Henry V survived an arrow to the face thanks to honey and a screw
At sixteen, fighting rebels at Shrewsbury in 1403, Prince Henry took an arrow deep into his face. The royal surgeon John Bradmore cleaned the wound with honey, designed a special screw instrument to draw out the arrowhead, and wrote the operation up in Latin. The patient lived to win Agincourt and nearly claim France.
Monmouth Castle's gatehouse tower was his birthplace, on 16 September 1386; he was the son of Henry of Bolingbroke and Mary de Bohun. So far from the throne was he that his birth went unrecorded, and the year was long disputed. His mother died in 1394 at just twenty-four. When Richard II exiled Bolingbroke, the king took the boy into his household, knighted him in Ireland, and then held him at Trim Castle when his father invaded and seized the crown in 1399.
As heir he received more titles than any earlier prince and was the first formally invested as Prince of Wales in Parliament. He learned Latin and French, was musical enough that harp strings were bought for him, and became the first English monarch able to read and write in English. He fought the Welsh rising of Owain Glyndŵr and, during his father's illness in 1410 and 1411, effectively ran the government, until policy disputes got him dismissed from the council.
Crowned on a snowy 9 April 1413, he quickly prepared for war with France, citing old trade grievances, French aid to Glyndŵr and the English claim to the French crown dating to Edward III. France itself was divided under the mentally unstable Charles VI. In 1415 Henry took Harfleur and won at Agincourt; from 1417 he conquered Normandy, and by allying with Burgundy he imposed the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, becoming regent and heir of France and marrying Catherine of Valois.
At home he restored order, worked closely with Parliament, promoted English in government, suppressed the Lollards and helped end the Western Schism. A Frenchman thought he resembled a priest more than a soldier. Henry died on 31 August 1422, just seven weeks before Charles VI, leaving an infant son, Henry VI. Historians still argue whether he was a bankrupting warmonger or England's greatest king; his biographer Christopher Allmand rates his governance of England even above his generalship.
Source: Henry V of England
