HENRY IV

born Dec. 13, 1553, Pau, Barn, Navarre died May 14, 1610, Paris, France also called (until 1572) Prince De Barn, byname Henry Of Navarre, or Of Bourbon, French Henri De Navarre, or De Bourbon king of Navarre (as Henry III, 1572-89) and first Bourbon king of France (1589-1610), who, at the end of the Wars of Religion, abjured Protestantism and converted to Roman Catholicism (1593) in order to win Paris and reunify France. With the aid of such ministers as the Duke de Sully, he brought new prosperity to France. born , April ? 1366, Bolingbroke Castle, Lincolnshire, Eng. died March 20, 1413, London Henry IV, detail of a manuscript illumination from Froissart's Chronicles 15th century; in 1/4 also called (1377-97) Earl of Derby, or (1397-99) Duke of Hereford, byname Henry Bolingbroke, or Henry of Lancaster king of England from 1399 to 1413, the first of three 15th-century monarchs from the House of Lancaster. He gained the crown by usurpation and successfully consolidated his power in the face of repeated uprisings of powerful nobles. At the same time he was unable to overcome the fiscal and administrative weaknesses that contributed to the eventual downfall of the Lancastrian dynasty. Henry was the eldest surviving son of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, by his first wife, Blanche. Before becoming king he was known as Henry Bolingbroke, and he received from his cousin the titles earl of Derby (1377) and duke of Hereford (1397). During the opening years of the reign of King Richard II (ruled 1377-99), Henry remained in the background while his father ran the government. When Gaunt departed for an expedition to Spain in 1386, Henry entered politics as an opponent of the crown. He and Thomas Mowbray (later 1st duke of Norfolk) became the younger members of the group of five opposition leaders-known as the lords appellants-who in 1387-89 outlawed Richard's closest associates and forced the King to submit to their domination. Richard had just regained the upper hand when Gaunt returned to reconcile the King to his enemies. Bolingbroke then went on crusades into Lithuania (1390) and Prussia (1392). Meanwhile, Richard had not forgiven his past enmity. In 1398 the King took advantage of a quarrel between Bolingbroke and Norfolk to banish both men from the kingdom. The seizure of the Lancastrian estates by the crown upon John of Gaunt's death (February 1399) deprived Henry of his inheritance and gave him an excuse to invade England (July 1399) as a champion of the nobility. Richard surrendered to him in August; Bolingbroke's reign as King Henry IV began when Richard abdicated on Sept. 30, 1399. Henry IV used his descent from King Henry III (ruled 1216-72) to justify his usurpation of the throne. Nevertheless, this claim did not convince those magnates who aspired to assert their authority at the crown's expense. During the first five years of his reign, Henry was attacked by a formidable array of domestic and foreign enemies. He quashed a conspiracy of Richard's supporters in January 1400. Eight months later the Welsh landowner Owen Glendower raised a national rebellion against oppressive English rule in Wales. Henry led a number of fruitless expeditions into Wales from 1400 to 1405, but his son, Prince Henry, had greater success in reasserting royal control over the region. Meanwhile, Glendower encouraged domestic resistance to Henry's rule by allying with the powerful Percy family-Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, and his son Sir Henry Percy, called Hotspur. Hotspur's brief uprising, the most serious challenge faced by Henry during his reign, ended when the King's forces killed the rebel in battle near Shrewsbury, Shropshire, in July 1403. In 1405 Henry had Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, executed for conspiring with Northumberland to raise another rebellion. Although the worst of Henry's political troubles were over, he then began to suffer from an affliction that his contemporaries believed to be leprosy-it may have been congenital syphilis. A quickly suppressed insurrection, led by Northumberland in 1408, was the last armed challenge to Henry's authority. Throughout these years the King had to combat border incursions by the Scots and ward off conflict with the French, who aided the Welsh rebels in 1405-06. To finance these military activities, Henry was forced to rely on parliamentary grants. From 1401 to 1406 Parliament repeatedly accused him of fiscal mismanagement and gradually acquired certain precedent-setting powers over royal expenditures and appointments. As Henry's health deteriorated, a power struggle developed within his administration between his favourite, Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, and a faction headed by Henry's Beaufort half brothers and Prince Henry. The latter group ousted Arundel from the chancellorship early in 1410, but they, in turn, fell from power in 1411. Henry then made an alliance with the French faction that was waging war against the Prince's Burgundian friends. As a consequence, tension between Henry and the Prince was high when Henry became totally incapacitated late in 1412. He died several months later, and the Prince succeeded as King Henry V. born Nov. 11, 1050, Goslar?, Saxony died Aug. 7, 1106, Lige, Lorraine Henry IV, illumination from the manuscript Ekkehardi historia, c. 1113; in possession of 1/4 duke of Bavaria (as Henry VIII, 1055-61), German king (from 1054), and Holy Roman emperor (1084-1105/06), who engaged in a long struggle with Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII) on the question of lay investiture (see Investiture Controversy), eventually drawing excommunication on himself and doing penance at Canossa (1077). His last years were spent countering the rebellion of his sons Conrad and Henry (the future Henry V). king of England in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2; previously, in Richard II, he appears as Henry Bolingbroke. A masterful politician and dissembler, Henry is nonetheless tormented by increasing feelings of guilt over having deposed Richard II, the rightful king, and by disappointment over his prodigal son, Prince Hal (later Henry V). born Jan. 25, 1425, Valladolid, Castile died Dec. 11, 1474, Madrid byname Henry The Impotent, or The Liberal, Spanish Enrique El Impotente, or El Liberal king of Castile from 1454 to 1474, whose reign, though at first promising, became chaotic. Henry's weak father, John II, was entirely under the control of his constable, lvaro de Luna, who gave the young Henry a separate court at Segovia, hoping to control him. Instead, Henry became the tool of other cliques, who eventually overthrew and executed Luna. In 1464 Henry reconquered Gibraltar from the Muslims, but his nobles fell into warring factions. Henry IV's first marriage was childless and ended in divorce. He then married a Portuguese princess Joana, who bore a daughter, Juana (La Beltraneja). One faction recognized Henry's younger half brother Alfonso, deposing Henry in effigy in the "Farce of Avila." But Alfonso died, and Henry vacillated about the claim of his infant daughter. His rivals then recognized his half sister, Isabella (the future Isabella I), who without Henry's knowledge or consent married the heir to the throne of Aragon, Ferdinand (the future Ferdinand II); the two would one day rule a united Spain as Ferdinand and Isabella. Although much that was published about Henry IV may be discounted as propaganda, he suffered from the quarrels of his favourites, Juan Pacheco, Marqus de Villena, and Beltran de la Cueva, and their inability to maintain order. Additional reading After the bibliographies on Napoleon I, the Revolution, and Louis XIV, the one concerning Henry IV is the most abundant of any in French history, to the point that it fills an entire volume of the classic work of Henri Hauser, Les Sources de l'histoire de France au XVIe sicle, vol. 4 (1915). Pierre de Vaissire, Henri IV (1928), is a study that remains today the best informed in its entirety; this study may be supplemented by the more recent work of Duke Antoine de Lvis-Mirepoix, Henri IV, roi de France et de Navarre (1971), a brilliant and lively evocation of the personality and of the great events of his life and reign; and by that of Roland Mousnier, L'Assassinat d'Henri IV, 14 mai 1610 (1964). The writings of Henry himself are instructive in the Recueil des lettres missives de Henri IV, 9 vol. (1843-76), by M. Berger de Xivrey (finished by J. Guadet); and the numerous documents of the same nature that have followed and continued since the last quarter of the 19th century. Little has been published on Henry IV in English; however, Hesketh Pearson, Henry of Navarre: The King Who Dared (also published as Henry of Navarre: His Life, 1963), is of interest; as is Desmond Seward, The First Bourbon: Henri IV, King of France and Navarre (1971). Additional reading No critical biography has appeared. For the King's dispute with the Pope, see K.F. Morrison, "Canossa: A Revision," Traditio, 18:121-148 (1962). Contemporary research and a full bibliography may be found in B. Gebhardt and H. Grundmann (eds.), Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, 9th rev. ed., vol. 1 (1970). See also the Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5 (1964).