Hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel where I bring you new videos
every week looking at all aspects of the past. Today on History Calling we’re travelling back
to the year 1403 to look at an incident in the life of Henry V of England, a man who was shot
in the face and survived. We’ll look at how this was possible, using the first-hand account of the
doctor who treated Henry and managed to withdraw the head of the arrow that nearly killed a Prince
out of the then 16 year old’s head, despite it being wedged in at a remarkable depth of
six inches. Prepare to hear about one of the more horrific battlefield injuries ever endured
and survived by an English royal, some crazy medieval surgery performed without anaesthesia
and how Henry’s scars may have affected the way in which he is remembered. [intro]
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The future Henry V was born on 16 September 1386 at Monmouth Castle, which has led to him sometimes
being referred to as Henry of Monmouth. His father was Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV
in 1399. His mother was Bolingbroke’s first wife, Mary de Bohun, who died in 1394 (and whose surname
was pronounced different ways in the different pronunciation guides I looked up online before I
recorded this, so no hate in the comments please if I chose a different pronunciation to the one
you would have preferred). By 1403, the sixteen year old Henry was (among his other titles)
Prince of Wales, Duke of Aquitaine and heir to the English throne and it was for that reason
that he ended up at the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July that year, alongside his father.
King and Prince were fighting against Sir Henry Percy, known as Hotspur because of the speed
at which he could move and attack. He had become disaffected with Henry IV’s rule, however for the
purposes of this video, the argument between these men doesn’t really matter (though for the record,
Percy died during the Battle). What we’re interested in is the fact that at some point
that day, Prince Henry received his gruesome injury, courtesy of an arrow to the face.
This incident is one of most famous connected to Henry and was reported
by chroniclers and historians in the centuries following.
Hall's chronicle, written by Edward Hall and published posthumously in 1548 recorded that:
The prince Henry that daie holpe muche his father, for although he wer sore wouded in
the face with an arow, yet he neuer ceased ether to fight where the battail was moste
strongest, or to courage his men where their hertes was moste danted. [this last
word could be dented or daunted, it’s not clear from the old spelling of it]
Thomas Lanquet in his 1559 book An epitome of chronicles (which was again published
posthumously and actually completed by Thomas Cooper, later bishop of Lincoln and Winchester),
said that ‘prince Hēry the kinges sonne [was] wounded, with an arrowe in the face’.
In later years, Ralphael Holinshed,
who noted in the margin of his work that his information was coming from Hall, said that:
The Prince that daye holp his father lyke a lustie yong Gentleman,
for although hee was hurt in the face with an arrowe, so that dyuers noble men that were about
him, would haue conueyed him forth of the fielde, yet he would in no wise suffer them so to doe,
least his departure from among his men, might happely haue striken some feare into their hartes:
and so without regarde of his hurt, hee continued with his men, and neuer ceassed, either to
fight where the battel was most hottest, or to incourage his men, where it seemed most neede.
By 1611 and the publication of John Speed’s book The history of Great Britaine under the conquests
of ye Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans, the story was legendary and seen as a portent of
Henry’s later military victories. Speed wrote that the rebellion of Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy:
almost had done Prince Henry his life, who in battell against him was wounded in the face with
an arrow. This marke of his manhood, with the ouerthrow of Hotspur in that bloody conflict,
were hopefull signes of his following successe.
Speed by the way, was also a famous cartographer and if you see my video
on the phantom island of Hy Brasil, I used some of his beautiful maps there. But back to Henry.
How had the Prince survived what should have been a fatal arrow injury?
The future King was treated here at Kenilworth Castle,
but initial attempts to deal with the wound were unsuccessful.
According to Dr John Bradmore, the arrow had entered his face ‘next to his nose on the
left side’ and ‘at an angle’. The first doctors to treat him removed the arrow shaft, however
‘the head of the aforesaid arrow remained in the furthermost part of the bone of the skull for the
depth of six inches’. It seems then that the arrow tip had come incredibly close to killing or brain
damaging Henry, or blinding him in one eye and it had stopped just millimetres away from his brain.
The pain must have been intense. The ‘various doctors’ attending tried using ‘potions and
other cures’ according to Bradmore, but nothing worked. It was at that point that he was sent for.
John Bradmore was a London-based surgeon who we know had previously worked in the household
of Henry IV and may have been working there still. He died in 1412 and his account of how he
treated Henry (which appears in a book he called Philomena) was therefore written sometime between
1403 and his own demise and it’s where much of our knowledge about his life comes from. It survives
in Latin in the Sloane papers in the British Library, while a slightly later and abridged
middle-English translation of it exists in the Harley papers in the same archive. According to
Bradmore, when he arrived at Kenilworth, he took the following course of action:
First, I made small probes from the pith of an elder, well dried and well stitched in purified
linen [made to] the length of the wound. These probes were infused with rose honey.
And after that, I made larger and longer probes, and so I continued to always enlarge these probes
until I had the width and depth of the wound as I wished it. And after the wound was as enlarged
and deep enough so that, by my reckoning, the probes reached the bottom of the wound,
I prepared anew some little tongs, small and hollow, and with the width of an arrow. A screw
ran through the middle of the tongs, whose ends were well rounded both on the inside and outside,
and even the end of the screw, which was entered into the middle, was well rounded
overall in the way of a screw, so that it should grip better and more strongly. This is its form.
I’m going to pause here to show you what Bradmore meant, when he said ‘This is its
form’ because in the original document, next to these words, he drew a little picture of
the tongs he used which I’ve redrawn for you here. Before anyone mentions it in the comments,
I know it kind of looks like I just put a rude doodle on my YouTube channel,
but I swear, these are 15th century medical tongs, copied from a 15th century drawing.
Anyway, we can only imagine the pain Henry must have been in, both from the initial wound,
the botched attempts to treat it and then Bradmore’s actions in opening it up further
so that he could reach the arrow head himself. Perhaps the worst was yet to come however,
for Bradmore now proceeded to the extraction, saying:
I put these tongs in at an angle in the same way as the arrow had first entered, then placed the
screw in the centre and finally the tongs entered the socket of the arrowhead. Then,
by moving it to and fro, little by little (with the help of God) I extracted the arrowhead. Many
gentlemen and servants of the aforesaid prince were standing by and all gave thanks to God.
How exactly these tongs worked, despite the drawing and description,
is still a little unclear, but historian Sheila Lang (details of her work are in the description
box) posits that that they were inserted into the wound until they entered the hollow centre of the
arrow head where the wooden shaft had once been and the screw in the centre then expanded the
sides of the tongs out until they pressure gripped the inside of the arrow head so that it could be
gradually pulled out. For a comparison, imagine you put your finger tips inside an empty glass,
then spread your fingers wide until they are pushing against the side of the glass.
This will enable you to lift it, purely thanks to the pressure you’re exerting on the inside.
The arrowhead may have been removed, but Henry wasn’t out of the woods yet
and Bradmore’s attention now turned to healing the hole it had left in his patient’s face. The risk
of infection must have been high, but as you may have already noticed in Bradmore’s description of
using ‘purified linen’ and employing honey as an antiseptic, he understood the need for cleanliness
in wounds, even if his methods of achieving it could be a bit strange by modern standards and
he showed great patience and fastidiousness in his treatment of Henry. Bradmore explains that:
I cleansed the wound with a syringe full of white wine and then placed in new probes,
made of wads of flax soaked in a cleansing ointment. This is made thus. Take a small
loaf of white bread, dissolve it well in water, and sift through a cloth. Then take a sufficient
quantity of flour and barley and honey and simmer over a gentle heat until it thickens,
and add sufficient turpentine oil, and the healing ointment is made.
And from the second day, I shortened the said wads, soaked in the aforesaid ointment,
every two days and thus within twenty days the wound was perfectly well cleansed. And afterwards,
I regenerated the flesh with a dark ointment. And note that from the beginning right up to
the end of my cure, I always anointed him on the neck, every day in the morning and evening,
with an ointment to soothe the muscles, and placed a hot plaster on top, on account of fear of spasm,
which was my greatest fear. And thus, thanks to God, he was perfectly cured.
Though we might cringe at these treatments and find ourselves pining for modern antiseptics,
antibiotics, pain relief and surgeons, by 15th century standards, Bradmore was a medical marvel.
Though Henry must have been in excruciating pain and hardly able to sleep for weeks while
the wound was treated and healed, he survived and apparently with no ongoing physical effects.
Sheila Lang noted in her 1998 PhD (again, details are below) that some of the treatments meted out
to him didn’t accomplish the purpose Bradmore had intended, but were nevertheless useful.
For instance, based on the recipe given elsewhere in the book for the ‘dark ointment’ he mentioned
for regenerating flesh, it actually had some mild antiseptic properties which would
have aided natural healing. It didn’t heal the flesh itself however. As for the neck massages,
she speculates that Bradmore feared spasms caused by a tetanus infection.
We might now wonder what the healed up injury looked like. Some portraits of Henry show him
in profile, however they also show the left side of his face, where Bradmore says the injury was
located, yet there is no scar depicted. It’s hard to imagine that there was no mark at all,
or that the final scar was akin to the barely there scratch shown on actor Timothee
(or Timothee if you prefer) Chalamet’s face, when he portrayed Henry in the movie The King
and instead I suspect one of two things has happened here.
Either the artist tactfully removed the mark, or Bradmore meant that the mark was on the left
side of Henry’s face as he (Bradmore) looked at the Prince, making it on Henry’s right. Whatever
scarring was left, Bradmore had undoubtedly done an incredible job and perhaps in recognition of
his efforts, he was given an annuity of 10 marks from the young Prince of Wales.
Henry went on to live for almost 20 years after this horrific incident,
becoming King in 1413, winning the famous Battle of Agincourt against the French in 1415,
marrying Katherine of Valois in 1420 and fathering the future Henry VI in 1421. He didn’t have long
to enjoy these dynastic successes though. He was back in France by the time Katherine gave birth
and never saw his son, falling sick whilst on campaign and dying, just shy of his 36th birthday,
on 31 August 1422. His remains were brought back to England and buried in Westminster Abbey.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this video much more than Henry will have enjoyed getting the injury which
inspired it. Please remember to hit the thumbs up and subscribe buttons if you haven’t done so
already and let me know in the comments below how bad you think Henry’s scar might have been,
or if you think it’s possible that Bradmore managed to heal
it well enough that it produced only a small mark, or even nothing at all.
If gruesome history is your thing, why not try out one of these videos next, which I
think will fit the bill. I’ll be back next week with a new upload and until then, keep learning.