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Henry was the first English ruler whose mother tongue was English (rather than French) since the Norman Conquest. His usurpation of the crown gave way for many other usurpations including Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII. Most of his reign entailed fighting off plots and uprisings against him, most notably Owain Glyndŵr in Wales.
He was exiled for suspected plotting against Richard originally for 10 years but after his father died Richard made it for life so he could seize the duchy of Lancaster. He came back and overthrew Richard with the support of the Percy’s the first time since the conquest a king had been replaced with someone other than his son. He most likely had Richard starved to death in Pontefract castle. His reign saw owain glyndwrs rebellion in wales which lasted for his entire reign the last significant rebellion in wales. The Percy’s rebelled against him dissatisfied with the rewards they had gained ending with the battle of Shrewsbury one of the bloodiest battles in England to that point. There was lots of tension between him and Henry of Monmouth (Henry V) who was impatient for the throne. No one really knows what killed him but it was apparently slow and horrible, there’s references to him effectively rotting and he may have had leprosy. He’s mostly a middle of the road king sandwiched between the tyrannical failure of Richard II and the warrior king Henry V, he basically just tried to steady the ship.
No, he was exiled on the accusation of perjury.
Henry said that the duke of Norfolk had told him that Richard planned to destroy several of the great families of England and to raise up several of the sycophants that surrounded him by reinstating several attainders from the reign of Edward II and reversing several attainders from the reign of Edward II and early in the reign of Edward III. Henry passed this information to his father, who then brought it to Richard. The king called both Henry and Norfolk before parliament, where Henry again recounted what Norfolk had supposedly told him. Norfolk said Henry was lying -- and lying to the king and parliament is a crime. So, eventually, Richard exiled Norfolk for life on suspicion of conspiracy and Henry for 10 years on charges of perjury. This sentence made no sense since both men could not be guilty at the same time -- i.e., if Norfolk was guilty of conspiracy then Henry was not lying and vice versa. Richard was a fan of arbitrary rule and unjust punishment, though, and Henry's father, the duke of Lancaster, was extremely (I'd say foolishly) supportive of Richard until the bitter end, so they were both exiled.
FWIW, Richard almost immediately turned around and started doing the things that Henry said Norfolk had told him the king was planning. So we can say with some certainty that Henry was telling the truth and Norfolk was trying to find an ally to bring down Richard before 1399.
In his biography of Henry, Ian Mortimer points out that a lot of what is written about Henry is written about the Black Prince re: their terrible health. He also points out that they both became sick either after visiting Iberia or after a significant Iberian party came to court, as there were Navarrese ambassadors had almost constantly in England after Henry wed Joan. Considering the number of diseases that have died out since the medieval era, he supposes that it may be a case where some Iberian disease that Englishmen were not used to was contracted.
Amazing soldier, crusader in Eastern Europe, sympathy for the Mortimer brothers who would have been the heirs to Richard (kept alive, the older one was one of the best friends of Henry V), very strict as king, too authoritarian for many peoples likings. This got worse the older he got. I think he was better than his reputation, but was overshadowed by his son‘s success and what he did to Richard
He is the perfect example why it is puzzling to us that everybody was so keen to become king because apparently Henry's IV life quickly went downhill after he took the throne.
But, he still managed to get himself a queen, which was most certainly a love match, Joan of Navarre.
I find him intriguing. One of my favorite kings. Brilliant and beloved hero of tournaments and crusades when he was a young man, became entangled in politics and then the angry, sad, ill king.
One of my favorite stories about him is that he was saved from certain death as a teenager during the Wat Tyler rebellion by a soldier, whom he later pardoned when he came before him as a rebel. *google* Ah, John Ferrour.
The Mortimers were never really heirs to the throne, though they are the subject of a few longshot plots against Henrys IV and V and descent through them formed the basis of Richard of York's claim a half-century later.
John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, is formally recognized as heir to the throne for nearly the whole length of Richard's reign -- from 1377 to 1386 and again from 1388 to the mid/late 1390s. Roger Mortimer, 4th earl of March, is apparently recognized by Richard as heir in the parliament of 1386, but this comes in the middle of a political crisis for Richard. (Parliament was threatening to depose him for screwing basically everything up.) So, threatened with deposition, Richard names the then-12-year-old boy Roger as his heir. This is basically a threat to parliament, like "Oh, you want to remove me? Do that and this boy will be king, and is that really any better?" (It probably would have been.) Regardless, Richard is forced to make many concessions in parliament, which he then spends all of 1387 breaking, leading to a rebellion. Faced with deposition again at the end of that rebellion, Richard basically becomes a puppet of a handful of lords. Richard's puppetmasters force him to recognize that Lancaster is the heir to the crown in 1388.
So, Mortimer is recognized as heir for a year-ish (from the fall parliament of 1386 until early 1388), but this is never made official. There is no act of parliament confirming or letters patent sealed by the king. It was only in a speech to parliament hat Richard ever recognized the Mortimers and the announcement is not even taken seriously enough to be recorded in the parliamentary rolls. It is noted in only one chronicle of the parliament's proceedings. It is such a minor event that so few people take seriously that it has a single sentence of space in all contemporary records combined.
Richard is a puppet king until 1389, when his uncle, Gaunt, returns from Spain. Richard recognizes Gaunt as his heir until the mid to late 1390s, when the name of Richard's younger uncle, Edmund of Langley, duke of York, starts appearing on documents in places where convention would normally find the name of the heir to the throne. Most notably, in 1394, Richard named Langley as guardian of the realm, which was purely a symbolic appointment that was meant to note the highest person in the line of succession who was actually in the country when the monarch was abroad. Now, it should be said that both Gaunt and his son were out of the country at this time (Gaunt was in Gascony and Henry was in Ireland with Richard), but by a Lancastrian succession, the next in line should have been Gaunt's grandson and Henry's son, a then-eight-year-old Henry of Monmouth. (As "guardian of the realm" was a symbolic appointment, there was not an issue with naming a child, and children were routinely named as such before Richard's reign.)
Richard launched his second Irish campaign after Gaunt's death in 1399, at which time he named Langley as guardian of the realm -- again over all of the Lancastrian children. Langley was also named as chief executor of his will in the event of his death on campaign, another place where kings typically listed their heirs. But while these and many other indirect references to Langley being heir to the throne exist, there is no document that makes this explicit. It may be that Richard simply never bothered (as he hadn't with the Mortimers in 1386-7), or that he intentionally did not make it official so as to keep the line of succession murky for his own political benefit, or it may be that he did make it explicit and the document was simply been lost to time.
All in all, though, the Mortimers only come into the conversation around the succession during the brief period in which Richard sees a short-term political benefit in elevating them. The moment that passes, he drops them. (Indeed, Richard will attempt to destroy the Mortimers in much the same way he tried to destroy his uncle Gloucester and his cousin Henry at different times.)
There is another interesting angle that brings in two families from Essex one of which produced Kings of Scotland and Ireland and the other was descended from Llewellyn the Great with a additional power base around Hereford. And connecting them is a very able administrator, John Prophète, who was a member of council under Richard II and Lord Privy Seal under both Henry IV & V. There are also sundry connections with James I of Scotland and his wife Joan Beaufort.
Henry Bolingbroke's first wife was Mary de Bohune who was the wealthiest woman in England, and possibly Europe. The de Bohunes were directly descended from Llewellyn the Great which gave then a power base in both Essex and Hereford. Their neighbours in Essex were the De Bruis whose two sons had become the Kings of Ireland and Scotland, Robert the Bruce in modern parlance, about sixty years earlier. John Prophet was between them in Essex and also in Hereford with the De Bohunes. This is a very strong base for any political power within the British Isles.
Henry and Mary married for love, unusual amongst such powerful families. Being based in the Marches they were also closely entwined with the Mortimers which makes Richard's political manoeuvring seem very ill-advised. John Prophète was, incidentally, the first person to write the Minutes of Council under Richard in English and retained a power base in Hereford where Richard 'banished' him at one point. Prophete also seems to have been one of the guardians of Henry and Mary's children. Mary died in childbirth before Henry became King so the guardianship of her children and their inheritance was vitally important. (One son became King, another founded the University of Caen, a daughter became Empress Palatine and the youngest became Queen Philippa of England of Sweden raising the siege of Copenhagen. Remarkable children).
Was Richard's promotion of the Mortimers an effort to split the Welsh Marcher Lords? If so, it failed disastrously.
John Prophète continued in service until as the last of Henry IV's Council he retired as Privy Seal in 1415 having already laid the administrative basis for Henry's war in France that was by then inevitable. Prophète had recognised the Rome Pope in 1408 over the French Avignon Pope at a convocation of Cardinals in Lucca. The French King took a dim view of this and stated that all of the Prophetes' possessions were defaulted to the French crown.
I'd suggest that Henry IV was a far more important King than is currently appreciated. He crusaded in the Baltic States before becoming King making powerful alliances. In 1400 he hosted the Byzantine Emperor in London for three months over Christmas. He supported the Rome Papacy and formed powerful alliances through marriage across the whole of Scandinavia and Germany. If only his daughters had had children and his son Henry V hadn't died so young then what European unity could have been forged along with the salvation of the Byzantine Empire.
And all of this without mentioning Joan Beaufort or John of Gaunt asking with his attempt to marry another daughter to the Duc de Savoie. France was in danger of being completely surrounded and.....
Him overthrowing the whiny tyrannical is one of the best thing he done fight me
Overthrowing Richard is one of the best things any monarch has ever done. Richard had all the cruelty, shortsightedness and vindictiveness of John, but was thankfully not competent enough to pull off all the various murders and plots he tried to spin.
I only really know him from the Shakespeare plays. So I don’t know if it’s historically accurate or just a load of Bolingbrokes.