In the preceding chapters, we have been concerned with some of the general conditions of later medieval monarchy, the ideological and institutional frameworks which influenced the language, and perhaps the behaviour, of the king and other leading politicians. For much of what follows, we shall be looking at the ways in which these conditions affected the politics of Henry VI's reign; but as we make our descent from the general to the specific, there are other circumstantial factors to be considered. K. B. McFarlane once observed that the character of politics in the forty years after Henry V's death was largely governed by the fact that the crown descended ‘upon the head of a baby who grew up an imbecile’. Not everyone would agree that this is a sufficient explanation for the disturbances of the period, or even a fair assessment of Henry VI's abilities, but it is clear that both the king's personality and his long minority must have played some part in shaping the rule of England during his lifetime. In order to gain a realistic sense of what part this was, we need to explore these factors in relation to the scheme of common values and practices we have so far been investigating: we need to know how a group of men who believed in a representative but independent monarchy, and were familiar with its modes of operation, might respond to the challenge of an infant king, or indeed an idiot one. First of all, however, it will be necessary to tackle a difficulty which has arisen since McFarlane wrote.