Henry became king at the age of only nine months following the death of his father Henry V but never really grew into the role. After he came of age in 1437, his reign was punctuated by the ding-dong battles of the Wars of the Roses, a bloody struggle for power between the noble houses of Lancaster and York.
One month after inheriting the throne of England, he technically became king of France as well, as a result of the treaty of Troyes, signed by Henry V and Charles VI of France (who had also died by then). But all his French lands bar Calais were lost during the final battles of the Hundred Years War or had been ceded to France as part of his marriage agreement with Margaret of Anjou.
After the defeat of the English at Castillon near Bordeaux in 1453, which is generally regarded as marking the end of the Hundred Years War, Henry suffered his first serious mental breakdown. Richard of York, already his rival for the throne, took over as protector.
Richard had already asserted his claim to the throne based on his descent, through his mother, from Edward III's second surviving son. Henry was descended directly from Edward's surviving third son. So it can be said that the Wars of the Roses that ensued was a struggle to decide if the succession should keep to the male line or could pass through the female one. Yet, as the Yorkists and Lancastrians slugged it out for dominance, Henry really only figured as a frequently incapacitated pawn, primarily manipulated by his wife Margaret.
After the Lancastrians' defeat at the battle of Towton in 1461 and Edward IV's seizure of the throne, Henry and Margaret fled to Scotland. Two years later, the queen and her son with Henry, Prince Edward, sailed for exile in Flanders, leaving Henry behind. Following Edward's truce with the Scots in December 1463, Henry was forced to go into hiding, only to be discovered two years later and incarcerated in the Tower of London.
He was briefly restored to power in 1470, when Edward fled to Holland following the invasion of England by Warwick the Kingmaker. However, in April 1471, Edward returned from exile and decisively defeated Warwick at Barnet (14 April) and then Margaret's army at Tewkesbury (4 May), killing Prince Edward in the process. Returning in triumph to London on 21 May, Edward almost immediately had Henry murdered, thus eliminating the last threat from the House of Lancaster.
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 King Henry VI
www.berkshirehistory.com/bios/henry6.html
Detailed biography of the mentally ill king.
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Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship by John Watts (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Since the 1970s, most histories of 15th-century England have focused on the individual interests and private connections of politicians as a means of making sense of politics. By contrast, this work argues that we can understand what happened in Henry VI's reign only if we also look at common interests and public connections. Ultimately it is the problem of establishing royal authority that emerges as paramount, with the supposedly factious and 'overmighty' nobility appearing as doomed but devoted servants of the state.
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 Eton College
About 21 miles west of London, directly across the Thames from Windsor
In 1440, Henry VI founded 'The King's College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor'. It was to be part of a large foundation where 70 poor scholars were to receive free education. To fund this, Henry gave Eton a substantial income from land and a huge collection of holy relics, among them fragments supposedly of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns.
He took a close personal interest in the building of the school. Much of what he had constructed can still be seen: the church; accommodation along the north side of School Yard; a single classroom below (Lower School) and a large dormitory (Long Chamber) above; College Hall, where priests, headmaster, and scholars could eat; and Cloister Court.
Progress on the church was interrupted when, in 1461, Henry was deposed by Edward IV. Parliament annulled all grants of lands made by the Lancastrians, and
the college had its lands, ornaments and relics transferred to St George's, Windsor. Tradition has it that Edward's mistress Jane Shore interceded on behalf of the college and saved it from extinction by persuading Edward to restore some of its lands.
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