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Henry IV (April 3, 1367 - March 20, 1413) was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, hence the other name by which he was known, "Henry of Bolingbroke". His father, John of Gaunt was the third and oldest surviving son of King Edward III of England, and enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of Richard II. Henry, however, had a rather more equivocal relationship with Richard: they were first cousins and childhood playmates, and 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 (many of the other rebellious barons were executed or exiled), and in fact elevated him from earl of Derby to duke of Hereford. The relationship between Henry and the King reached a second crisis in 1398, when Richard banished Henry from the kingdom for ten years -- with John of Gaunt's approval -- to avoid a blood feud between Henry of Bolingbroke and Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk (who was exiled for life). The following year, however, John of Gaunt died, and 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 (and future) Archbishop of Canterbury, who had lost his position because of his involvement with the Lords Appellant, and Henry and Arundel returned to England while Richard was on a military campaign in Ireland. With Arundel as his advisor, Henry Bolingbroke began a military campaign, confiscating land from those who opposed him and ordering his soldiers to destroy much of Cheshire. Quickly, Henry gained enough power and support to have himself declared King Henry IV, imprisoning King Richard (who died in prison under mysterious circumstances) and by-passing Richard’s heir-presumptive Roger Mortimer. Henry's coronation, on October 13, 1399, is notable as the first time following the Norman Conquest that the monarch made an address in English. Henry consulted with parliament frequently, but was sometimes at odds with them, especially over ecclesiastical matters. On Arundel's advice, Henry was the first English king to allow the burning of heretics, mainly to suppress the Lollard movement. In 1380 Henry had married Mary de Bohun; they had two daughters and four sons, one of which was the future Henry V of England. In 1406, one of their daughters, Philippa, married Eric of Pomerania, king of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Mary died in 1394, and in 1403 Henry married Joanna of Navarre, the daughter of Charles d'Evreux, King of Navarre. She was the widow of John V of Brittany, with whom she had four daughters and four sons, but she and Henry had no children. The fact that in 1399 Henry had four sons from his first marriage was undoubtedly a clinching factor in his acceptance onto the throne. By contrast, Richard II had no children, and Richard's heir-apparent Mortimer was only seven years old. Henry spent much of his reign defending himself against plots, rebellions and assassination attempts. His first problem was what to do with the deposed Richard, and after an early assassination plot was foiled, he probably ordered his death by starvation in early 1400, although there is no evidence for this. Richard's body was put on public display in the old St Paul's Cathedral to show his supporters that he was dead. Rebellions continued throughout the first ten years of Henry’s reign, including the revolt of Owen Glendower 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, who would later become King Henry V of England, though the younger Henry himself (who had maintained a close relationship with Richard II) managed to seize much effective power from his father in 1410. In 1406, English soldiers captured the future James I of Scotland as he was going to France. James remained a prisoner of Henry for the rest of Henry's reign. The later years of Henry's reign were marked by serious health problems. He had some sort of disfiguring skin disease, and more seriously suffered acute attacks of some grave illness in June 1405, April 1406, June 1408, during the winter of 1408-9, December 1412, and then 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 in any case didn't mean precisely the same thing as it does to modern medicine), perhaps psoriasis, a symptom of syphilis, or some other disease. The acute attacks have been given a wide range of explanations, from epilepsy to some form of cardiovascular disease. In 1413, he died in the Jerusalem Chamber in the house of the Abbot of Westminster. He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. His body was well embalmed, as an exhumation some centuries later established. Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite. Another version: Henry IV, also called (1377-97) Earl of Derby , or (1397-99) Duke of Hereford , byname Henry Bolingbroke , or Henry of Lancaster, King of England from 1399 to 1413, the first of three 15th-century monarchs from the House of Lancaster. He gained the crown by usurpation and successfully consolidated his power in the face of repeated uprisings of powerful nobles. At the same time he was unable to overcome the fiscal and administrative weaknesses that contributed to the eventual downfall of the Lancastrian dynasty. Henry was the eldest surviving son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by his first wife, Blanche. Before becoming king he was known as Henry Bolingbroke, and he received from his cousin the titles Earl of Derby (1377) and Duke of Hereford (1397). During the opening years of the reign of King Richard II (ruled 1377-99), Henry remained in the background while his father ran the government. When Gaunt departed for an expedition to Spain in 1386, Henry entered politics as an opponent of the crown. He and Thomas Mowbray (later 1st duke of Norfolk) became the younger members of the group of five opposition leaders-known as the lords appellants-who in 1387-89 outlawed Richard's closest associates and forced the King to submit to their domination. Richard had just regained the upper hand when Gaunt returned to reconcile the King to his enemies. Bolingbroke then went on crusades into Lithuania (1390) and Prussia (1392). Meanwhile, Richard had not forgiven his past enmity. In 1398 the King took advantage of a quarrel between Bolingbroke and Norfolk to banish both men from the kingdom. The seizure of the Lancastrian estates by the crown upon John of Gaunt's death (February 1399) deprived Henry of his inheritance and gave him an excuse to invade England (July 1399) as a champion of the nobility. Richard surrendered to him in August; Bolingbroke's reign as King Henry IV began when Richard abdicated on Sept. 30, 1399. Henry IV used his descent from King Henry III (ruled 1216-72) to justify his usurpation of the throne. Nevertheless, this claim did not convince those magnates who aspired to assert their authority at the crown's expense. During the first five years of his reign, Henry was attacked by a formidable array of domestic and foreign enemies. He quashed a conspiracy of Richard's supporters in January 1400. Eight months later the Welsh landowner Owen Glendower raised a national rebellion against oppressive English rule in Wales. Henry led a number of fruitless expeditions into Wales from 1400 to 1405, but his son, Prince Henry, had greater success in reasserting royal control over the region. Meanwhile, Glendower encouraged domestic resistance to Henry's rule by allying with the powerful Percy family-Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, and his son Sir Henry Percy, called Hotspur. Hotspur's brief uprising, the most serious challenge faced by Henry during his reign, ended when the King's forces killed the rebel in battle near Shrewsbury, Shropshire, in July 1403. In 1405 Henry had Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, executed for conspiring with Northumberland to raise another rebellion. Although the worst of Henry's political troubles were over, he then began to suffer from an affliction that his contemporaries believed to be leprosy-it may have been congenital syphilis. A quickly suppressed insurrection, led by Northumberland in 1408, was the last armed challenge to Henry's authority. Throughout these years the King had to combat border incursions by the Scots and ward off conflict with the French, who aided the Welsh rebels in 1405-06. To finance these military activities, Henry was forced to rely on parliamentary grants. From 1401 to 1406 Parliament repeatedly accused him of fiscal mismanagement and gradually acquired certain precedent-setting powers over royal expenditures and appointments. As Henry's health deteriorated, a power struggle developed within his administration between his favourite, Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, and a faction headed by Henry's Beaufort half brothers and Prince Henry. The latter group ousted Arundel from the chancellorship early in 1410, but they, in turn, fell from power in 1411. Henry then made an alliance with the French faction that was waging war against the Prince's Burgundian friends. As a consequence, tension between Henry and the Prince was high when Henry became totally incapacitated late in 1412. He died several months later, and the Prince succeeded as King Henry V. http://en.wikipedia.org
William B.
