Part III
15
Henry IV was born on 15 April 1367 at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, England. Known in his youth as Henry Bolingbroke, he was the fourth-born son of the mightiest English land magnate at that time, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and son of King Edward III. John had a total of fourteen children with two wives and a mistress who later became his wife. Only eight of John’s children lived to adulthood, with Henry Bolingbroke being the oldest legitimate son.1 Not only was Henry raised with the expectation of inheriting his father’s vast lands and wealth one day, he was also a high ranking member of the royal family which put him close in the line of succession to the English throne, automatically making him one of the most powerful men in England.
Henry Bolingbroke was the grandson of King Edward III, a ‘victorious and honourable king who had won respect abroad and popularity at home’.2 When Edward III was just a teenager, his mother and her lover deposed his father, King Edward II, and Edward III became the new king of England. Edward II was a terrible king who allowed his favourites to rule in his stead. He was very controversial because of his flamboyant style and it is very likely he was gay. In fact, throughout his reign he had two very close councillors that were purported to be his lovers: Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser.3 Edward II’s long-suffering wife, Queen Isabella, tolerated her husband’s outrageous behaviour for years but finally reached her breaking point in 1325 and allied herself with Roger Mortimer, the earl of March, to bring about a rebellion against her husband. At some point early in their alliance, Isabella and Roger became lovers. Together the queen and the earl made a powerful duo and quickly exerted their will on Edward II’s court.
In 1326, Isabella and Roger mounted a successful takeover of England in which they captured King Edward II and the king’s current favourite, Hugh Despenser. Hugh was given a traditional traitor’s execution for that time. First, he was dragged behind a horse and then he was hanged. Before he passed out from asphyxiation, he was taken off the gallows so he could be disemboweled and castrated. Then he was quartered, and his body parts were sent around England to show the people how traitors would be dealt with under Isabella’s and Mortimer’s rule.4 King Edward II was dealt with more gently. He was imprisoned and forced to abdicate his throne to his eldest son, Edward III, who was only 14 years old at the time.
Although Edward III was now the ordained king of England, he would not yet be allowed to rule on his own since he was a minor. Until he reached the age of 18, he was supposed to be ruled by a council of noblemen, however, the real power resided with his mother and her lover. They made all the decisions for him and pulled all the levers in the machinations of government. They were only using Edward III as a puppet king.
For all their talk about Edward II’s misrule, Isabella and Roger turned out to be no better. They plundered the royal coffers for their own enjoyment and took counsel from no one. They failed to protect their subjects from continuous Scottish attacks. They had neither the courage nor the money to fund a military campaign. Most damning of all were the restrictions they put on young Edward III. They limited his financial allowance, they prevented him from making decisions in government matters, and they blocked his new young wife from being coronated as queen of England.5
Young Edward endured three years of Isabella’s and Roger’s tyranny before he was old enough and courageous enough to make a bid for control of his own kingdom. He knew they would not step down willingly. He would have to mount a coup to overthrow them. Edward gathered a small circle of his most loyal supporters and broke into Isabella and Roger’s apartments at Nottingham where both were taken as prisoners. Roger was tried before parliament on 26 November 1330, found guilty, and hanged three days later. Isabella was held as a prison of honour at several castles, finally settling in at Castle Rising in Norfolk where she lived for nearly thirty years.6 Young Edward III had proven himself successful in wielding his authority in England and banishing those with evil intentions, even if it was his own mother. Empowered and in control of England, now he would turn his attention to France.
All future kings of England would trace their heritage back to Edward III because he not only had English royal blood but also French royal blood (his mother Isabella was the sister of King Charles IV of France). When Charles IV died childless in 1328, young King Edward asserted his right to the French crown as Charles’ nearest male relative. The French rejected his claim citing Salic Law which stated that inheritance could not be passed through a female line. The throne went instead to Philip of Valois, Charles’ cousin through a completely male line.7 Edward was greatly aggrieved and felt that he was cheated out of his rightful inheritance. He vowed to make France pay and he set his sights on winning the throne of France by conquest. By October 1337, Edward was styling himself as the king of England and France, and in 1340 he formally claimed his right to the throne of France.8
The Hundred Years’ War was the result of Edward III’s bid to win the throne of France. The early years of the war did not go well for him but as he grew in both age and experience, he began to make considerable advancements against the French.9 The first major victory for the English was the Battle of Crécy in October 1346, followed by the Battle of Poitiers in September 1356. But then Edward’s fortune started to turn again. The English ran out of money and men to fight the unrelenting French army, therefore, Edward was forced into a number of peace treaties. Edward suffered further degradations when a new French king was crowned in 1364: Charles V. King Charles was merciless in beating back Edward’s aggressions and forced him to give up his claim to the French throne via the Treaty of Bruges in 1375.10 The treaty reversed all the hard-fought work Edward and his soldiers had undertaken over the past thirty years.
Edward would never quite recover from the humiliation of losing his bid for France. He began to shrink into the background and allow his councillors to rule in his name, just as his father had done. Not only was Edward III crushed by his failures in France, he had also lost his third and favourite son, Lionel of Antwerp, in 1368, and his wife, Queen Philippa, in 1369.11 He still had plenty of sons left though, among them his first-born son Edward of Woodstock, nicknamed the Black Prince, either for his brutality or for the black armor he wore on the battlefield.12
Edward of Woodstock was born in 1330, the fourth year of his father’s reign, the year in which Edward III gained control of government over his own mother and her lover, Roger Mortimer. Edward of Woodstock was made heir to the throne of England when he was invested as prince of Wales in 1343 at the age of 13. Only three years, later young Edward proved himself as a gifted military leader during England’s decisive victory over the French at the Battle of Crécy and then at Poitiers in 1356. He helped his father fight the battles of the Hundred Years’ War for over twenty years and was poised to one day make a magnificent, chivalrous, and knightly king. In fact, all of King Edward III’s hopes for the future relied on the Black Prince, but even the best laid plans sometimes go awry.
In the fall of 1368, the Black Prince fell ill and from that point forward he was seriously debilitated. We don’t know the specific ailment, but we do know that it followed him for the rest of his life and the condition seems have been both physical and mental. He would endure extreme bouts of lethargy that confined him to his bed for months at a time. He also experienced physical maladies, including discharges of blood, presumably from his genitals or anus because he was unable to ride a horse and had to be carried around in a litter. Contemporary chroniclers speculate that he may have been suffering from rectal or prostate cancer.13 He expired from his long illness on 8 June 1376.
The devastated King Edward III now had to select a new heir. Fortunately for him, he had many other legitimate living sons to draw from. Unfortunately, not all were good candidates to be the next king of England. His youngest sons, Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock, were too young and had shown little appetite for government. The most logical heir for King Edward would be his eldest living son, John of Gaunt. He was the only son who had demonstrated the ambition and the intelligence to rule the kingdom.14
Although John of Gaunt was a spare heir, he had been raised to be a chivalrous prince and mighty warrior whose role in the family would be to aid his brother Edward, the Black Prince, in ruling England. John witnessed his first military campaign during the 1355 expedition to France the tender age of 15 and took part in at least another eleven major military expeditions, often alongside his father and his brother in France during the Hundred Years’ War.15 In 1359, John of Gaunt made a highly profitable marriage to Blanche, the only child of the duke of Lancaster, Henry Grosmont, which made her an heiress. After Grosmont’s death in 1361, John of Gaunt inherited, on behalf of his wife, the entire duchy of Lancaster which was the largest singly held territory in England. This made him immensely wealthy, second only to the king of England. When you were wealthy and powerful in medieval England, you were often accused of being overly ambitious. Rich, mighty nobles made the people suspicious that they might have designs on the crown for themselves. John of Gaunt was no different. Although he proved his loyalty to Richard II time and time again, there were continual whispers that Gaunt was going to try to usurp the throne from his nephew.16
After the death of the Black Prince and with his own health failing, 64-year-old King Edward III finally wrote his will in late 1376. His will was called the ‘Act of Entail’ and in it he established the succession of the throne following ‘tail male’ rules which excluded heirs through his daughters. Rather than naming his eldest living son (John of Gaunt) to be the next king, King Edward did something slightly unusual, although not unprecedented.17 He named his grandson, Richard of Bordeaux, eldest living son of the Black Prince, to be next in the order of succession using a device called ‘Right of Substitution’. Essentially since the Black Prince died prematurely, his son Richard was accepted as a substitute. After Richard, he named the next in line for succession to be John of Gaunt and the male heirs of his body, followed by King Edward’s other living sons, Edmund, Duke of York, and Thomas, Duke of Gloucester.
Interestingly, the ‘Act of Entail’ was kept secret from the public. The only people who knew about it were those named in the entail and the king’s closest confidants who bore witness.18 Certainly, as the main beneficiaries, Richard, Gaunt, and Henry would have been made aware of their status in line for the throne. Unfortunately, the document must never have been introduced to parliament to put into law or else we would have seen in recorded in the Parliament Rolls.
There are a few possible reasons for the secrecy. First, many rulers were hesitant to publicly name an heir because that gave discontented subjects someone to rally around and possibly attempt a coup. Secondly, it is possible King Edward hid the Act of Entail because he was afraid of a backlash since John of Gaunt was so unpopular in London. John was haughty, overmighty, and openly flaunted his relationship with longtime mistress Catherine Swynford who bore him three illegitimate children. Thirdly, Edward may have kept it secret because it defied the English tradition of primogeniture, which states that the next eldest child inherits, regardless of gender. If King Edward III would have followed primogeniture, the next in line to the throne would have been the first earl of March, Roger Mortimer, who was the son of Edward’s second eldest living child, Isabella.19 Instead, Edward III chose to exclude females from the royal succession, in favour of his living sons and grandsons.