HENRT IV. (OF ENGLAND). 



HENRY V. (OF ENGLAND). 



following UMM eventa, the earl is rappoMd to hare 

 pent on the Continent. We find him ai^iu in England in 1397 at 

 Uwtime of lh- Mtxura of Gloucester, whiali ot, Richard, in a procla- 

 mation which he JMoad on the occasion, stated to have been done 

 with his approbation. Within a few month*, after being railed to 

 the rank of l>uke of Hereford, he and the Duke of Norfolk, formerly 

 the Karl of Nottingham, who had alao participated in Olonoeater'a 

 rebellion ten yean before, were involved in the aame ruin with 

 their former associates, in cirouuiktancea leading to a strong suspicion 

 thai, notwithstanding the forgiveness and even favour which he had 

 apparently shown them, the insidious king had never forgotten their 

 owner, but bad still cherished a secret determination of revenge. 

 It appears that while Hereford WAS riding from Brentford to London 

 he waa overtaken by Norfolk, who, entering into conversation with 

 him, expressed his conviction, on grounds which he stated, that the 

 king was preparing to destroy them. In some way or other, but 

 how is doubtful, a report of this conversation reached the eat a of the 

 king. The consequence waa that Hereford in obedience to n royal 

 order appeared before liichard and the parliament nt Shrewsbury, 

 January 80, 1393, and there formally accused Norfolk of having spoken 

 to him in the terms that have been mentioned. Apparently ho had 

 been induced to take this course as affording hU only chance of 

 escape from destruction ; but it did not save him, although it perfectly 

 answered the end the king probably had in view. The charge against 

 Norfolk was in the first instance referred to a committee of twelve 

 peers and six commoners', and eventually it was determined that it 

 should be brought before a high court of chivalry. That court assem- 

 bled at Windi-or on the 29th of April, and awarded that wager of 

 battle should be joined between the two dukes at Coventry on the 

 16th of September. When the day arrived and the combatants had 

 entered the lieU, and were on the point of advancing to the encounter, 

 the king, who presided, suddenly threw down his warder, and so 

 arrested both where they stood. Norfolk was ordered to go on a 

 pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and banished from Kngland for life ; 

 Hereford was also sentenced to quit the kingdom withiu four mouths, 

 and to remain abroad for the next ten years. Ho retired to Paris, 

 and while he was resident in that city his father the Duke of Lancaster 

 died, February 3, 1899, on which liichard immediately seized his 

 estates, on the pretence that the banishment of the son disqualified 

 him from inheriting. This injury, and the advioe of Arundel, arch- 

 bishop of Canterbury, who hud alao been banished from Kngland, 

 di termined Hereford, now Duke of Lancaster, immediately to letuni 

 home, with the avowed object of maintaining his rights as Duke of 

 Lancaster, but doubtless with a real design of a higher pitch. He 

 landed with a few attendants at Itavenspurn in Yorkshire on the 4th 

 of July, while Richard was in Ireland. The events that followed 

 belong to the history of the reign of that king ; it is sufficient to state 

 hen that Henry, who was immediately joined by the two powerful 

 earls cf Northumberland and Westmorland, carried everything before 

 him, and, the deposition of Kichard having been pronounced by the 

 parliament, was on the 30th of September solemnly acknowledged as 

 king by the estates of the realm assembltd in Westminster Halt The 

 commencement of his reign is reckoned from that day. 



This change was undoubtedly hi the highest degree acceptable to 

 the t;reat body of the people, among whom the vices and misgovern- 

 inent of Richard had made him an object cf hatred or contempt, 

 while Henry of Lancaster had long been the idol of their affections 

 and hopes. The new settlement was first disturbed by a plot of a few 

 of the nobility, the lords who had appealed the Duke of Olouceater, 

 and who for that act had now been deprived of the titles and estates 

 they had received aa the reward of their services from Kichard. Their 

 scheme to assassinate the new king however was detected in time, and 

 when they afterwards flew to arms they were everywhere fallen upon 

 and easily overpowered by the spontaneous loyalty of the people. 

 A war with France, of which some apprehension was for a moment 

 entertained, from the feelings naturally excited in the king and people 

 of that country by the treatment of Richard II., who had lately 

 married Isabella, the young daughter of Charles VI., was averted by 

 the restoration of that princess. Military operations however speedily 

 commenced on the side both of Wales and Scotland, in the former of 

 which countries an insurrection, beaded by the famous Owen Gleudwr, 

 baffled all Henry's effort* during several successive campaigns to put 

 it down [OLEKDWR, Ow] ; while two Scottish armies, that marched 

 across the borders, pretending that they came to restore king Richard, 

 who, it nas said, was still alive and resident at the northern court, 

 were deflated, the first on the 22nd of June 1402, at Nesbet Moor, the 

 second on the 14th of September, in the same year, iu the much more 

 destructive fight of Homildon Hilt The victorious commander in 

 this last uff.iir was Harry 1 Yrcy, the renowned Hotspur, eldest son of 

 the Karl of Northumberland, the nobleman to whom more than to 

 any other individual Henry owed his throne. That great house, 

 conscious of its power and its services, now broke with the king of 

 it* own making, on his refusal to permit the ransoming of Henry 

 Percy's wife's brother, Sir Kdmund Mortimer, who had been taken 

 prisoner by Olendwr, and whom, as the uncle ai;d natural guardian of 

 the young Karl of March, the legitimate hi ir by lineal di scent to the 

 crown, H< nry had bis own reasons for wishing out of the way. [See 

 the genealogical table in KDWABJJ IV. ; but alter tho line drawn from 



Lionel, duko of Clarence, so as to fall upon Philippa, and not upon 

 her husband, Edmund Mortimer, as there printed.] A most formidable 

 rebellion followed, in which tho 1'ercies wore joined by Hotspur's 

 uncle the Karl of Worcester, and Scroop, archbishop of York, and 

 leagued both with Owen Qlendwr, who now gave his daughter in 

 marriage to his prisoner Mortimer, and with tho Scottish Karl Uouglaa, 

 whom Percy liberated without ransom, on condition of his aiding 

 them with all his power. The mighty confederacy however waa 

 annihilated, '21st of July 1403, by the battle of Shrewsbury, in which 

 Heury Percy, the commander of tho rebel force, was himself slain. 

 This decisive victory established the throne of Henry of Lancaster. 

 Some further hostilities with the Soots and the Welsh, the latter 

 being assisted by a force from France, continued to give him occupa- 

 tion for two or three years longer; but before the end of 1405 Owen 

 Qleudwr was effectually put down, principally by the activity and 

 military skill of Henry, prince of Wales, the eldest son of the English 

 king, and a truce with Scotland bad restored quiet for the present in 

 that quarter. It waa iu the time of this truce that on tho 30th of 

 March 1405, an Kngluh cruiser captured the ship in which James, the 

 eldest son of King Robert of Scotland, was proceeding to Franop, ou 

 which Henry tetained possession of the young prince, who, becoming 

 king the following year by the death of his father, remained a 

 prisoner iu Kngland till 1424. About the aame time Henry detected 

 a conspiracy against bis life, one of the principal persona engu 

 which was his cousin Edward, duke of York, whose estates were imme- 

 diately forfeited to the crown, and quelled another insurrectionary 

 attempt of tho Percies, headed by Scroop, archbishop of York, who 

 expiated his treason by a death on the scaffold. A third northern 

 insurrection, the last effort of the crafty old Karl of Northumberland, 

 who had some years before been deprived of his estates and outlawed, 

 was put down, 28th of February 1408, ai the battle of Branbatu 

 Moor, near Tadcaster, in which the earl himself fell 



Meanwhile an irregular war with France, which had at first been 

 carried on principally at sea, had led at last to some military operations 

 in Uuienue, where the English possessions were attacked by the 

 French; and this involved Henry to a sliglit degne in tho contest 

 between the two great factions that then distracted France, the 

 Bourguignons and the Orleanists, or Armagnaca. Having first sent a 

 small body of troops to the assistance of the former iu 1411, tho next 

 year he changed sides and entered into alliance with the latter, his 

 principal object apparently being to keep up the anarchy which their 

 quarrel occasioned ; but these transactions led to no important national 

 results during this reign. 



In Lis latter years Henry, whose character the more it b 

 known developed a harsher and more uuamiable aspect, lost all tho 

 popular favour that hod greeted his accession ; and he had the nnliap- 

 piuess of seeing not only his chief friends transformed into enemies, 

 but the affections of his subjects generally transferred to his sou. Tu 

 ill-health of body is also said to have been added remorse for many 

 of the actions of his unscrupulous career, and especially for the means 

 by which he had acquired a crown that sat so heavy on hia brow, and 

 which he superstitiously dreaded Heaven would not permit to be long 

 worn by his descendants. He had endeavoured to soothe his conscience 

 with the project of a crusade to the Holy Land, but death took him 

 off before he could execute that design. He breathed his last on tho 

 20th of March 1413, in the forty-seventh year of his age and the 

 fourteenth of hU reign. 



By hU first wife, Mary do Bohuii, Henry IV. had the following 

 children:!, Henry, who succeeded him; 2, Thomas, born 

 created earl of Albemarle and duke of Clarence 1411, died 1421 ; 8, 

 John, created earl of Keudal and duke of Bedford, 1414, afterwards 

 regent of France, died 1435; 4, Humphrey, created earl of Pembroke 

 and duke of Gloucester 1414, died 1440; 5, Blanch, married succes- 

 sively to Lewis Barbatus, elector palatine and duke of Bavaria, to tho 

 king of Aragou and to tho Duko of Bar; and ti, I'hilippa, married to 

 Eric X., king of Denmark and Norway. By a second wife, Joanna, 

 daughter of Charles II., king of Navarre, and widow of John V., duke 

 of Brittany, whom he married in 1403, he had no issue. 



Of the laws made in this reign the most memorable is tho statute 

 against the Lollards (the 2 Henry IV., c. 15), one of the enactments of 

 which was that persons guilty of heresy, and refusing to abjure, in- 

 relapsing after abjuration, should be publicly burned. It is commonly 

 supposed however that the writ ' De 1 lau-etico Coinbureudo ' was a 

 common-law process before the passing of this statute. Several exe- 

 cutions took place upon tho new law hi the course of the reign. In 

 Henry's first parliament also the law of treason was brought back (by 

 the 1st Henry IV., o. 10) to the state in which it had beeu placed by 

 the act of the 25th of Edward III., certain new treasons created in 

 the 21st year of the preceding reign being all repealed. The defects 

 of Henry's title to the crown, and tho repeated applications he was 

 obliged to mako to parliament for the means of putting down tho 

 insurrections by which the new settlement was assailed, had tho effect 

 of greatly enhancing the importance and power of the House of 

 Commons under this king and the other Lancastrian princes. 



HENRY V., surnamed of Monmouth, from the place of his birth, 

 was the eldest son of king Henry IV., by his first wife, Mary de 

 liohun, and was born in the year 1388. He waa educated at Queen's 

 College, Oxford, under the superintendence of his half- uncle, the great 



