Henry IV (3 April 1367 – 20 March 1413) was the King of England and France and Lord of Ireland from 1399 to 1413. He was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, hence the other name by which he was known, "Henry (of) Bolingbroke". His father, John of Gaunt, was the third and oldest surviving son of King Edward III of England, and enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of Richard II. Henry's mother was Blanche, heiress to the considerable Lancaster estates.

One of his older sisters, Philippa, married John I of Portugal, and his sister Elizabeth Plantagenet was the mother of John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter. His younger half-sister Catherine, the daughter of his father's second wife, Constance of Castile, ruled as co-consort of Castile, by marrying Henry III. He also had four half-siblings by Katherine Swynford, his sisters' governess and his father's longtime mistress and eventual third wife. These four children were surnamed Beaufort.

Henry's relationship with the Beauforts and their mother is uncertain. Henry was only 2 when his mother died, and his father's second wife was not Katherine but rather Constance of Castile. Gaunt and Katherine did not marry until Henry was an adult and a father himself, only three years before Gaunt's death. Upon his accession, however, Henry revoked the marquessate of his half-brother, John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset and passed further legal measures barring the Beauforts from the throne. However, Thomas Swynford, a son from Katherine’s first marriage to Sir Hugh Swynford was apparently a loyal companion and Constable of Pontefract Castle, where King Richard II is said to have died. Eventually, a direct descendant of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford through the Beaufort line would take the throne as Henry VII.

Henry experienced a rather more inconsistent relationship with King Richard II than his father had. They were first cousins and childhood playmates, they were admitted together to the Order of the Garter in 1377, but Henry participated in the Lords Appellant’s rebellion against the King in 1387. After regaining power, Richard did not punish Henry (many of the other rebellious Barons were executed or exiled). In fact, Richard elevated Henry from Earl of Derby to Duke of Hereford.

However, the relationship between Henry Bolingbroke and the King encountered a second crisis in 1398, when Richard banished Henry from the kingdom for ten years (with the approval of Henry's father, John of Gaunt) to avoid a blood feud between Henry and Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, who was exiled for life. Henry spent a full year supporting the unsuccessful siege of Vilnius (capital of the Grand duchy of Lithuania) by Teutonic knights with his 300 fellow knights.

The following year, John of Gaunt died, and without explanation, Richard cancelled the legal documents that would have allowed Henry to inherit Gaunt's land automatically; instead, Henry would be required to ask for the lands from Richard. After some hesitation, Henry met with the exiled Thomas Arundel, former (and future) Archbishop of Canterbury, who had lost his position because of his involvement with the Lords Appellant. Henry and Arundel returned to England while Richard was on a military campaign in Ireland. With Arundel as his advisor, Henry Bolingbroke began a military campaign, confiscating land from those who opposed him and ordering his soldiers to destroy much of Cheshire. Henry quickly gained enough power and support to have himself declared King Henry IV, to imprison King Richard, who died in prison under mysterious circumstances, and to by-pass Richard’s seven-year-old heir-presumptive, Edmund de Mortimer. Henry's coronation, on 13 October 1399, is notable as the first time following the Norman Conquest that the monarch made an address in English.

Henry consulted with Parliament frequently, but was sometimes at odds with the members, especially over ecclesiastical matters. On Arundel's advice, Henry passed the De heretico comburendo and was thus the first English king to allow the burning of heretics, mainly to suppress the Lollard movement.

Henry's first problem was what to do with the deposed Richard, and after an early assassination plot (The Epiphany Rising) was foiled in January 1400, he ordered his death (very probably by starvation). The evidence for this lies in the circulation of letters in France demonstrating prior knowledge of the death. Richard died on 14 February 1400, and his body was put on public display in the old St Paul's Cathedral to prove to his supporters that he was dead. He was 33 years old.

Henry spent much of his reign defending himself against plots, rebellions, and assassination attempts.

Rebellions continued throughout the first ten years of Henry’s reign, including the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr, who declared himself Prince of Wales in 1400, and the rebellion of Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland. The king's success in putting down these rebellions was due partly to the military ability of his eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, who would later become king, though the son (who had maintained a close relationship with Richard II) managed to seize much effective power from his father in 1410.

Early in his reign, Henry hosted the visit of Manuel II Palaiologos, the only Byzantine emperor ever to visit England, from December 1400 to January 1401 at Eltham Palace, with a joust being given in his honour. He also sent monetary support with him upon his departure to aid him against the Ottoman Empire.

In 1406, English pirates captured the future James I of Scotland off the coast of Flamborough Head as he was going to France. James remained a prisoner of Henry for the rest of Henry's reign.

The later years of Henry's reign were marked by serious health problems. He had a disfiguring skin disease, and more seriously suffered acute attacks of some grave illness in June 1405, April 1406, June 1408, during the winter of 1408–09, December 1412, and then finally a fatal bout in March 1413. Medical historians have long debated the nature of this affliction or afflictions. The skin disease might have been leprosy (which did not necessarily mean precisely the same thing in the 15th century as it does to modern medicine); perhaps psoriasis; perhaps a symptom of syphilis; or some other disease. The acute attacks have been given a wide range of explanations, from epilepsy to some form of cardiovascular disease.

It is said in Holinshed (and taken up in Shakespeare's play) that it was predicted to Henry he would die in Jerusalem. Henry took this to mean that he would die on crusade, but in fact it meant that, in 1413, he died in the Jerusalem Chamber in the house of the Abbot of Westminster. He died with his executor Thomas Langley at his side.

Unusually for a King of England, he was buried not at Westminster Abbey but at Canterbury Cathedral, on the north side of what is now the Trinity Chapel, as near to the shrine of Thomas Becket as possible. (No other kings are buried in the Cathedral, although his uncle Edward, the Black Prince, is buried on the opposite, south side of the chapel, also as near the shrine as possible.) At the time, Becket's cult was at its height, as evidenced in the Canterbury Tales written by the court poet Geoffrey Chaucer, and Henry was particularly devoted to it. (He was anointed at his coronation with oil supposedly given to Becket by the Virgin Mary and that had then passed to Henry's father).

Henry was given an alabaster effigy, alabaster being a valuable English export in the 15th century. His body was well-embalmed, as a Victorian exhumation some centuries later established.

On 27 July 1380 at Arundel Castle, 19 years before his accession, Henry married Mary de Bohun and had seven children by her:

*Edward (b&d. April 1382); buried Monmouth Castle, Monmouth *Henry V of England *Thomas, Duke of Clarence *John, Duke of Bedford *Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester *Blanche of England (1392-1409) married in 1402 Louis III, Elector Palatine *Philippa of England (1394-1430) married in 1406 Eric of Pomerania, king of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Mary died in 1394, and on February 7 1403 Henry married Joanna of Navarre, the daughter of Charles d'Evreux, King of Navarre, at Winchester. She was the widow of John V of Brittany, with whom she had four daughters and four sons, but she and Henry had no children. The fact that in 1399 Henry had four sons from his first marriage was undoubtedly a clinching factor in his acceptance onto the throne. By contrast, Richard II had no children, and Richard's heir-apparent Mortimer was only seven years old.

Almost two hundred years after his death, Henry became the subject of two plays (or one two-part play) by William Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2) as well as featuring prominently in Richard II.

*Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV: the Life of England's Self-Made King (Jonathan Cape, 2007) *Peter McNiven, "The Problem of Henry IV's Health, 1405–1413", English Historical Review, 100 (1985), pp 747–772 *ANTIQUARY s9-IX (228): 369. (1902)

*Henry IV Chronology *

*Britannia: Henry IV

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