*c=1408, *M=1424, *A=1440, *G=1456, *c=1472
What do you mean, did he really say that? What are you, some kind of subversive or something?
King Henry V (1413-1422) has acquired a reputation as something like a pure military commander. This isn't entirely Shakespeare's fault: in a very short reign, Henry V appears to have done very little except make war, but to have done that superlatively well. He seems to have been in most matters orthodox, and particularly in religion, giving by contemporary accounts particular attention both to his chapel and to his troops. He was, in the words of the clerical author of the Gesta Henrici Quinti, an "Athleta Christi", the medieval exemplar of that frame of mind for which 1960s critics of the British public school system coined the phrase: "muscular Christianity". I think I should have admired and envied him, have wanted much unthinkingly to follow him, and yet, through thinking, have not followed him (and then maybe through fear followed him, but that's another story). I have known his type so well, in classroom and in camp, and have loved and detested them, as they in detestation and love have measured me against their will. But in the end, we must grow into wisdom: that we are all expressions of the same Spirit, and must love as we find, or perish.
The son (1422 (aged less than 1)-1461 & 1470-1471) is in many ways the more interesting character, and more seriously tested by his times; and if he is generally judged to have failed as a King, whether he failed as a man depends on one's point of view. A great benefactor of learning and the arts, he "thought little or nothing of the pomp or vanities of this world, wherefore after my mind he might say as Christ said to Pilate, "Regnum meum non est de hoc mundo" [My Kingdom is not of this world] for God had endowed him with such grace that he chose with Mary Magdalen the life contemplative, and refused of Martha the active, the which he forsook not from his tender age unto the last day of his life, how be it he had many occasions to the contrary." (--The Great Chronicle [of London]).
It is interesting that disorder occurred not during the minority of the King, when one might conventionally expect it, but during his adult life: as in the reign of Henry III (1216-72). Although unrest comes up again when the cycle pattern suggests it might, it has a rather different emphasis from that of the previous cycle: Cade's Rebellion seems to have nothing like the same shock-impact as the Peasants' Revolt. The period covered by the previous *G semicycle is, I should say, remembered chiefly (whatever that means) for the Peasants' Revolt; the period covered by the *G semicycle shown here is remembered not for Cade's Rebellion, but for the violent dynastic civil Wars of the Roses (the white rose against the red rose: strange and powerful symbolism, although probably not contemporary). Unlike the Peasants' Revolt, the Wars of the Roses were not struggles of the people, of any class, but of their rulers. If there is a pattern in this, it may be found in the interlocking of larger nested cycles: the 128-year cycle in particular, of which this entire 64-year cycle forms the first (*M) semicycle. But it is difficult to be certain about this.
An obvious question is: why anno Domini? Why does this sequence of cycles appear to be based on the Christian calendar? The answer is that it quite possibly is not. Although it is extremely convenient to use the calendar as it stands, there is no certainty that the Crisis on any scale falls at Year 1bce-1ce (or bc/ad). On the other hand Crisis almost certainly falls somewhere near, and so perhaps exactly there; and it is worth bearing in mind the opinion of scholars that Jesus Christ was almost certainly not born exactly then either....
The diagonal points outside the circle also have Principles attached. They are, in clockwise order: at point *S, Ordination, in the secular as well as the religious sense; at point *U, Complication; at point *J, Fragmentation; at point *R, Simplification. This last has a slightly specialised meaning encompassing both the achievement of simplicity, and dissolution. While these two aspects are not necessarily distinct, where they are distinct they are so as part of the approach to the turning-point of Crisis. For lack of space, I shall not be showing these in the 64-year historical cycle diagrams; the flow of political events is in any case not generally fine enough for expressions of these diagonal principles to be accurately located.
You can go to the Contents Page for a list of Cycle Pages;