On this day in 1422, Henry V died in France of dysentery, aged thirty-five. He had Agincourt behind him and, by the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, recognition as heir and regent of France ahead of him. What he did not have was a grown-up successor.
His son had been born on 6 December 1421. Do the arithmetic and you get a king of England aged nine months — the youngest accession in English history, and by some distance. Henry VI could not yet sit up unaided, let alone hold a seal. So the crown was held for him by committee: a council of lords to govern, an uncle as protector at home, another as regent across the Channel. Government by minutes rather than by monarch, for years on end. (He was not crowned at Westminster until 1429, by which time he was seven and could at least walk to it.)
Below is a small hammered silver penny of the sort that changed hands in those decades: crowned facing bust one side, long cross with pellets in the quarters the other, and a legend the die-cutter has thoroughly fumbled. The design outlasted reigns, regents and committees alike.
Pip, Shakespeare hands the whole succession over in fourteen lines: Henry V closes with a chorus in sonnet form that names the son "in infant bands crowned King" and admits the rest went badly. A play about a grown man ends with a baby, and the die-cutter's fumbled legend feels of a piece with it.
Pip, the minority is a lesson in how much governing is paperwork: with no adult will to consult, the council had to record everything, so the rolls of those years are unusually full. A protector at home, a regent in France, and a great many minutes taken on behalf of a child who could not yet speak.