HENRY 



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HENRY 



Emperor. Of these, Henry III, Henry IV and 

 Henry VI were the most important. 



Henry III (1017-1056) succeeded to the 

 throne of Germany in 1039 on the death of his 

 father, Conrad II, and was crowned emperor 

 in 1046. Under his able rule the power of the 

 German nation was greatly increased, and he is 

 also renowned in history for the part he took 

 in strengthening the powers of the Pope and 

 in encouraging reforms in the Church. In 

 1046, when three rivals were attempting to 

 gain the Papal throne,' he made an expedition 

 to Italy, settled the difficulty by appointing 

 a new Pope, Clement II, and throughout the 

 rest of his reign made the nominations for the 

 holy office. 



Henry IV (1050-1106), son and successor of 

 Henry III, became king of Germany at the 

 age of six. The nobles during his mother's 

 regency rose in revolt, and when Henry, in 

 1069, took control of affairs, he found the king- 

 dom in a state of turmoil. After several years 

 of warfare, by which he attempted to estab- 

 lish his authority throughout his dominions, he 

 came into conflict with Pope Gregory VII, who, 

 in 1075, issued a decree forbidding civil rulers 

 to make appointments to Church offices. 

 Henry's answer to this decree was his sum- 

 moning of a council at Worms in 1076, which 

 deposed the Pope. 



Gregory in turn excommunicated the king, 

 releasing his subjects from their allegiance to 

 him, and after a futile struggle Henry was 

 forced to yield. Gregory had retired to a 

 stronghold at Canossa, in the Apennines, and 

 the humbled ruler was forced to stand bare- 

 footed in the snow, in the castle courtyard, for 

 three days before he was permitted to kneel 

 at the feet of the Pope and receive forgive- 

 ness. 



On his return to Germany, however, he 

 renewed the struggle, and for years his country 

 was torn by civil war. In 1084 he succeeded 

 in capturing Rome, placing on the Papal throne 

 an antipope of his own selection, who in the 

 same year crowned him Holy Roman Emperor. 

 Soon after, Pope Gregory died in exile, and the 

 contest was taken up by his successors, one of 

 whom renewed the sentence of excommunica- 

 tion against the emperor. Finally, in 1105, 

 after one of his own sons had been persuaded 

 to rebel against him, Henry was forced to abdi- 

 cate. A few months later, in the midst of 

 preparations for war, he died. 



Henry VI (1165-1197) was the son of Fred- 

 erick, surnamed BARBAROSSA (which see). He 



succeeded to the throne in 1190, and the fol- 

 lowing year was crowned emperor at Rome. 

 Through his wife he laid claim to the throne 

 of Sicily, and a part of his reign was given up 

 .to the conquest of the Sicilian kingdom. 

 While Richard the Lion-heart, king of Eng- 

 land, was passing through Henry's dominions 

 on his way home from the Third Crusade the 

 emperor caused his arrest and imprisonment, 

 and the release of the royal captive was se- 

 cured only on the payment of a ransom equiva- 

 lent to nearly $50,000 a large sum at that 

 time. Henry was one of the strongest of the 

 early German emperors, and when he died he 

 was attempting to secure for his own family the 

 hereditary rights to the crown. 



Related Subjects. Further information as to 

 the periods of history which fell within the 

 reigns of these monarchs will be found in the 

 following articles : 

 Clement Gregory 



Crusades Holy Roman Empire 



Frederick Barbarossa Richard I 

 Germany, subtitle History 



HENRY, ALEXANDER (1739-1824), a Canadian 

 fur trader, one of the pathfinders who opened 

 the way to the Rocky Mountains. He is now 

 best remembered for a book, Travels and Ad- 

 ventures in Canada and the Indian Territory 

 between the Years 1760 and 1776, which was 

 one of the sources used by Francis Parkman 

 for his Conspiracy of Pontiac. Henry was with 

 General Amherst during the Invasion of Can- 

 ada by the British in 1760,' but after peace 

 was declared in 1763 went to Mackinac to 

 become a trader. He was one of the few whose 

 lives were spared when the garrison there was 

 massacred at the time of Pontiac's conspiracy, 

 but he was held a prisoner by the Ojibways for 

 a year before he could make his escape. He 

 then resumed his trading, in the course of 

 which he made frequent journeys as far as the 

 Rocky Mountains. In 1765 the commandant 

 at Michilimackinac gave him an exclusive 

 license to trade at that point. In the course 

 of his travels he became convinced of the 

 great extent of the copper deposits on Lake 

 Superior, but his efforts to form a company 

 for the development of mines were unsuc- 

 cessful. 



HENRY, JOSEPH (1799-1878), an authority in 

 physics, whose brilliant experiments in elec- 

 tricity have coupled his name with Franklin's 

 and Edison's as one of the three most original 

 investigators that America has thus far pro- 

 duced in that branch of science. He was born 

 at Albany, N. Y., and received his education in 



