified court favorites, and military atrophy. She was a below average ruler who happened to live during a time of expanding European economies, and who had a very vibrant cult of personality.
TFSmith121
Banned
So what's your take on Churchill?
So what's your take on Churchill? Winston, not John.
Best,
So what's your take on Churchill? Winston, not John.
Best,
I'd agree with Athelstan. All the consolidation of the English state happened during his reign. I think the entire economy and administration were rebuilt during that period
It depends on whether you judge historical leaders by the standards of fictional/legendary heroes (charisma, strength of character, triumph in the face of extreme adversity, etc) or by the standards of whose leadership you'd rather live under (in which case, most of us would probably prefer someone who kept things as boring as possible, or at least who kept the excitement in the realm of institutional reform).
Henry V does very well by the former standard, but extremely poorly by the latter. His reign was dominated by an expensive, bloody, and destructive war in which he achieved impressive but unsustainable successes, and he set the stage for both an expensive, bloody, and destructive defeat in the next round of war and a devastating series of civil wars back home.
By the latter standard, I like Henry VII and Victoria, with honorable mention to William III and the first few Georges.
Henry V does very well by the former standard, but extremely poorly by the latter. His reign was dominated by an expensive, bloody, and destructive war in which he achieved impressive but unsustainable successes, and he set the stage for both an expensive, bloody, and destructive defeat in the next round of war and a devastating series of civil wars back home.
By the latter standard, I like Henry VII and Victoria, with honorable mention to William III and the first few Georges.
Well, most earlier critics of Elizabeth criticized her for not going all out in the Netherlands. In fact, she didn't go all out pretty much in anything. For a premodern monarch that's pretty good. I think that also her posthumous reputation tells us something - she wasn't much mourned at all when she passed, but after some years of Stuart reign she started to be quite missed indeed, and rather spontaneously. Perhaps someone else would have done a better job, but I think it has to be admitted that it wouldn't have been a totally easy task.
I'll admit he was incredibly capable and effective in reaching his goals. The problem is that his goals were pretty much the opposite of what the English wanted or needed.
And William the "Bastard" is none too popular with us Yorkshire folk.
Spoiler for the Rex Factor Podcast Henry V didn't even make the Top 3 that went to the final. In the end it went to Henry II, though I personally voted for Elizabeth I.
I think James VI/I does not get much love. His reign was not as sexy in that he did not have any military glory or did not have a cultural renaissance but he was a man of peace. The first thing he did as King of England was end the war with Spain which was fruitless. Doing so, he cleaned up England's finances and focused on colonizing America, thereby laying the seeds of the British Empire.
It is a 3-way tie between him, Alfred the Great who kept England Anglo-Saxon, and William III who modernized England's financial system paving the way to the expansion of the British Empire.
It is a 3-way tie between him, Alfred the Great who kept England Anglo-Saxon, and William III who modernized England's financial system paving the way to the expansion of the British Empire.
I don't think Henry V is even in the top 5.
It's hard to top Alfred the Great. And Athelstan's accomplishments in making England/House of Wessex an international power are very underrated. Edward I probably made England what it is today (basically conquering Wales and subduing the Scots, temporarily).
I also agree you can make the case that between George VI and Elizabeth II they saved the monarchy when the concept was falling in the rest of Europe.
I think the English kings' inability to entrench the idea of an absolutist monarchy helped save it too. Even at it's worst there were always strong traditional and legal limits to what the English crown could do. Why remove the monarchy and upset everyone when you can just ignore them and let Parliament get to work? No need to messily depose the royals at all and you get to leave them as a symbol. George and Elizabeth were smart enough to see where the winds were blowing and to stand there politely and look regal. The democrats get their democracy, the monarchists get their kings and everyone goes home happy.
This seems a bit overstated. All of the Scandinavian and Benelux monarchies have also lasted to the present day. For the most part, the European monarchies that made it to World War II (and didn't experience a Communist takeover thereafter) have survived.
I think Victoria, or perhaps George V, would deserve more credit in this regard. The period from c. 1830-1931 was particularly dangerous for royals across Europe.