Henry IV (England)

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Henry IV. Fantasy from the late 16th century
Signature of Henry IV.

Henry IV. (English: Henry IV. , Also Henry Bolingbroke ) (* April or May 1366 or 1367 at Bolingbroke Castle , Lincolnshire , † March 20, 1413 in London ) was, after he had previously dethroned Richard II , King of England from 1399 to 1413.

He was the son and heir of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster , and the first English king from the House of Lancaster , which later fought to keep power in the so-called Wars of the Roses .

Life

royal coat of arms of Henry IV.

Henry IV was the only surviving son of John of Gaunt, the third surviving son of Edward III. , from his first marriage to Blanche of Lancaster , daughter and heiress of Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster . He belonged to a branch line of the Plantagenet royal family and was heir to the Duchy of Lancaster with its extensive estates. The only thing that can be said with certainty about the birth of Heinrich is that he was born at Bolingbroke Castle, which is why he was also called Henry Bolingbroke. However, the exact date of birth is not known. Most often, however, you will find information that settles his birth in April or May of the year 1366 or 1367.

On April 23, 1377 he was, together with his cousin Richard of Bordeaux by King Edward III. inducted into the Order of the Garter as a Knight Companion . When Edward III. died two months later, Richard of Bordeaux was crowned as Richard II as the new king. From July 1377, Heinrich also used his father's subordinate title, Earl of Derby, as a courtesy title .

In 1380 Heinrich married Mary de Bohun , who was then still a minor , one of the two daughters and heiresses of Humphrey de Bohun, who died in 1373 , 7th Earl of Hereford, 6th Earl of Essex, 2nd Earl of Northampton . Since his wife came of age in 1384, he received from her right the income from the lands of the extinct Earldoms of Hereford and Northampton . He continued to move in after the death of his wife in 1394. In 1397 he was awarded the title Duke of Hereford .

During King Richard II's disputes with the parliaments, Henry, like the majority of the English nobility, was initially on the side of the opposition to the king. In the Merciless Parliament of 1388, Heinrich was one of the appellants who enforced several death sentences against Richard's supporters. When the king regained power in the following years, Heinrich switched to Richard II's side. 1390/91 and in 1392 he undertook trips to Prussia , in 1392/93 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem .

In 1398 Heinrich was exiled to France for ten years after a court intrigue and as part of a general wave of lawsuits. When John of Gaunt died in February 1399, Henry held extensive estates, the titles Duke of Guyenne , 2nd Duke of Lancaster , 3rd Earl of Derby , 6th Earl of Lancaster and 6th Earl of Leicester , and the office of Lord High Steward inherited, the king extended this banishment for life in order to appropriate Henry's rich inheritance. However, when Richard set out on a campaign in Ireland in June 1399, Heinrich Bolingbroke landed in Yorkshire and immediately received a huge influx from almost all of the English nobility. Richard II returned immediately from Ireland, but his army disbanded and most of the time ran over to Heinrich. This captured Richard in August 1399 and brought him to London. Imprisoned in the Tower, Richard II was forced to give up the crown and Heinrich Bolingbroke, who now called himself Henry IV, was appointed as his successor. The convened parliament declared Richard unworthy of the crown. Henry IV was crowned on October 13, 1399.

With the deposition of the king, the succession to the throne was by no means clear. Had the inheritance law been strictly interpreted, Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March , would have stood before Heinrich in the line of succession. However, this was unacceptable to Heinrich and the Privy Council, as, given Edmund's minority, there was a risk that Richard, who was still alive at the time, would recapture the throne or that an underage king would have led to civil war and anarchy again. Heinrich succeeded in asserting his own claim to rule, with reference to his close relationship to his predecessor, through parliamentary resolutions and with reference to divine right. In view of these flimsy justifications, massive doubts remained about the legitimacy of the succession to the throne throughout his reign, which arose primarily through criticism and intrigue from the clergy, which Heinrich was rather hostile to because of the anti-clerical attitude of his father John of Gaunt. He tried a political rapprochement with the German King Ruprecht by the marriage of his eldest daughter Blanca with his eldest son Ludwig III. the bearded man . The "English marriage" took place on July 6, 1402 in Cologne.

In terms of realpolitik, Henry IV was able to achieve a number of successes in his short reign. A few months after taking power, he managed to put down an uprising by powerful supporters of Richard II. Shortly afterwards Richard was murdered while in custody in Pontefract Castle , presumably on the orders of Heinrich. In the following years there were several revolts of the powerful northern English aristocratic family Percy , who had recently supported Heinrich in asserting his claim to the throne, as well as an unusually extensive uprising of the Welsh under Owain Glyndŵr that lasted until 1410 . The Percy Rising ended with the defeat of the family-owned Duke of Northumberland in 1408 at the Battle of Branham Moor. Heinrich emerged victorious from all of these disputes. The King's success is due in part to the military capabilities of his eldest son Henry, who later became King Henry V was. He found allies above all in the clergy, especially in Thomas Arundel , Archbishop of Canterbury. This meant a strengthening of the Commons in Parliament, which were able to temporarily extend their say in the royal budget. Another consequence of this policy was crackdown on the Lollards , a movement that questioned fundamental church tenets and was persecuted as heresy , especially in the late phase of Henry's reign .

In 1406, English soldiers captured the later James I of Scotland, who was on his way to France . Jakob remained a prisoner until the end of Henry's reign.

From 1405 the king showed increasing symptoms of illness. His health deteriorated dramatically in the winter of 1408/09. Nevertheless, he kept power firmly in hand, although his son, who later became Heinrich V , urged him to withdraw from politics. This led to a rift between father and son, which ended shortly before Henry IV's death. Heinrich IV was afflicted by various diseases, including epilepsy . On March 20, 1413 he died in Jerusalem rooms in the house of the Abbot of Westminster from a skin disease, probably leprosy was, and was in the Cathedral of Canterbury buried. If the cause of death was leprosy, he was probably infected with this disease on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the late outbreak is not uncommon due to a longer waiting period for this disease. An exhumation a few centuries later revealed that his body had been superbly embalmed .

In many chronicles of the Middle Ages, Henry IV is referred to as a despot and usurper . This is probably a representation colored by church circles, with which the clergy reacted to the restriction of their power by Heinrich, but especially by his father. Henry IV is the eponymous main character of William Shakespeare's two-part drama Henry IV.

Marriages and offspring

Heinrich had two daughters and five sons from his first marriage to Mary de Bohun in 1380 :

His wife Mary died on June 4, 1394. In 1403 Heinrich married Johanna of Navarre , the daughter of King Charles II of Navarre , as a second marriage . She was the widow of John V of Brittany , to whom she had borne four daughters and four sons, but she and Heinrich had no children.

literature

Web links

Commons : Heinrich IV.  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Henry IV of England  - Quotes

Remarks

  1. ^ National Portrait Gallery
  2. ↑ See: p10187.htm # i101863 on thepeerage.com  ; for a more detailed discussion of the problem, see George Edward Cokayne : The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom - extant, extinct or dormant. Reprint of the London edition, St. Catherine Press: 1910–1959, Sutton, Stroud et al. a. 2000, ISBN 0-904387-82-8 , p. 412.
  3. ^ Werner Paravicini: The Prussian journeys of the European nobility. Part 1 (= supplements of Francia. Volume 17/1). Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1989, ISBN 3-7995-7317-8 , p. 149 ( digitized version ).
  4. ↑ Walther Holtzmann: The English marriage of Count Palatine Ludwig III. In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine. NF 43: 1-22 (1930).
predecessor Office successor
New title created Duke of Hereford
1397-1399 		Title merged with the crown
John of Gaunt Duke of Guyenne
1399-1400 		Henry V.
John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster
Earl of Derby
Earl of Lancaster
Earl of Leicester
1399 		Title merged with the crown
John of Gaunt Lord High Steward
1399 		Thomas of Lancaster
Richard II King of England,
Lord of Ireland
1399-1413 		Henry V.
personal data
SURNAME Henry IV.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heinrich Bolingbroke; Henry Bolingbroke
BRIEF DESCRIPTION King of England
DATE OF BIRTH April 1366 or May 1366 or April 1367 or May 1367
PLACE OF BIRTH Bolingbroke Castle, Lincolnshire
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1413
Place of death London