Private Worship and the Eschatology of Chantry Rites

THE verses quoted are from one of the king’s speeches in Shakespeare’s Henry V. They are part of a prayer in which Henry asks God to “think not upon the fault” of his father, Henry of Lancaster, who had obtained the crown by murdering Richard II (IV.i.293–302). Shakespeare is probably drawing on Holinshed who says that Henry V (r. 1413–22), after his coronation, had the body of Richard (r. 1377–99) moved “with all funerall dignitie convenient for his estate,” from King’s Langley to Westminster Abbey, where he was buried with his first queen, Anne of Bohemia, in a “solemn toome erected and set up at the charges of this king.” Holinshed records the historical event, but Shakespeare gives us a glimpse, as well, of the religious belief and a whole set of liturgical practices associated with Henry’s actions. Here is a more complete citation from Henry’s speech:

Shakespeare’s portrayal here of Henry V’s response to the death of Richard II provides a rare as well as sympathetic description of the piety associated with the late medieval chantry movement in England. The tears of contrition shed, perhaps, at the dead king’s tomb, the poor mourners who have been hired by Henry to pray twice a day for the atonement of his father’s guilt, and the building of the chantry chapels to have Masses said daily for Richard’s soul are some of the religious and cultural features of the chantry movement that require brief consideration before proceeding to a fuller consideration of the movement’s architectural expression.