Lydgate’s Problematic Commission: A Legend of St. Edmund for Henry VI

Abstract

In the winter and early spring of 1433–1434, Henry VI paid an extended visit to the Benedictine abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, where the abbot and monks in residence gave him a fittingly royal welcome.1 The young king appears to have enjoyed his stay, dividing his time between the abbot’s house, which had been enlarged and improved for the visit, and the prior’s quarters, which overlooked the open country and gave easy access to gentle recreations. Henry participated actively in religious observances while at the monastery and toward the end of his visit—on Easter Tuesday, in a ceremony at St. Edmund’s shrine—was formally admitted to the abbey’s confraternity, a ritual that allowed him to share the religious privileges of the monks. The abbot, William Curteys, responded to the king’s piety and devotion to his abbey’s patron saint by commissioning one of his monks—John Lydgate, perhaps the ablest poet in early fifteenth-century England—to compose a verse hagiography of St. Edmund that would be presented to the king in a lavishly illustrated manuscript.2