The Tumultuous Reign of Henry IV

A Crown Usurped – The Death of a King – The Welsh Uprising – Harry Hotspur & the Battle of Homildon Hill – The Hotspur Uprising – The Battle of Shrewsbury – Henry of Monmouth in Wales – A Mysterious Sickness – A Government Fractured 

Henry IV of England

Henry IV had a short but chaotic reign. He sat on the throne from 1399 to 1413, and he was the first of three monarchs in the 15th century who hailed from the House of Lancaster. He was the eldest surviving son of John of Gaunt, cousin to Richard II, and grandson of Edward III—though he would make his bid for the throne based on none of this but, rather, on his descent from Henry III from the 13th century. During the reign of Richard II, Henry IV—known then as Henry Bolingbroke—had incurred Richard’s wrath by serving on the Lords Appellant who reigned in Richard’s stead following the Merciless Parliament of 1388. After his time with the Appellant, he went crusading in Lithuania and Prussia before returning to England. Richard hadn’t “buried the hatchet,” and it was only a matter of time before his vengeance against the former Lords Appellant fell on Bolingbroke. That hammer blow came in 1398 when he exiled Henry and stripped him of his inheritance, leaving him broke and hopeless. Bolingbroke wasn’t the sort to back down, and in July 1399 he invaded England not just to take back his inheritance but to seize all of England. 

Richard met Henry’s representatives at Conway Castle and was told that if he restored Henry’s estates and surrendered named councilors for trial, he would remain in power. This was but a ruse, for when Richard submitted, Henry’s men seized him and had him thrown in the dungeon in the Tower of London. A parliament was called that September, and there Henry claimed the throne. He used his descent from Henry III to justify his usurpation, but therein he erroneously claimed that his Lancastrian maternal ancestor, Edmund Crouchback, had been the elder son of Henry III but had been overlooked because of his physical deformity in favor of Edward I. Parliament didn’t care for fact or fiction; they’d had enough of King Richard and were ready to be done with him. They declared him a tyrant and deposed him, and he was carried off to Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire where he would eventually die (likely by starvation under Henry’s orders). Henry Bolingbroke took the throne on 20 September 1399, adopting the regal name Henry IV. At his coronation one of his golden spurs fell off, which many interpreted as an evil omen. Very well it may have been—the chaos of Henry’s reign was about to begin.

The first half decade of Henry IV’s reign was marked by rebellions in Wales and Northumberland, both of which were preceded by his snuffing out an attempt by Richard II’s supporters to get the old king back on the throne. Eight months after putting Richard’s diehard followers in their place, a Welsh landowner named Owain Glyn Dwr called himself the true Prince of Wales and seized Conway Castle. He received a large following among the Welsh, who resented England’s often oppressive rule. Beginning in 1400, Henry IV ordered a number of campaigns into Wales to subdue the rebellion, but the Welsh fighters held their ground. The Earl of Northumberland sent his son, Henry Percy—known as “Harry Hotspur” because of his ferocity—to fight for Henry IV in Wales. 

Harry Hotspur

During the reign of Richard II, Henry Percy had been named Warden of the East March and tasked with protecting England’s border with Scotland. It was there that Percy earned his nickname, for the Scots came to call him “Haatspore” because of his tenacity, daring, and skill in numerous border skirmishes. In 1386, at the tail end of the Caroline War, Richard dispatched Hotspur to Calais, where he led sorties against the French. When the French besieged Brest, Hotspur led the naval force tasked with relieving the beleaguered town. His prowess in the Caroline War earned him membership as a Knight of the Garter, and after peace came between England and France, he returned to his homeland and soon commanded the English forces against the Scottish Earl of Douglas at the Battle of Otterburn in 1388. He handled himself well despite being captured; he was quickly ransomed for 7000 marks. He witnessed Richard’s tyrannical unraveling in Ireland in 1395, and he returned to Calais the next year. When Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne, Hotspur’s support was bought with lands and titles (the Percys had been supporters of the former king). So great was Hotspur’s reputation that Henry IV commissioned him royal lieutenant over the campaigns in Wales, and the king’s eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, the Prince of Wales, who was just a teenager, was placed under Hotspur and tasked to “teach [the Prince of Wales] the art of war; and they used to climb the mountains and sleep together as good friends.” But Hotspur’s time in Wales drew to a close: the Scots were raiding his homeland in Northumbria, and he was drawn northward to defend the frontier. He participated in the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Homildon Hill on 14 September 1402 and acquired numerous prisoners. When Henry IV demanded that Hotspur send his prisoners to the Tower of London (where the king, rather than Hotspur, would make bank off their ransoms), Hotspur’s allegiance—bought but not quite paid for—began to slip. 

The Battle of Homildon Hill

The Percys, remember, had been supporters of Richard II. Henry Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne was but one reason, however, for them to despise him. The new king had not only failed to pay the Percys their wages due for defending England’s frontier, but he had also made a personal foul by refusing to ransom Hotspur’s brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer, the Earl of March, who had been captured by Owain Dyr. Henry had refused to ransom the Earl of March because, according to the laws of primogeniture, March had a better claim to the English throne than Henry; the king figured it was prudent to have his possible rival enchained rather than roaming around and possibly causing problems. Ironically it was Henry’s fear of a possible problem that led to a monstrous one: the king’s refusal to ransom Mortimer, coupled with his audacity not only to delay payments to the Percys but also to demand their prisoners so he could line his own pockets, pushed Hotspur across that thin red line. He loaded his prisoners on wagons and left Northumberland, but rather than heading south to London he headed west to Wales—and he forged an alliance with Henry’s archenemy, Owain Dwr. There he proclaimed the Earl of March the true heir to the English throne. He returned to Northumberland to stir up revolt, and he even went so far as to join hands with his own archenemy, the Scottish Earl of Douglas. These three entities made strange bedfellows; it was not often that the English, Welsh, and Scots banded together. 

The Battle of Shrewsbury

Hotspur, along with his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, and their new Scottish ally the Earl of Douglas, marched towards Shrewsbury, which was held by Hotspur’s old protégé, the Prince of Wales. Henry IV marched hard and fast to intercept Hotspur before the rebels could link up with Welsh reinforcements dispatched by Owain. The king reached the town before the rebels, on the 20th of September, and the next morning he led his royal army from Shrewsbury to confront the rebels before the Welsh reinforcements arrived. The two forces arrayed themselves face-to-face at Haytely Field, just three miles from the town. Though medieval sources are at great variance when it comes to the numbers of the opposing armies (estimates for Henry’s forces, for example, run anywhere between 15,000 to 60,000 men), the chroniclers are consistent in that the royal army outnumbered the rebels 3:1. Henry opened parleys with Hotspur and his entourage, for he, like his son, was fond of Hotspur and hoped to put all this behind them. The peace talks came to nothing, however, and the matter would have to be settled by blows. The Battle of Shrewsbury began around noon, and it opened with a hellacious exchange of arrows from both sides. The Prince of Wales was wounded by an arrow in the face, but he refused to retire from the field. Neither army wished to duel it out with arrows, and the two sides charged into one another. The royal army quickly gained the upper hand, though the Earl of Stafford, leading Henry’s center, was killed. Harry Hotspur, true to his name, led a ferocious but rash charge into the English line. Before he could reach the line, however, an arrow plunged through his forehead and sank into his brain. He pitched dead off his horse, and rebel morale sank. Come dusk the rebels, run ragged, broke and fled, but the royal forces were too wearied to give chase. A contemporary speaks of Shrewsbury, telling us, “A more stubborn fight, it is maintained by those who were present, was never known. Very many of the combatants on both sides struggled with such obstinacy that when night came on they did not know which side had won: and they sank down in all directions a chance medley of weary, wounded, bruised and bleeding men.”

Hotspur Catches An Arrow

A lunar eclipse cast an eerie blackness over the field sprinkled with the dead and dying, and when Hotspur’s body was recovered, the English king wept over him. But running a kingdom doesn’t make allowances for sentimentalities, and when rumors began to spread that the infamous Hotspur had survived the battle, Henry was moved to desecrate the corpse. He ordered Hotspur’s body to be displayed in Shrewsbury; it was impaled on a spear set between two millstones, and after rot began to set in, the corpse was quartered. Its parts were sent to far-flung regions of the kingdom, and Hotspur’s head was set on a pike at the gates of York. The Earl of Worcester, who had been captured in the battle, was beheaded for his treachery; his own head was thrust upon a spike and displayed on London Bridge. These were the fates, the king was saying, of those who dared rise against his rule—no matter the affection he may feel for you. The lesson suppressed many who would otherwise have followed Hotspur’s lead, but a number of minor uprisings from restless Northumberland had to be squashed (the Earl of Northumberland, Hotspur’s father, vowed not to rest until Hotspur’s death and desecration was avenged). Thomas Mowbray, whom Henry had quarreled with during the reign of Richard II, and the Archbishop of York were executed for conspiring with the Earl of Northumberland to raise yet another rebellion. 

Owain Dwr had hoped for an edge with Hotspur at his right hand, but the Battle of Shrewsbury blunted those hopes. Owain was emboldened when news came that Henry IV had begun suffering a mysterious disease that left him incapacitated in his chambers for long periods at a time; while contemporaries named this sickness as leprosy, some historians believe it was some form of cardiovascular disease or congenital syphilis. As the sickness grew stronger, the king developed a massive tumor under his nose, and his body became covered in suppurating sores. Owain hoped that the king’s predicament would work in his favor, but his raids into English territory in 1405-1406 were met by the man who had been trained under Hotspur: Henry of Monmouth, the Prince of Wales. Owain had forged an alliance with the French, hoping that their aid could replace what he lost in Hotspur’s demise, but the Prince of Wales was too much for him to handle. Piece by piece the Prince subdued Wales, and Owain was forced into hiding. The rebellion fizzled out and Owain disappeared. All traces of him vanish after 1412, and though his cause came to nothing, the Welsh still revere him as a hero. 

Henry IV had managed to put down not only the Hotspur Rebellion but the Welsh Uprising, and though these were undeniable victories, they came at a heavy cost. These conflicts needed money, and the king had to rely on parliamentary grants. Multiple times between 1401 and 1406, parliament accused Henry of mismanaging his grants, and they were able to acquire precedent-setting powers over royal expenditures and appointments, further strengthening their role in English governance and politics. As his health further deteriorated, Henry’s administration was placed in the hands of the Prince of Wales. The government soon succumbed to a power struggle between the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was beloved by the king, and the Prince with his cohort of Beaufort half-brothers. The Beaufort faction was able to oust the Archbishop from his position as chancellor in 1410, but the Beauforts fell from power the next year. Henry IV regained his wits for a time and managed to make an alliance with the French faction that was waging war against the Burgundians (for France had fallen into a civil war between two competing factions, the Burgundians and Armagnacs); because of this alliance, Henry and his son had a falling out. Henry IV’s sickness got the better of him in 1412, and the Prince of Wales ascended the throne as Henry V. 

The tyranny of Richard II and the tumultuous reign of Henry IV would now be outmatched by a king whose glory would shine like the sun and remind the people of what life—and war—was like under Edward III. The English were going to conquer France.