646 



HENRY IV. -V. OF ENGLAND 



the arbitration of Louis of France, who annulled 

 the Provisions. De Montfort and his party dis- 

 regarded their agreement to be bound by his judg- 

 ment, and took up arms against the king. They 

 defeated him, and took him prisoner in the battle 

 of Lewes, on 14th May 1264. The battle was followed 

 by an agreement called the Mise of Lewes ( q. v. ), 

 more humiliating to the king than the Provisions 

 of Oxford. Earl Simon now summoned the parlia- 

 ment (20th January 1265) which has since been 

 famous as the first assembly of the sort in which 

 boroughs were represented ; although it was nearly 

 the end of the century before the representatives 

 of towns began regularly to sit in parliament. De 

 Montfort's supremacy did not last long. Within a 

 year the powerful Earl of Gloucester deserted his 

 ' party, and, with Prince Edward, who had escaped 

 from captivity, led an overwhelming army against 

 him. Simon was defeated and slain at Evesham, 

 on 4th August 1265. With this event the im- 

 portance of this long, dismal reign ends. Henry 

 died on 16th November 1272, and his son Edward, 

 though absent in Palestine, was at once proclaimed 

 king. 



See Freeman, Stubbs (vol. ii.), Prothero's Life and 

 Times of Simon de Montfort (1887), and other works 

 cited at MONTFORT. 



Henry IV. of England, the first king of the 

 House of Lancaster, was born 3d April 1367, the 

 son of John of Gaunt, and was surnamed Boling- 

 broke, from his birthplace in Lincolnshire. His 

 father was the fourtn son of Edward III., his 

 mother the daughter of Duke Henry of Lancaster. 

 In 1386 Henry was made Earl of Derby, and 

 married Mary de Bohun, the second richest heiress 

 in England. For some years he led a roving life. 

 He was present at the taking of Tunis in 1390, 

 fought against the heathen on the shores of the 

 Baltic, made an attempt to reach Jerusalem in 

 1392-93, and commanded some English lances in 

 the disastrous battle against the Turks at Nicopolis 

 (1396). In 1397 he supported Richard II. in the 

 revolution which destroyed the Duke of Gloucester, 

 and was created Duke of Hereford ; in 1398 he was 

 banished, and in the following year, when his father 

 died, his estates were declared forfeit to Richard. 

 Thereupon, in July 1399, Henry landed in York- 

 shire with three small vessels. He met with no 

 opposition ; and on September 29, in the Tower, he 

 induced Richard, who had been deserted and be- 

 trayed, to sign a renunciation of his claims to be 

 king. On the next day Henry rose in his place in 

 parliament and claimed the kingdom and crown, all 

 present assenting. The act was a usurpation, for 

 Henry's claim to succeed by right of birth was barred 

 by the six-year-old son of the Earl of March, who 

 was descended from an older branch. Richard was 

 shut up in the castle of Pomfret. There was an 

 attempted rising on the part of his friends in the 

 following January, but it was easily suppressed, 

 the leaders being beheaded by the mob ; and in 

 the middle of January 1400 Richard died in his 

 dungeon, probably from starvation. Yet his death 

 was more than once denied by the disaffected 

 party, and many cruel executions were necessary 

 before the report that he had escaped to Scotland 

 could be silenced. Henry's reign was one of trouble 

 and commotion. There were incessant rebellions, 

 and more than one treacherous attempt was made 

 upon his life, until in his last years he was reduced 

 to a state of constant fear. Lawlessness, rising 

 partly out of the great poverty and heavy taxa- 

 tion, was rife in every quarter ; piracy crippled 

 commerce, though not much more so than the 

 increased duties laid on staples ; and frequent 

 descents were made upon the coast by expeditions 

 from France for the country of Richard s young 

 queen was Henry's implacable enemy. The king's 



movements, too, were constantly hampered for 

 want of money, there being no funds available for 

 anything beyond the most ordinary expenses of 

 the country ; and ' war treasurers ' were ultimately 

 appointed by the impatient Commons to watch 

 the disbursement of the sums voted. In 1404 

 the Illiterate Parliament, to which it had been 

 directed that no lawyer should be returned as a 

 knight of the shire, proposed to confiscate the 

 property of the clergy ; but the necessity under 

 ,which Henry found himself of supporting the 

 authority of the church led him not only to dis- 

 countenance all such proposals, but also to permit 

 severe enactments against heretics. On 2d March 

 1401 the first case in England of burning for heresy 

 occurred, when a clergyman named William 

 Chatrys was burned at Smithfield. 



The chief disturbances of the peace of the reign, 

 however, were occasioned by the Welsh and the 

 Scots. Under Owen Glendower (q.v.) the Welsh 

 maintained their independence throughout this 

 reign, and kept up a harassing warfare against the 

 English. Scotland Henry invaded in 1400, besieg- 

 ing Edinburgh Castle until compelled by famine to 

 retire. In 1402, while Henry was engaged against 

 the Welsh, the Scots in turn made an irruption 

 into Northumberland with 40,000 men ; but a 

 body of some 10,000 of them were encountered by 

 the Earl of Northumberland and his son Harry 

 Percy, with a force computed at 12,000 lances and 

 7000 archers, and met with a crushing defeat ( 14th 

 September) at Humbleton (or Homildon), where 

 Earl Douglas and the Duke of Albany's son were 

 taken prisoners. Harry Percy (Hotspur) and his 

 house shortly after broke with the king, and 

 leagued with Douglas and Glendower against him ; 

 but the king met the Percies at Shrewsbury (21st 

 July 1403), where the insurgents were utterly 

 defeated, Hotspur slain, and Douglas again taken 

 prisoner. Two other insurrections followed, but 

 were easily suppressed ; and the remainder of the 

 reign was comparatively free from domestic 

 troubles. In 1406 Prince James of Scotland 

 (afterwards James I.) was captured on his way 

 to France, and was detained and educated in 

 England. The civil wars in France gave Henry 

 an opportunity to send two expeditions (1411 and 

 1412) to that country; but in his later years he 

 was a miserable invalid, afflicted with epileptic 

 fits, the last of which seized him while in West- 

 minster Abbey. He died on 20th March 1413, in 

 the Jerusalem Chamber ; and this was taken to 

 explain a prophecy which had said that he was to 

 die at Jerusalem and as late as the preceding 

 November he certainly had hoped to go once more 

 on crusade. Henry's last days were embittered by 

 a dread that he would be supplanted by his eldest 

 son. He had commenced his reign energetic and 

 determined to govern on constitutional principles ; 

 to this resolve he remained steadfast, as he main- 

 tained also his devoutness and purity of life ; 

 but disappointment and perhaps disease latterly 

 made him cruel, vindictive, suspicious, and irre- 

 solute. The labour and sorrow of founding a 

 dynasty were his, and his usurped crown he found 

 a heavy burden. 



See Stubbs, vol. iii. ; Gairdner, The Houses of Lan- 

 caster and York, in 'Epochs of History' series (1874); 

 and especially Wylie, History of England under Henry 

 the Fourth (1884-96). To these must be added, for 

 this and the next two reigns, and for Henry VIII., 

 Shakespeare's historical plays, which are based mainly 

 on the Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed (q.v.). For 

 their value as history, see Courtenay's Commentaries on 

 the Historical Plays of Shakespeare ( 2 vols. 1840 ). 



Henry V. was born in the castle of Monmouth, 

 9th August 1387, the eldest of the six children 

 of Henry IV. by Mary de Bohun, from whom he 



