ENRICO VI, king of England. – Born on 6 December 1421 at Windsor, died on 21 May 1471 in the Tower of London. The only son of Enrico V and Caterina di Valois, he lost his father at nine months of age and became king under the regency of his uncle. Crowned king at Westminster in 1429 and at Paris in 1431, he lost all the French conquests. When E. lost his reason in 1453, Riccardo, duke of York, became regent and subsequently initiated the civil war of the Two Roses. E. was killed in the Tower of London, where he had been imprisoned, by order of king Edoardo IV.
BIBL.: C. Oman, The history of England from the accession of Richard II to the death of Richard III, London 1906, passim; T. F. Tout, Henry VI, in The dictionary of national biography, IX, pp. 507–20, with bibliography. Silvio Furlani