by Isabella of Angouleme. Born on the 1st of October 1207, the prince
was but nine years old at the time of his father's death. The greater
part of eastern England being in the hands of the French pretender,
Prince Louis, afterwards King Louis VIII., and the rebel barons, Henry
was crowned by his supporters at Gloucester, the western capital. John
had committed his son to the protection of the Holy See; and a share in
the government was accordingly allowed to the papal legates, Gualo and
Pandulf, both during the civil war and for some time afterwards. But the
title of regent was given by the loyal barons to William Marshal, the
aged earl of Pembroke; and Peter des Roches, the Poitevin bishop of
Winchester, received the charge of the king's person. The cause of the
young Henry was fully vindicated by the close of the year 1217. Defeated
both by land and sea, the French prince renounced his pretensions and
evacuated England, leaving the regency to deal with the more difficult
questions raised by the lawless insolence of the royal partisans. Henry
remained a passive spectator of the measures by which William Marshal
(d. 1219), and his successor, the justiciar Hubert de Burgh, asserted
the royal prerogative against native barons and foreign mercenaries. In
1223 Honorius III. declared the king of age, but this was a mere
formality, intended to justify the resumption of the royal castles and
demesnes which had passed into private hands during the commotions of
the civil war.
The personal rule of Henry III. began in 1227, when he was again
proclaimed of age. Even then he remained for some time under the
influence of Hubert de Burgh, whose chief rival, Peter des Roches, found
it expedient to quit the kingdom for four years. But Henry was ambitions
to recover the continental possessions which his father had lost.
Against the wishes of the justiciar he planned and carried out an
expedition to the west of France (1230); when it failed he laid the
blame upon his minister. Other differences arose soon afterwards. Hubert
was accused, with some reason, of enriching himself at the expense of
the crown, and of encouraging popular riots against the alien clerks for
whom the papacy was providing at the expense of the English Church. He
was disgraced in 1232; and power passed for a time into the hands of
Peter des Roches, who filled the administration with Poitevins. So began
the period of misrule by which Henry III. is chiefly remembered in
history. The Poitevins fell in 1234; they were removed at the demand of
the barons and the primate Edmund Rich, who held them responsible for
the tragic fate of the rebellious Richard Marshal. But the king replaced
them with a new clique of servile and rapacious favourites. Disregarding
the wishes of the Great Council, and excluding all the more important of
the barons and bishops from office, he acted as his own chief minister
and never condescended to justify his policy except when he stood in
need of subsidies. When these were refused, he extorted aids from the
towns, the Jews or the clergy, the three most defenceless interests in
the kingdom. Always in pecuniary straits through his extravagance, he
pursued a foreign policy which would have been expensive under the most
careful management. He hoped not only to regain the French possessions
but to establish members of his own family as sovereigns in Italy and
the Empire. These plans were artfully fostered by the Savoyard kinsmen
of Eleanor, daughter of Raymond Berenger, count of Provence, whom he
married at Canterbury in January 1236, and by his half-brothers, the
sons of Queen Isabella and Hugo, count of la Marche. These favourites,
not content with pushing their fortunes in the English court, encouraged
the king in the wildest designs. In 1242 he led an expedition to Gascony
which terminated disastrously with the defeat of Taillebourg; and
hostilities with France were intermittently continued for seventeen
years. The Savoyards encouraged his natural tendency to support the
Papacy against the Empire; at an early date in the period of misrule he
entered into a close alliance with Rome, which resulted in heavy
taxation of the clergy and gave great umbrage to the barons. A
cardinal-legate was sent to England at Henry's request, and during four
years (1237-1241) administered the English Church in a manner equally
profitable to the king and to the pope. After the recall of the legate
Otho the alliance was less open and less cordial. Still the pope
continued to share the spoils of the English clergy with the king, and
the king to enforce the demands of Roman tax-collectors.
Circumstances favoured Henry's schemes. Archbishop Edmund Rich was timid
and inexperienced; his successor, Boniface of Savoy, was a kinsman of
the queen; Grosseteste, the most eminent of the bishops, died in 1253,
when he was on the point of becoming a popular hero. Among the lay
barons, the first place naturally belonged to Richard of Cornwall who,
as the king's brother, was unwilling to take any steps which might
impair the royal prerogative; while Simon de Montfort, earl of
Leicester, the ablest man of his order, was regarded with suspicion as a
foreigner, and linked to Henry's cause by his marriage with the princess
Eleanor. Although the Great Council repeatedly protested against the
king's misrule and extravagance, their remonstrances came to nothing for
want of leaders and a clear-cut policy. But between 1248 and 1252 Henry
alienated Montfort from his cause by taking the side of the Gascons,
whom the earl had provoked to rebellion through his rigorous
administration of their duchy. A little later, when Montfort was
committed to opposition, Henry foolishly accepted from Innocent IV. the
crown of Sicily for his second son Edmund Crouchback (1255). Sicily was
to be conquered from the Hohenstaufen at the expense of England; and
Henry pledged his credit to the papacy for enormous subsidies, although
years of comparative inactivity had already overwhelmed him with debts.
On the publication of the ill-considered bargain the baronage at length
took vigorous action. They forced upon the king the Provisions of Oxford
(1258), which placed the government in the hands of a feudal oligarchy;
they reduced expenditure, expelled the alien favourites from the
kingdom, and insisted upon a final renunciation of the French claims.
The king submitted for the moment, but at the first opportunity
endeavoured to cancel his concessions. He obtained a papal absolution
from his promises; and he tricked the opposition into accepting the
arbitration of the French king, Louis IX., whose verdict was a foregone
conclusion. But Henry was incapable of protecting with the strong hand
the rights which he had recovered by his double-dealing. Ignominiously
defeated by Montfort at Lewes (1264) he fell into the position of a
cipher, equally despised by his opponents and supporters. He acquiesced
in the earl's dictatorship; left to his eldest son, Edward, the
difficult task of reorganizing the royal party; marched with the
Montfortians to Evesham; and narrowly escaped sharing the fate of his
gaoler. After Evesham he is hardly mentioned by the chroniclers. The
compromise with the surviving rebels was arranged by his son in concert
with Richard of Cornwall and the legate Ottobuono; the statute of
Marlborough (1267), which purchased a lasting peace by judicious
concessions, was similarly arranged between Edward and the earl of
Gloucester. Edward was king in all but name for some years before the
death of his father, by whom he was alternately suspected and adored.
Henry had in him some of the elements of a fine character. His mind was
cultivated; he was a discriminating patron of literature, and
Westminster Abbey is an abiding memorial of his artistic taste. His
personal morality was irreproachable, except that he inherited the
Plantagenet taste for crooked courses and dissimulation in political
affairs; even in this respect the king's reputation has suffered unduly
at the hands of Matthew Paris, whose literary skill is only equalled by
his malice. The ambitions which Henry cherished, if extravagant, were
never sordid; his patriotism, though seldom attested by practical
measures, was thoroughly sincere. Some of his worst actions as a
politician were due to a sincere, though exaggerated, gratitude for the
support which the Papacy had given him during his minority. But he had
neither the training nor the temper of a statesman. His dreams of
autocracy at home and far-reaching dominion abroad were anachronisms in
a century of constitutional ideas and national differentiation. Above
all he earned the contempt of Englishmen and foreigners alike by the
instability of his purpose. Matthew Paris said that he had a heart of
wax; Dante relegated him to the limbo of ineffectual souls; and later
generations have endorsed these scathing judgments.
Henry died at Westminster on the 16th of November 1272; his widow,
Eleanor, took the veil in 1276 and died at Amesbury on the 25th of June
1291. Their children were: the future king Edward I.; Edmund, earl of
Lancaster; Margaret (1240-1275), the wife of Alexander III., king of
Scotland; Beatrice; and Katherine.
ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES.--Roger of Wendover, _Flores historiarum_ (ed. H.
O. Coxe, 4 vols., 1841-1844); and Matthew of Paris, _Chronica majora_
(ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series, 7 vols., 1872-1883) are the chief
narrative sources. See also the _Annales monastici_ (ed. H. R. Luard,
Rolls Series, 5 vols., 1864-1869); the collection of _Royal and other
Historical Letters_ edited by W. Shirley (Rolls Series, 2 vols.,
1862-1866); the Close and Patent Rolls edited for the Record
Commission and the Master of the Rolls; the _Epistolae Roberti
Grosseteste_ (ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series, 1861); the _Monumenta
Franciscana_, vol. i. (ed. J. S. Brewer, Rolls Series, 1858); the
documents in the new _Foedera_, vol. i. (Record Commission, 1816).
MODERN WORKS.--G. J. Turner's article on the king's minority in
_Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New Series_, vol.
xviii.; Dom Gasquet's _Henry III. and the Church_ (1905); the lives of
Simon de Montfort by G. W. Prothero (1871), R. Pauli (Eng. ed., 1876)
and C. Bemont (Paris, 1884); W. Stubbs's _Constitutional History of
England_, vol. ii. (1887); R. Pauli's _Geschichte von England_, vol.
iii. (Hamburg, 1853); T. F. Tout in the _Political History of
England_, vol. iii. (1905), and H. W. C. Davis in _England under the
Normans and Angevins_ (1905). (H. W. C. D.)
HENRY IV. (1367-1413), king of England, son of John of Gaunt, by
Blanche, daughter of Henry, duke of Lancaster, was born on the 3rd of
April 1367, at Bolingbroke in Lincolnshire. As early as 1377 he is
styled earl of Derby, and in 1380 he married Mary de Bohun (d. 1394)
one of the co-heiresses of the last earl of Hereford. In 1387 he
supported his uncle Thomas, duke of Gloucester, in his armed opposition
to Richard II. and his favourites. Afterwards, probably through his
father's influence, he changed sides. He was already distinguished for
his knightly prowess, and for some years devoted himself to adventure.
He thought of going on the crusade to Barbary; but instead, in July
1390, went to serve with the Teutonic knights in Lithuania. He came home
in the following spring, but next year went again to Prussia, whence he
journeyed by way of Venice to Cyprus and Jerusalem. After his return to
England he sided with his father and the king against Gloucester, and in
1397 was made duke of Hereford. In January 1398 he quarrelled with the
duke of Norfolk, who charged him with treason. The dispute was to have
been decided in the lists at Coventry in September; but at the last
moment Richard intervened and banished them both.
When John of Gaunt died in February 1399 Richard, contrary to his
promise, confiscated the estates of Lancaster. Henry then felt himself
free, and made friends with the exiled Arundels. Early in July, whilst
Richard was absent in Ireland, he landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire. He
was at once joined by the Percies; and Richard, abandoned by his
friends, surrendered at Flint on the 19th of August. In the parliament,
which assembled on the 30th of September, Richard was forced to
abdicate. Henry then made his claim as coming by right line of blood
from King Henry III., and through his right to recover the realm which
was in point to be undone for default of governance and good law.
Parliament formally accepted him, and thus Henry became king, "not so
much by title of blood as by popular election" (Capgrave). The new
dynasty had consequently a constitutional basis. With this Henry's own
political sympathies well accorded. But though the revolution of 1399
was popular in form, its success was due to an oligarchical faction.
From the start Henry was embarrassed by the power and pretensions of the
Percies. Nor was his hereditary title so good as that of the Mortimers.
To domestic troubles was added the complication of disputes with
Scotland and France. The first danger came from the friends of Richard,
who plotted prematurely, and were crushed in January 1400. During the
summer of 1400 Henry made a not over-successful expedition to Scotland.
The French court would not accept his overtures, and it was only in the
summer of 1401 that a truce was patched up by the restoration of
Richard's child-queen, Isabella of Valois. Meantime a more serious
trouble had arisen through the outbreak of the Welsh revolt under Owen
Glendower (q.v.). In 1400 and again in each of the two following autumns
Henry invaded Wales in vain. The success of the Percies over the Scots
at Homildon Hill (Sept. 1402) was no advantage. Henry Percy (Hotspur)
and his father, the earl of Northumberland, thought their services
ill-requited, and finally made common cause with the partisans of
Mortimer and the Welsh. The plot was frustrated by Hotspur's defeat at
Shrewsbury (21st of July 1403); and Northumberland for the time
submitted. Henry had, however, no one on whom he could rely outside his
own family, except Archbishop Arundel. The Welsh were unsubdued; the
French were plundering the southern coast; Northumberland was fomenting
trouble in the north. The crisis came in 1405. A plot to carry off the
young Mortimers was defeated; but Mowbray, the earl marshal, who had
been privy to it, raised a rebellion in the north supported by
Archbishop Scrope of York. Mowbray and Scrope were taken and beheaded;
Northumberland escaped into Scotland. For the execution of the
archbishop Henry was personally responsible, and he could never free
himself from its odium. Popular belief regarded his subsequent illness
as a judgment for his impiety. Apart from ill-health and unpopularity
Henry had succeeded--relations with Scotland were secured by the capture
of James, the heir to the crown; Northumberland was at last crushed at
Bramham Moor (Feb. 1408); and a little later the Welsh revolt was
mastered.
Henry, stricken with sore disease, was unable to reap the advantage. His
necessities had all along enabled the Commons to extort concessions in
parliament, until in 1406 he was forced to nominate a council and govern
by its advice. However, with Archbishop Arundel as his chancellor, Henry
still controlled the government. But in January 1410 Arundel had to give
way to the king's half-brother, Thomas Beaufort. Beaufort and his
brother Henry, bishop of Winchester, were opposed to Arundel and
supported by the prince of Wales. For two years the real government
rested with the prince and the council. Under the prince's influence the
English intervened in France in 1411 on the side of Burgundy. In this,
and in some matters of home politics, the king disagreed with his
ministers. There is good reason to suppose that the Beauforts had gone
so far as to contemplate a forced abdication on the score of the king's
ill-health. However, in November 1411 Henry showed that he was still
capable of vigorous action by discharging the prince and his supporters.
Arundel again became chancellor, and the king's second son, Thomas, took
his brother's place. The change was further marked by the sending of an
expedition to France in support of Orleans. But Henry's health was
failing steadily. On the 20th of March 1413, whilst praying in
Westminster Abbey he was seized with a fainting fit, and died that same
evening in the Jerusalem Chamber. At the time he was believed to have
been a leper, but as it would appear without sufficient reason.
As a young man Henry had been chivalrous and adventurous, and in
politics anxious for good government and justice. As king the loss and
failure of friends made him cautious, suspicious and cruel. The
persecution of the Lollards, which began with the burning statute of
1401, may be accounted for by Henry's own orthodoxy, or by the influence
of Archbishop Arundel, his one faithful friend. But that political
Lollardry was strong is shown by the proposal in the parliament of 1410
for a wholesale confiscation of ecclesiastical property. Henry's faults
may be excused by his difficulties. Throughout he was practical and
steadfast, and he deserved credit for maintaining his principles as a
constitutional ruler. So after all his troubles he founded his dynasty
firmly, and passed on the crown to his son with a better title. He is
buried under a fine tomb at Canterbury.
By Mary Bohun Henry had four sons: his successor Henry V., Thomas, duke
of Clarence, John, duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester;
and two daughters, Blanche, who married Louis III., elector palatine of
the Rhine, and Philippa, who married Eric XIII., king of Sweden. Henry's
second wife was Joan, or Joanna, (c. 1370-1437), daughter of Charles the
Bad, king of Navarre, and widow of John IV. or V., duke of Brittany, who
survived until July 1437. By her he had no children.
The chief contemporary authorities are the _Annales Henrici Quarti_
and T. Walsingham's _Historia Anglicana_ (Rolls Series), Adam of Usk's
_Chronicle_ and the various _Chronicles of London_. The life by John
Capgrave (_De illustribus Henricis_) is of little value. Some personal
matter is contained in _Wardrobe Accounts of Henry, Earl of Derby_
(Camden Soc.). For documents consult T. Rymer's _Foedera_; Sir N. H.
Nicolas, _Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council_; Sir H.
Ellis, _Original Letters illustrative of English History_ (London,
1825-1846); _Rolls of Parliament_; _Royal and Historical Letters,
Henry IV._ (Rolls Series) and the _Calendars of Patent Rolls_. Of
modern authorities the foremost is J. H. Wylie's minute and learned
_Hist. of England under Henry IV._ (4 vols., London, 1884-1898). See
also W. Stubbs, _Constitutional History_; Sir J. Ramsay, _Lancaster
and York_ (2 vols., Oxford, 1892), and C. W. C. Oman, _The Political
History of England_, vol. iv. (C. L. K.)
HENRY V. (1387-1422), king of England, son of Henry IV. by Mary de
Bohun, was born at Monmouth, in August 1387. On his father's exile in
1398 Richard II. took the boy into his own charge, and treated him
kindly. Next year the Lancastrian revolution forced Henry into
precocious prominence as heir to the throne. From October 1400 the
administration of Wales was conducted in his name; less than three years
later he was in actual command of the English forces and fought against
the Percies at Shrewsbury. The Welsh revolt absorbed his energies till
1408. Then through the king's ill-health he began to take a wider share
in politics. From January 1410, helped by his uncles Henry and Thomas
Beaufort, he had practical control of the government. Both in foreign
and domestic policy he differed from the king, who in November 1411
discharged the prince from the council. The quarrel of father and son
was political only, though it is probable that the Beauforts had
discussed the abdication of Henry IV., and their opponents certainly
endeavoured to defame the prince. It may be that to political enmity the
tradition of Henry's riotous youth, immortalized by Shakespeare, is
partly due. To that tradition Henry's strenuous life in war and politics
is a sufficient general contradiction. The most famous incident, his
quarrel with the chief-justice, has no contemporary authority and was
first related by Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531. The story of Falstaff
originated partly in Henry's early friendship for Oldcastle (q.v.). That
friendship, and the prince's political opposition to Archbishop Arundel,
perhaps encouraged Lollard hopes. If so, their disappointment may
account for the statements of ecclesiastical writers, like Walsingham,
that Henry on becoming king was changed suddenly into a new man.
Henry succeeded his father on the 20th of March 1413. With no past to
embarrass him, and with no dangerous rivals, his practical experience
had full scope. He had to deal with three main problems--the restoration
of domestic peace, the healing of schism in the Church and the recovery
of English prestige in Europe. Henry grasped them all together, and
gradually built upon them a yet wider policy. From the first he made it
clear that he would rule England as the head of a united nation, and
that past differences were to be forgotten. Richard II. was honourably
reinterred; the young Mortimer was taken into favour; the heirs of those
who had suffered in the last reign were restored gradually to their
titles and estates. With Oldcastle Henry used his personal influence in
vain, and the gravest domestic danger was Lollard discontent. But the
king's firmness nipped the movement in the bud (Jan. 1414), and made his
own position as ruler secure. Save for the abortive Scrope and Cambridge
plot in favour of Mortimer in July 1415, the rest of his reign was free
from serious trouble at home. Henry could now turn his attention to
foreign affairs. A writer of the next generation was the first to allege
that Henry was encouraged by ecclesiastical statesmen to enter on the
French war as a means of diverting attention from home troubles. For
this story there is no foundation. The restoration of domestic peace was
the king's first care, and until it was assured he could not embark on
any wider enterprise abroad. Nor was that enterprise one of idle
conquest. Old commercial disputes and the support which the French had
lent to Glendower gave a sufficient excuse for war, whilst the
disordered state of France afforded no security for peace. Henry may
have regarded the assertion of his own claims as part of his kingly
duty, but in any case a permanent settlement of the national quarrel was
essential to the success of his world policy. The campaign of 1415, with
its brilliant conclusion at Agincourt (October 25), was only the first
step. Two years of patient preparation followed. The command of the sea
was secured by driving the Genoese allies of the French out of the
Channel. A successful diplomacy detached the emperor Sigismund from
France, and by the Treaty of Canterbury paved the way to end the schism
in the Church. So in 1417 the war was renewed on a larger scale. Lower
Normandy was quickly conquered, Rouen cut off from Paris and besieged.
The French were paralysed by the disputes of Burgundians and Armagnacs.
Henry skilfully played them off one against the other, without relaxing
his warlike energy. In January 1419 Rouen fell. By August the English
were outside the walls of Paris. The intrigues of the French parties
culminated in the assassination of John of Burgundy by the dauphin's
partisans at Montereau (September 10, 1419). Philip, the new duke, and
the French court threw themselves into Henry's arms. After six months'
negotiation Henry was by the Treaty of Troyes recognized as heir and
regent of France, and on the 2nd of June 1420 married Catherine, the
king's daughter. He was now at the height of his power. His eventual
success in France seemed certain. He shared with Sigismund the credit of
having ended the Great Schism by obtaining the election of Pope Martin
V. All the states of western Europe were being brought within the web of
his diplomacy. The headship of Christendom was in his grasp, and
schemes for a new crusade began to take shape. He actually sent an envoy
to collect information in the East; but his plans were cut short by
death. A visit to England in 1421 was interrupted by the defeat of
Clarence at Bauge. The hardships of the longer winter siege of Meaux
broke down his health, and he died at Bois de Vincennes on the 31st of
August 1422.