Henry IV | |
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16th-century painting of Henry IV | |
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Reign | 30 September 1399 – 20 March 1413 |
Coronation | 13 October 1399 |
Predecessor | Richard II |
Successor | Henry V |
Spouse | Mary de Bohun Joan of Navarre |
Issue | |
Henry V of England Thomas of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Clarence John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford Humphrey, 1st Duke of Gloucester Blanche, Electress Palatine Philippa, Queen of Denmark, Norway and Sweden |
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House | House of Lancaster |
Father | John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster |
Mother | Blanche of Lancaster |
Born | [1] Bolingbroke Castle, Lincolnshire |
3 April 1367
Died | 20 March 1413[1] (aged 46) Westminster, London |
Burial | Canterbury Cathedral, Kent |
Signature |
Henry IV (3 April 1367[1][2] – 20 March 1413[3]) was King of England and Lord of Ireland (1399–1413). He was the ninth King of England of the House of Plantagenet and also asserted his grandfather's claim to the title King of France. He was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, hence his other name, Henry (of) Bolingbroke ( /ˈbɒlɪŋbrʊk/). His father, John of Gaunt, was the third son of Edward III, and enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of Henry's cousin Richard II, whom Henry eventually deposed. Henry's mother was Blanche, heiress to the considerable Lancaster estates, thus he became the first King of England from the Lancaster branch of the Plantagenets, one of the two family branches that were belligerents in the War of the Roses. The other one was the York branch, initiated by his uncle Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York (see section "Seniority in line from Edward III" below).
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Siblings
One of Henry's elder sisters, Philippa of Lancaster, married John I of Portugal, and his younger sister Elizabeth was the mother of John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter. His younger half-sister Catherine, the daughter of his father's second wife, Constance of Castile, was queen consort of Castile. He also had four half-siblings by Katherine Swynford, originally his sisters' governess, then his father's longstanding mistress, and later his third wife. These four children were given the surname Beaufort after a castle their father held in Champagne, France.[4]
Henry's relationship with his stepmother, Katherine Swynford, was a positive one, but his relationship with the Beauforts varied. In youth he seems to have been close to all of them, but rivalries with Henry and Thomas proved problematic after 1406. His brother-in-law Ralph Neville remained one of his strongest supporters, and so did his eldest half-brother John Beaufort, even though Henry revoked Richard II's grant to John of a marquessate. Thomas Swynford, a son from Katherine's first marriage to Sir Hugh Swynford, was another loyal companion. Thomas was Constable of Pontefract Castle, where King Richard II is said to have died.
Eventually, a direct descendant of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford through the Beaufort line would take the throne as Henry VII.
Relationship with Richard II
Henry experienced a rather more inconsistent relationship with King Richard II than his father had. First cousins and childhood playmates, they were admitted together to the Order of the Garter in 1377, but Henry participated in the Lords Appellant's rebellion against the king in 1387. After regaining power, Richard did not punish Henry, although he did execute or exile many of the other rebellious barons. In fact, Richard elevated Henry from Earl of Derby to Duke of Hereford.
Henry spent the full year of 1390 supporting the unsuccessful siege of Vilnius (capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) by Teutonic Knights with his 300 fellow knights. During this campaign he bought captured Lithuanian princes and then apparently took them back to England. Henry's second expedition to Lithuania in 1392 illustrates the financial benefits to the Order of these guest crusaders. His small army consisted of over 100 men, including longbow archers and six minstrels, at a total cost to the Lancastrian purse of £4,360. Despite the efforts of Henry and his English crusaders, two years of attacks on Vilnius proved fruitless. In 1392/93 Henry undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he made offerings at the Holy Sepulchre and at the Mount of Olives.[5] Later he vowed to lead a crusade to 'free Jerusalem from the infidel,' but he died before this could be accomplished.[6]
The relationship between Henry Bolingbroke and the king met with a second crisis. In 1398, a remark by Bolingbroke regarding Richard II's rule was interpreted as treason by Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk. The two dukes agreed to undergo a duel of honour (called by Richard II) at Gosford Green near Coventry. Yet before the duel could take place, Richard II decided to banish Henry from the kingdom (with the approval of Henry's father, John of Gaunt) to avoid further bloodshed. Mowbray himself was exiled for life.
John of Gaunt died in 1399. Without explanation, Richard cancelled the legal documents that would have allowed Henry to inherit Gaunt's land automatically. Instead, Henry would be required to ask for the lands from Richard. After some hesitation, Henry met with the exiled Thomas Arundel, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who had lost his position because of his involvement with the Lords Appellant. Henry and Arundel returned to England while Richard was on a military campaign in Ireland. With Arundel as his advisor, Henry began a military campaign, confiscating land from those who opposed him and ordering his soldiers to destroy much of Cheshire. Henry quickly gained enough power and support to have himself declared King Henry IV, imprison King Richard (who died in prison under mysterious circumstances) and bypass Richard's seven-year-old heir-presumptive, Edmund de Mortimer. Henry's coronation, on 13 October 1399, marked the first time following the Norman Conquest when the monarch made an address in English.
Henry consulted with Parliament frequently, but was sometimes at odds with the members, especially over ecclesiastical matters. On Arundel's advice, Henry obtained from Parliament the enactment of De heretico comburendo in 1401, which prescribed the burning of heretics; this was done mainly to suppress the Lollard movement. In 1410, parliament suggested confiscating church land. Henry refused to attack the Church that had helped him to power, and the House of Commons had to beg for the bill to be struck off the record.[7]
Reign
The previous ruler
Henry's first major problem as monarch was what to do with the deposed Richard. After an early assassination plot (The Epiphany Rising) was foiled in January 1400, he ordered his death (very probably by starvation). The evidence for this lies in the circulation of letters in France demonstrating prior knowledge of the death.[8] Richard died on 14 February 1400, after which his body was put on public display in the old St Paul's Cathedral to prove to his supporters that he was dead. He was 33 years old.
Rebellions
Henry spent much of his reign defending himself against plots, rebellions and assassination attempts.
Rebellions continued throughout the first ten years of Henry's reign, including the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr, who declared himself Prince of Wales in 1400, and the rebellion of Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland. The king's success in putting down these rebellions was due partly to the military ability of his eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, who later became king (though the son managed to seize much effective power from his father in 1410).
In the last year of Henry's reign, the rebellions picked up speed. "The old fable of a living Richard was revived", notes one account, "and emissaries from Scotland traversed the villages of England, in the last year of Henry's reign, declaring that Richard was residing at the Scottish Court, awaiting only a signal from his friends to repair to London and recover his throne."
A suitable-looking impostor was found and King Richard's old groom circulated word in the city that his master was alive in Scotland. "Southwark was incited to insurrection" by Sir Elias Lyvet (Levett) and his associate Thomas Clark, who promised Scottish aid to carry out the insurrection. Ultimately, the rebellion came to naught. The knight Lyvet was released and his follower thrown into the Tower.[9]
List of rebellions
- Epiphany Rising (1400). Executions of the Earls of Kent, Huntingdon and Salisbury and the Baron le Despencer for their attempt to have Richard II restored as King.
- Glyndŵr Rising in Wales (1400–1415), led by Owain Glyndŵr.
- Percy Rebellion (1402–1408): three attempts by the Percy family and their allies to overthrow Henry:
- Battle of Shrewsbury (1403). King Henry IV defeats a rebel army led by Henry Hotspur Percy who has allied with the Welsh rebel Owain Glyndŵr. Percy is killed in the battle by an arrow in his face. Thomas Percy, 1st Earl of Worcester, Sir Richard Venables and Sir Richard Vernon were publicly hanged, drawn and quartered in Shrewsbury on 23 July and their heads publicly displayed. The Earl of Northumberland flees to Scotland.
- Archbishop of York Richard le Scrope leads a failed rebellion in northern England (1405). Scrope and other rebel leaders are executed. The Earl of Northumberland again flees to Scotland.
- Battle of Bramham Moor (1408). The Earl of Northumberland invades Northern England with Scottish and Northumbrian allies but is defeated and killed in battle.
Foreign relations
Early in his reign, Henry hosted the visit of Manuel II Palaiologos, the only Byzantine emperor ever to visit England, from December 1400 to January 1401 at Eltham Palace, with a joust being given in his honour. He also sent monetary support with him upon his departure to aid him against the Ottoman Empire.[10]
In 1406 English pirates captured the future James I of Scotland off the coast of Flamborough Head as he was going to France.[11] James was delivered to the English king and remained a prisoner for the rest of Henry's reign.
Final illness and death
The later years of Henry's reign were marked by serious health problems. He had a disfiguring skin disease, and more seriously, suffered acute attacks of some grave illness in June 1405; April 1406; June 1408; during the winter of 1408–09; December 1412; and finally a fatal bout in March 1413. Medical historians have long debated the nature of this affliction or afflictions. The skin disease might have been leprosy (which did not necessarily mean precisely the same thing in the 15th century as it does to modern medicine), perhaps psoriasis, or some other disease. The acute attacks have been given a wide range of explanations, from epilepsy to some form of cardiovascular disease.[12] Some medieval writers felt that he was struck with leprosy as a punishment for his treatment of Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York, who was executed in June 1405 on Henry's orders after a failed coup.[13]
According to Holinshed, it was predicted that Henry would die in Jerusalem, and Shakespeare's play repeats this prophecy. Henry took this to mean that he would die on crusade. In reality, he died in the "Jerusalem" chamber of the house of the Abbot of Westminster, on 20 March 1413 during a convocation of Parliament.[3] His executor, Thomas Langley, was at his side.
Burial
Unusually for a King of England, he was buried not at Westminster Abbey, but at Canterbury Cathedral, on the north side of what is now the Trinity Chapel, as near to the shrine of Thomas Becket as possible. (No other kings are buried in the Cathedral, although his uncle Edward, the Black Prince, is buried on the opposite, south side of the chapel, also as near the shrine as possible.) At the time, Becket's cult was at its height, as evidenced in the Canterbury Tales written by the court poet Geoffrey Chaucer, and Henry was particularly devoted to it: he was anointed at his coronation with oil supposedly given to Becket by the Virgin Mary and that had then passed to Henry's father.[14]
Henry was given an alabaster effigy, alabaster being a valuable English export in the 15th century. His body was well-embalmed, as an exhumation in 1832 established.[15]
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles
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- Henry Bolingbroke
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- Earl of Derby (by courtesy until his father's death)
- Earl of Northampton – restored 1384 to his father-in-law's Earldom
- Duke of Hereford – after the punishment of the Lords Appellant
- 2nd Duke of Lancaster – upon his father's death
- King of England, Henry IV by deposition of his cousin King Richard II
Arms
Before his father's death in 1399, Henry bore the arms of the kingdom, differenced by a label of five points ermine. After his father's death, the difference changed to a label of five points per pale ermine and France.[16] Upon his accession as king, Henry updated the arms of the kingdom to match an update in those of royal France – from a field of fleur-de-lys to just three.
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Seniority in line from Edward III
When Richard II was forced to abdicate the throne in 1399, Henry was not next in line to the throne; the heir presumptive was Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, who descended from Edward III's second son, Lionel of Antwerp. Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt, was Edward's third son. The problem was solved by emphasising Henry's descent in a direct male line, whereas March's descent was through his grandmother. The official account of events claims that Richard voluntarily agreed to resign his crown to Henry on 29 September. The country had rallied behind Henry and supported his claim in parliament. However, the question of the succession never went away. The problem lay in the fact that Henry was only the most prominent male heir, the most senior in terms of agnatic descent from Edward III. This made him heir to the throne according to Edward III's entail to the crown of 1376,[17] but, as Dr. Ian Mortimer has recently pointed out in his biography of Henry IV, this had probably been supplanted by an entail of Richard II made in 1399 (see Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV, appendix two, pp. 366–9). Henry thus had to overcome the superior claim of the Mortimers in order to maintain his inheritance. This difficulty compounded when the Mortimer claim was merged with the Yorkist claim in the person of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. The Duke of York was the heir-general of Edward III, and the heir presumptive (due to agnatic descent) of Henry's grandson Henry VI (since Henry IV's other sons did not have male heirs, and the legitimated Beauforts were excluded from the throne). The House of Lancaster was finally deposed by Edward IV, son of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, during the Wars of the Roses.
The following are the senior descendants of Edward III. The descendants that were alive at the death of Richard II are in bold.
- Edward III of England (1312–1377)
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- Edward, the Black Prince (1330–1376)
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- Edward (1365–1372)
- Richard II of England (1367–1400)
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- Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence (1338–1368)
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- Philippa of Clarence, 5th Countess of Ulster (1355–1382)
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- Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March (1374–1398)
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- Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March (1391–1425)
- Roger Mortimer (died young c. 1411)
- Anne de Mortimer (1390–1411)
- Eleanor (d. 1418)
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- Edmund Mortimer (1376–1409?)
- Lady Elizabeth de Mortimer (1370/1371-1417)
- Lady Philippa de Mortimer (1375–1401)
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- John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster (1340–1399)
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- Henry IV of England (1367–1413)
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- Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York (1341–1402)
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- Edward, Duke of Aumerle, later declined to Earl of Rutland
- Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge (c.1375–1415)
Ancestry
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Marriage and issue
The date and venue of Henry's first marriage, to Mary de Bohun, are uncertain but her marriage licence, purchased by Henry's father, John of Gaunt, in June 1380 is retained in the Public Record Office. The accepted date of the ceremony is 5 February 1381, at Mary's family home of Rochford Hall, Essex.[3] However the near-contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart reports a "gossipy" tale that Gaunt's sister kidnapped Mary from Pleshey Castle, Essex, where her family was holding her cloistered as a novice nun in order to keep her fortune for themselves, and took her to her own castle at Arundel.[18][19] There Mary was persuaded to marry Henry. They had six children:[20]
- Edward (April 1382 – April 1382)
- Henry V of England (1386–1422)
- Thomas of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Clarence (1388–1421)
- John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford (1389–1435)
- Humphrey of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Gloucester (1390–1447)
- Blanche of England (1392–1409) married in 1402 Louis III, Elector Palatine
- Philippa of England (1394–1430) married in 1406 Eric of Pomerania, king of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Mary died in 1394, and on 7 February 1403 Henry married Joanna of Navarre, the daughter of Charles d'Évreux, King of Navarre, at Winchester. She was the widow of John V of Brittany, with whom she had had four daughters and four sons; she and Henry had only one son Edmund, called Labourde, who was born and died in 1401. The fact that in 1399 Henry had four sons from his first marriage was undoubtedly a clinching factor in his acceptability for the throne. By contrast, Richard II had no children and Richard's heir-presumptive Edmund Mortimer was only seven years old. The only two of Henry's six children who produced children to survive to adulthood were Henry V and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Henry IV's male Lancaster line ended in 1471 during the War of the Roses, between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, with the deaths of his grandson Henry VI and his son Edward, Prince of Wales. Henry IV's son, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, is an ancestor of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, queen consort of George VI and mother of their daughter Elizabeth II. Provided the monarchy remain within Elizabeth II's descendants, all future monarchs will also be descendants of Henry IV.
See also
- Cultural depictions of Henry IV of England
- Naish Priory corbelled heads of Henry IV and Joanna celebrating their marriage, at the manor of Mary de Bohun's late and powerful great-aunt, Margaret de Bohun
Notes
- ^ a b c BBC - History - Henry IV – BBC.co.uk. Retrieved 18 July 2012.
- ^ Mortimer, Ian (2007). "Henry IV's date of birth and the royal Maundy". Historical Research (University of London) 80 (210): 567–576. DOI:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2006.00403.x. ISSN 0950-3471.
- ^ a b c Brown, A. L.; Summerson, Henry (January 2008). "Henry IV (1366–1413)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/ref:odnb/12951.
- ^ Armitage-Smith, Sydney. John of Gaunt, King of Castile and Leon, Duke of Lancaster, &c.. Constable, 1904.
- ^ Bevan, Bryan (1994). Henry IV. London: Macmillan. p. 32. ISBN 0-948695-35-8.
- ^ Bevan (1994: 1)
- ^ Terry Jones, Medieval Lives, page 112
- ^ Mortimer, Fears of Henry IV, pp. 211–7
- ^ The Book of the Princes of Wales, Heirs to the Crown of England, Dr. John Doran, London, Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, 1860
- ^ G. Dennis, The Letters of Manuel II Palaeologus (Washington DC, 1977) Letter 38.
- ^ E W M Balfour-Melville, James I King of Scots, London 1936
- ^ Peter McNiven, "The Problem of Henry IV's Health, 1405–1413", English Historical Review, 100 (1985), pp. 747–772)
- ^ Swanson Religion and Devotion p. 298
- ^ Debbi Codling, "Henry IV and Personal Piety", History Today, 57:1 (January 2007), pp. 23–29.
- ^ ANTIQUARY s9-IX (228): 369. (1902).
- ^ Marks of Cadency in the British Royal Family
- ^ Given-Wilson, Chris (2004). Alfonso Antón, Isabel. ed. Building Legitimacy: Political Discourses and Forms of Legitimacy in Medieval Societies. Boston, MA: Brill. pp. 90. ISBN 90-04-13305-4.
- ^ Johnes, Thomas; Froissart, Jean (1806). Chronicles of England, France and Spain. 5. London: Longman. p. 242. OCLC 465942209.
- ^ Strickland, Agnes (1840). Lives of the queens of England from the Norman conquest with anecdotes of their courts. 3. London: Henry Colborn. p. 144. OCLC 459108616. http://books.google.com/books?id=KwY-AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA144&sig=DE0UJCLyOAUoGK8IQJtsy2nvECk#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- ^ Note: The idea that he and Mary had a child in 1382 (Edward of England (born and died April 1382 retrieved from http://genealogy.euweb.cz/anjou/anjou6.html#H4) is based on a misreading of an account which was published in an erroneous form by JH Wylie in the 19th century. It missed a line which made clear that the boy in question was the son of Thomas of Woodstock. The attribution of the name Edward to this boy is conjecture based on the fact that Henry was the grandson of Edward III and idolised his uncle Edward or Woodstock yet did not call any of his sons Edward. However, there is no evidence that there was any child at this time (when Mary de Bohun was twelve), let alone that he was called Edward. See appendix 2 in Ian Mortimer's book The Fears of Henry IV.
References
- Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV: the Life of England's Self-Made King (Jonathan Cape, 2007)
- Peter McNiven, "The Problem of Henry IV's Health, 1405–1413", English Historical Review, 100 (1985), pp 747–772
- ANTIQUARY s9-IX (228): 369. (1902)
- Swanson, R. N. (1995). Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215-c. 1515. Cambridge Medieval Textbooks. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-37950-4.
External links
Henry IV of England
Cadet branch of the House of Plantagenet
Born: 15 April 1366 Died: 20 March 1413 |
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Regnal titles | ||
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Preceded by Richard of Bordeaux |
King of England Lord of Ireland 1399–1413 |
Succeeded by Henry of Monmouth |
Preceded by John of Gaunt |
Duke of Aquitaine 1399–1400 |
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Peerage of England | ||
Preceded by John of Gaunt |
Duke of Lancaster 1399 |
Succeeded by Henry of Monmouth |
In abeyance
Title last held by
Humphrey de Bohun |
Earl of Northampton 1384–1399 |
Succeeded by Anne of Gloucester |
Political offices | ||
Preceded by John of Gaunt |
Lord High Steward 1399 |
Succeeded by Thomas of Lancaster |
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