From Richard II to Henry V
Richard II (AD 1377-1399), Henry IV (1399-1413 AD), Henry V (1413-1422 AD)
Richard II,
born in 1367, was the son of Edward, the Black Prince and Joan, the Fair
Maid of Kent. Richard was but ten years old when he succeeded his
grandfather, Edward III; England was ruled by a council under the leadership
of John of Gaunt, and Richard was tutored by Sir Simon Burley. He married
the much-beloved Anne of Bohemia in 1382, who died childless in 1394. Edward
remarried in 1396, wedding the seven year old Isabella of Valois, daughter
of Charles VI of France, to end a further struggle with France.Richard asserted royal authority during an era of royal restrictions. Economic hardship followed the Black Death, as wages and prices rapidly increased. Parliament exacerbated the problem by passing legislation limiting wages but failing to also regulate prices. In 1381, Wat Tyler led the Peasants' Revolt against the oppressive government policies of John of Gaunt. Richard's unwise generosity to his favorites - Michael de la Pole, Robert de Vere and others - led Thomas, Duke of Gloucester and four other magnates to form the Lords Appellant. The five Lords Appellant tried and convicted five of Richard's closest advisors for treason. In 1397, Richard arrested three of the five Lords, coerced Parliament to sentence them to death and banished the other two. One of the exiles was Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV. Richard traveled to Ireland in 1399 to quell warring chieftains, allowing Bolingboke to return to England and be elected king by Parliament. Richard lacked support and was quickly captured by Henry IV.
Deposed in 1399, Richard was murdered while in prison, the first casualty of the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and York.
Henry
IV
(1399-1413 AD)
was born at Bolingbroke in 1367 to
John of Gaunt and
Blanche of Lancaster. He
married Mary Bohun in 1380, who bore him seven children before her death in
1394. In 1402, Henry remarried, taking as his bride
Joan of Navarre
.
Henry had an on-again, off-again relationship with his cousin, Richard II . He
was one of the
Lords Appellant who, in 1388, persecuted many of Richard's
advisor-favorites, but his excellence as a soldier gained the king's favor -
Henry was created Duke of Hereford in 1397. In 1398, however, the increasingly
suspicious Richard banished him for ten years.
John of Gaunt's
death in 1399 prompted Richard to confiscate the vast
Lancastrian estates;
Henry invaded England while Richard was on campaign in Ireland,
usurping the throne from the king.
The very nature of Henry's usurpation dictated the circumstances of his reign -
incessant rebellion became the order of the day. Richard's supporters
immediately revolted upon his deposition in 1400. In Wales,
Owen Glendower led
a national uprising that lasted until 1408; the Scots waged continual warfare
throughout the reign; the powerful families of Percy and Mortimer (the latter
possessing a stronger claim to the throne than Henry) revolted from 1403 to
1408; and
Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, proclaimed his opposition to the
Lancastrian claim in 1405.
Two political blunders in the latter years of his reign diminished Henry's
support. His marriage to
Joan of Navarre (of whom it was rumored practiced
necromancy) was highly unpopular - she was, in fact, convicted of witchcraft in
1419.
Richard Scrope
and
Thomas Mawbray were executed in 1405 after conspiring against
Henry; the Archbishop's execution alarmed the English people, adding to his
unpopularity. He developed a nasty skin disorder and epilepsy, persuading many
that God was punishing the king for executing an archbishop.
Crushing the myriad of rebellions was costly, which involved calling Parliament
to fund such activities. The House of Commons used the opportunity to expand its
powers in 1401, securing recognition of freedom of debate and freedom from
arrest for dissenting opinions.
Lollardy, the Protestant movement founded by
John Wycliffe during the reign of
Edward III , gained momentum and frightened
both secular and clerical landowners, inspiring the first anti-heresy statute,
De Heritico Comburendo, to become law in 1401.
Henry, ailing from leprosy and epilepsy, watched as Prince Henry controlled the
government for the last two years of his reign. In 1413, Henry died in the
Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey. Rafael Holinshed explained his
unpopularity in Chronicles of England : "... by punishing such as moved with
disdain to see him usurp the crown, did at sundry times rebel against him, he
won (himself more hatred, than in all his life time ... had been possible for him
to have weeded out and removed." Unlikely as it may seem (due to the amount of
rebellion in his reign), Henry left his eldest son an undisputed succession.
Henry
V
(Hal), the eldest son of Henry IV and
Mary Bohun, was born in 1387. As per arrangement
by the Treaty of Troyes, he married
Catherine, daughter of the
French King
Charles VI, in June 1420. His only child, the future Henry VI, was born in 1421.Henry was an accomplished soldier: at age fourteen he fought the Welsh forces of Owen Glendower; at age sixteen he commanded his father's forces at the Battle of Shrewsbury; and shortly after his accession he put down a major Lollard uprising and an assassination plot by nobles still loyal to Richard II . He proposed to marry Catherine in 1415, demanding the old Plantagenet lands of Normandy and Anjou as his dowry. Charles VI refused and Henry declared war, opening yet another chapter in the Hundred Years' War. The French war served two purposes - to gain lands lost in previous battles and to focus attention away from any of his cousins' royal ambitions. Henry, possessed a masterful military mind and defeated the French at the Battle of Agincourt in October 1415, and by 1419 had captured Normandy, Picardy and much of the Capetian stronghold of the Ile-de-France.
By the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, Charles VI not only accepted Henry as his son-in-law, but passed over his own son to name Henry as heir to the French crown. Had Henry lived a mere two months longer, he would have been king of both England and France.
Henry had prematurely aged due to living the hard life of a soldier. He became seriously ill and died after returning from yet another French campaign; Catherine had bore his only son while he was away and Henry died having never seen the child. The historian Rafael Holinshed, in Chronicles of England, summed up Henry's reign as such: "This Henry was a king, of life without spot, a prince whom all men loved, and of none disdained, e captain against whom fortune never frowned, nor mischance once spurned, whose people him so severe a justicer both loved and obeyed (and so humane withal) that he left no offence unpunished, nor friendship unrewarded; a terror to rebels, and suppressor of sedition, his virtues notable, his qualities most praiseworthy."