VI
THE RELATIONS OF HENRY VI
WITH THE CHURCH AND POPE
IT is useful to understand the attitude of the saintly King Henry towards the Church and its supreme head, the Pope. His letters, as they appear in the Beckynton correspondence, manifest an extraordinary and constant desire to serve the best interests of the Church of Christ, and a devotion and filial reverence for the Supreme Pontiff. It has already been pointed out how eager he was to obtain Pope Eugenius' approval for his two colleges of Eton and Cambridge, and how he pressed him to give them perpetuity by extending the original Indulgences beyond the term of his own life as founder, to which the privileges had been limited at first. This attitude manifests the King's belief in the Catholic doctrine of indulgences, and his understanding that the papal approval was necessary to secure the purpose he had in view in founding
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