HENRY 



2770 



HENRY 



Henry III (1207-1272), eldest son of King 

 John, succeeded his father in 1216, but his per- 

 sonal .rule did not begin until 1227, when he 

 was declared of age. He proved himself a 

 faithless and tyrannical king, and in 1258 the 

 great nobles, led by Earl Simon de Montfort, 

 rose in revolt, forcing him to sign an agree- 

 ment known as the Provision of Oxford, 

 whereby the governing power was to be placed 

 for the time being in the hands of a com- 

 mittee of the barons. Henry later repudiated 

 this agreement, and in the civil war which fol- 

 lowed he was defeated at the Battle of Leines 

 (1264) and taken prisoner. In the king's name 

 Earl Simon then summoned a Parliament, in 

 which the commons, as well as the clergy and 

 nobility, were represented,- marking the begin- 

 ning of the modern system of Parliamentary 

 government (1265). Throughout the remain- 

 der of Henry's reign, his son, Prince Edward, 

 had control of affairs. 



Henry IV (1367-1413) was the eldest son of 

 John of Gaunt (which see), and the first of 

 the Lancastrian line of kings. He ascended 

 the throne in 1399, on the abdication of the 

 weak Richard II, and as he owed his right to 

 rule to Parliament he is sometimes known as 

 the first constitutional monarch of England. 

 His firmness and vigor were revealed early in 

 his reign, in his suppression of the uprisings 

 of rebellious nobles and of the Scotch and the 

 Welsh. During this period occurred the first 

 persecution of the Lollards. Henry was the 

 friend and patron of England's first great poet, 

 Geoffrey Chaucer. 



Henry V (1387-1422), son and successor of 

 Henry IV, came to the throne in 1413. He 

 continued his father's persecution of the Lol- 

 lards, and in 1417 put to death their celebrated 

 leader, Sir John Oldcastle. The Hundred 

 Years' War with France, begun in the reign of 

 Edward III, was renewed by Henry in 1415. 

 After capturing the town of Harfleur, he met 

 a great French army of armor-clad knights on 

 the field of Agincourt, and with a force of 

 10,000, most of whom were armed with bows 

 and arrows, overwhelmingly defeated them. 

 Five years later he concluded with the French 

 king, Charles VI, the Peace of Troyes, accord- 

 ing to which the crown of France was to go to 

 the English king on the death of Charles. War 

 broke out again in 1422, and early in the cam- 

 paign Henry was taken ill and died. 



Henry VI (1421-1471) was proclaimed king 

 of England in 1422, on the death of his father, 

 Henry V, though at this time he was less than 



a year old. A few weeks later Charles VI of 

 France died, and the child, in accordance with 

 the terms of the Treaty of Treyes, was pro- 

 claimed king of France also. Henry's uncle, 

 the Duke of Bedford, ruled for him in 

 France and succeeded in holding that country 

 until 1429, when, through the heroism of Joan 

 of Arc (which see), the English were defeated 

 at Orleans. Gradually the French won back 

 their possessions, until, in 1451, Calais alone 

 was left to England. That was not lost until a 

 century later. 



Henry was pious and gentle, but hopelessly 

 incompetent, and at intervals suffered from at- 

 tacks of insanity. The great nobles took 

 advantage of his weakness to oppress the com- 

 mon people, and the popular discontent found 

 expression in 1450 in the uprising known as 

 Jack Cade's Rebellion. In this reign began 

 the struggle between the rival houses of York 

 and Lancaster (see ROSES, WARS OF THE), the 

 first battle of which, fought at Saint Albans in 

 1455, was a defeat for the king's forces. In 

 1461, Edward IV, head of the House of York, 

 was crowned king. Henry was reinstated for 

 a brief period in 1470, but the following year 

 he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, 

 where he was murdered. 



Henry VII (1456-1509), first of the royal 

 Tudor line, was proclaimed king in 1485, after 

 the defeat of Richard III at Bosworth's Field, 

 the last battle of the Wars of the Roses. He 

 laid claim to the kingly title as a descendant, 

 on his mother's side, of John of Gaunt, founder 

 of the House of Lancaster. His father was 

 Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond. By his 

 marriage to Elizabeth, a princess of the House 

 of York, he at last united the two rival houses. 

 Several insurrections troubled his reign, but 

 these were easily suppressed, and he won the 

 support of the common people by refusing to 

 be drawn into foreign wars. 



During his reign the royal power was greatly 

 strengthened by despotic measures, but these 

 were directed chiefly against the nobility, from 

 whom he exacted heavy taxes. To strengthen 

 an alliance made with Spain he arranged for 

 the marriage of his son Arthur to Catherine, 

 daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and, after 

 Arthur's death, secured the betrothal of the 

 young widow to his son Henry (afterward 

 Henry VIII). The friendship of the Scotch 

 was won by the union of his daughter Margaret 

 with James IV of Scotland. Henry's reign 

 was made glorious by the discovery of the 

 continent of North America in 1497. 



