The best and fullest biography of Henry is C. T. Allmand, Henry V (London: Eyre Methuen, 1992), which now forms part of the Yale English Monarchs series. In 1968 Professor Allmand published a useful pamphlet on Henry V for the Historical Association (General Series, no. 68). Reissued in a revised edition in 2013, it provides a succinct historiographical guide to works on the king. For general context, nothing beats G. L. Harris, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), in the New Oxford History of England series.
J. H. Wylie’s three-volume The Reign of Henry V (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914–29) is still much quoted and includes fascinating detail but fails to discriminate between the sources on which it draws. Wylie died before it could be completed; the third volume was written by W. T. Waugh based on his notes. The whole work is now available freely online at the Internet Archive (archive.org). C. L. Kingsford produced a biography, Henry V: The Typical Medieval Hero (London and New York: Putnam, 1901; 2nd edn 1923). Given the author’s expertise in the chronicle sources, this remains a valuable work. Kingsford also edited an important work of 1513–14, The First English Life of Henry V (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911).
There are a number of more popular biographies which provide lively if sometimes uncritical accounts of the king. Among these are H. F. Hutchinson, Henry V (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967), P. Earle, The Life and Times of Henry V (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972), and D. Seward, Henry V as Warlord (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987). More substantial is K. Dockray, Warrior King: The Life of Henry V (Stroud: History Press, 2006), and J. Matusiak, Henry V (London: Routledge, 2013), along with the short, as appropriate for the Pocket Giants series, A. J. Pollard, Henry V (Stroud: History Press, 2014). An attractive format is provided by M. Mercer, Henry V: The Rebirth of Chivalry (Kew: National Archives, 2004), which, as its series title suggests (English Monarchs: Treasures from the National Archives), prints and discusses facsimiles of documents from the royal records.
There are stimulating chapters on the relationship between Henry and his father, as well as a personal view of Henry V in K. B. McFarlane’s Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). Equally valuable is T. B. Pugh, Henry V and the Southampton Plot of 1415, first published as volume 30 in the Southampton Records Series (Southampton: Southampton University Press, 1988). In addition to discussion of the plot and appendices with the confessions of those involved, Dr Pugh provides a critical view of the king. Henry V: The Practice of Kingship, edited by G. L. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), also contains an overview as well as chapters on various aspects of the reign written by specialists. A second collection of essays, Henry V: New Interpretations, edited by G. Dodd (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), provides insights into where historians are now going in studies of Henry V.
For Henry as prince, a good starting point is J. H. Wylie’s four-volume History of England under Henry the Fourth (London: Longmans, Green, 1884–98), as well as P. McNiven, Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV: The Burning of John Badby (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), to which should be added Dr McNiven’s seminal articles ‘Prince Henry and the English Political Crisis of 1412’, History, 65 (1980), and ‘The Problem of Henry IV’s Health, 1405–1413’, English Historical Review, 100 (1985). My chapter ‘The Making of a Prince: The Finances of the “Young Lord Henry”, 1386–1400’, in Dodd’s Henry V: New Interpretations, gives more material on some of the points made in the current volume. For Henry in Wales, R. R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), is essential, with further detail in articles by R. Griffiths: ‘Prince Henry’s War: Armies, Garrisons and Supply During the Glyndŵr Rising’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 34 (1987), and ‘Prince Henry and Wales’, in Profit, Piety and Professions in Late Medieval England, edited by M. Hicks (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1991).
Agincourt has stimulated by far the largest concentration of works on any topic of Henry’s reign. Serious interest began with N. H. Nicolas, History of the Battle of Agincourt (London: 1827; 2nd edn 1832; 3rd edn 1833). In 2000, I published The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell Press; 2nd edn 2009; e-book 2015), and in 2005 a full scholarly study of the battle, Agincourt: A New History (Stroud: Tempus Publishing, now published by the History Press). Also in 2005 appeared J. Barker’s lively and more populist Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle (London: Little, Brown, 2005). I. Mortimer’s 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory (London: Bodley Head, 2009) sets the battle in the context of the year as a whole, using an ingenious day-by-day approach which brings out the complexity of royal life and action. C. J. Rogers has contributed two important articles to the Agincourt debate: ‘Henry V’s Military Strategy in 1415’, in The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, edited by L. J. A. Villalon and D. J. Kagay (Leiden: Brill, 2005), and ‘The Battle of Agincourt’, in the second volume of this work (published in 2008). The third volume (published in 2013) contains my chapter ‘Harfleur under English Rule 1415–1422’, while a study of the town’s rescue can be found in my ‘After Agincourt, What Next? Henry V and the Campaign of 1416’, Fifteenth Century England, 7 (2007). Henry’s triumphal entry into London is reconstructed in N. Coldstream, ‘Pavilion’d in Splendour: Henry V’s Agincourt Pageants’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 165 (2012).
For Henry V’s soldiers, many are listed on www.medievalsoldier.org and discussed in A. Bell, A. Curry, A. King and D. Simpkin, The Soldier in Later Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013). Henry’s interest in military matters is discussed in my ‘The Military Ordinances of Henry V: Texts and Contexts’, in War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles c.1150–1500, edited by C. Given-Wilson, A. Kettle and L. Scales (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), and in C. Taylor, ‘Henry V, Flower of Chivalry’, in Dodd’s Henry V: New Interpretations. On the king’s treatment of the Harfleur and Agincourt prisoners, there are three important contributions by R. Ambühl: ‘A Fair Share of the Profits? The Ransoms of Agincourt’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 50 (2006); ‘Le sort des prisonniers d’Azincourt’, Revue du Nord, 89 (2007); and Prisoners of War in the Hundred Years War: Ransom Culture in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
For a wide-ranging collection of essays, which includes discussion of military matters, my Agincourt 1415: Henry V, Sir Thomas Erpingham and the Triumph of the English Archers (Stroud: Tempus Publishing 2000), reissued as Agincourt 1415: The Archer’s Story (Stroud: History Press, 2008), is valuable and well illustrated, as is M. Strickland and R. Hardy, The Great Warbow (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 2005), with stimulating chapters on the battle and its archers. This can be supplemented by the catalogue for the 2015 exhibition at the Tower of London, The Battle of Agincourt, edited by A. Curry and M. Mercer (London: Yale University Press, 2015).
Henry’s later campaigns and the Treaty of Troyes are included in J. Barker, Conquest: The English Kingdom of France 1417–1450 (London: Little, Brown, 2009). A scholarly account is provided by R. A. Newhall, The English Conquest of Normandy 1416–1424: A Study in Fifteenth Century Warfare (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1924), C. T. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy: The History of a Medieval Occupation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), and G. L. Thompson, Paris and Its People under English Rule: The Anglo-Burgundian Regime 1420–1436 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), supplemented by my article ‘Lancastrian Normandy: The Jewel in the Crown?’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, edited by D. Bates and A. Curry (London: Hambledon Press, 1994). Although Henry never went to the English lands in south-west France, they were an important part of national interest: a full discussion is provided in M. G. A. Vale, English Gascony 1399–1453: A Study of War, Government and Politics During the Later Stages of the Hundred Years War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), with the Gascon rolls online at www.gasconrolls.org.
For the highly complex French politics of the period, try R. Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue: Crisis at the Court of Charles VI, 1392–1420 (New York: AMS Press, 1986). The importance of the dukes of Burgundy to Henry’s interests and policies in France are well covered in biographies of the two dukes with whom he interacted: R. Vaughn, John the Fearless: The Growth of Burgundian Power (London: Longmans, 1966); and R. Vaughn, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (London: Longmans, 1970). Both are now published by the Boydell Press.
Biographies of other key individuals can also provide interesting routes into the reign. Two of Henry’s brothers (John and Humphrey) have biographies, although rather dated: E. Carleton-Williams, My Lord of Bedford 1389–1453 (London: Longmans, 1963); and K. H. Vickers, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (London: Constable, 1907). His clergy have been better served: E. F. Jacob, Henry Chichele and the Ecclesiastical Politics of his Age (London: Athlone Press, 1952); M. Aston, Thomas Arundel: A Study of Church Life in the Reign of Richard II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967); and especially G. L. Harris, Cardinal Beaufort: A Study of Lancastrian Ascendancy and Decline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). For other key individuals, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is essential, with further detailed biographies of MPs in History of Parliament: The Commons 1386–1422, edited by J. S. Roskell, L. S. Clark and C. Rawcliffe, 4 vols (Gloucester: Alan Sutton for the History of Parliament Trust, 1992).
On Henry’s government there are several useful articles in Dodd’s collection of essays Henry V: New Interpretations, including G. Dodd, ‘Henry V’s Establishment: Service, Loyalty and Reward in 1413’, and W. M. Ormrod, ‘Henry V and the English Taxpayer’. On finance, the best general summary is in A. Steel, The Receipt of the Exchequer 1377–1485 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), with J. Stratford, ‘ Par le special commandement du roy: Jewels and Plate Pledged for the Agincourt Expedition’, in the Dodd collection as a fascinating glimpse into the special arrangements in 1415. E. Powell, Kingship, Law and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), provides a full study of the king’s attempts to improve law and order. The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England 1275–1504, IX: Henry V, edited by C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), includes contextual introductions as well as parallel texts.
The best overview of Henry’s monastic foundations remains D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, II: The End of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), with valuable studies of the Lollards by A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), and J. A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards 1414–1520 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), expanded by M. Jurkowski’s chapter in the Dodd collection: ‘Henry V’s Suppression of the Oldcastle Revolt’. For general background, G. Bernard, The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome (London: Yale University Press, 2013), is useful. Much can also be elucidated on Henry’s religion by considering his preparations for death through reading P. and F. Strong, ‘The Last Will and Codicils of Henry V’, English Historical Review, 96 (1981), and W. St John Hope, ‘The Funeral, Monument and Chantry Chapel of King Henry the Fifth’, Archaeologia, 63 (1913–14).
Henry is not well served in terms of cultural history but insights can be gained through J. E. Krochalis, ‘The Books and Reading of Henry V and His Circle’, Chaucer Review, 23 (1988), and, for manuscripts, S. McKendrick, J. Lowden and K. Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011). For his buildings, see The History of the King’s Works, I and II: The Middle Ages, edited by H. Colvin (London: HMSO, 1963). On his image as projected in the chronicles of the period, A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, II: c.1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1982), is the essential guide.