Henry was born in the then impressive Castle at Bolingbroke, which is now a sleepy village on the southernmost edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. At the time it was a prosperous market town on a series of islands in the marshes. The Castle came into the family when John of Gaunt married Henry's mother Blanche who was an heiress of the Duchy of Lancaster and its main function during the 15th and 16th centuries was as an administrative centre for the Duchy estates. The current names of the towers, for example the Auditor’s Tower and Receiver’s Tower, refer to their use during this period. (The Author's maternal grandmother was born just down the road.)
During the opening years of the reign of the young King Richard II, Henry’s father ran the government. (Henry and Richard were approximately the same age.) 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 Appellant—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 Crusade 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 in February 1399 deprived Henry of his inheritance and gave him an excuse to invade England in the July. Richard surrendered to him in August and Bolingbroke’s reign as King Henry IV began when Richard abdicated on 30th September 1399.
Either way, Henry IV of England and members of the Royal Family did not follow suit until about 10 or 20 years later. Edmund, 2nd Duke olf York appears to be the first on his seal of 1403. The future Henry V as Prince of Wales followed with his seal of 1405. Henry IV's second Great Seal shows the change and is believed to date around 1406-08.
Henry IV used his descent from King Henry III as well as his grandfather to justify his usurpation of the Throne. The memory of Henry III was closely interwoven with the two royal saints, Edward the Confessor and Edmund the Martyr, after whom Henry III named both his sons. Henry IV introduced both Saints' attributed shields to his second Great Seal.
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 II’s supporters in January 1400. Eight months later the Welsh landowner, Owain Glyn Dŵr, raised a 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, Owain Glyn Dŵr 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, the eldest son of the 1st Duke of Norfolk, and Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, executed for conspiring with Northumberland to raise another rebellion.
Whilst the worst of Henry’s political troubles were over, he 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 those 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 control 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, Prince of Wales. The latter group ousted Arundel from his other appointment as Chancellor 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 his son was high when Henry became totally incapacitated late in 1412. He died several months later, and the prince succeeded as King Henry V.
Mary de Bohun
Mary and her elder sister, Eleanor de Bohun, were the heiresses of their father Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford's substantial possessions. Eleanor became the wife of Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, the youngest child of Edward III. In an effort to keep the inheritance for himself and his wife, Thomas pressured the child Mary into becoming a nun. In a plot with John of Gaunt, Mary's aunt took her from Thomas' castle at Pleshey back to Arundel whereupon she was married to Henry Bolingbroke on 27th July 1380.
The de Bohun Arms were as follows:
Azure, a Bend argent cotised or between six Lions rampant or.
Mary died at Peterborough Castle, giving birth to her last child, a daughter, Philippa. Mary and Henry's children were as follows:
- Henry V, King of England (1386–1422)
- Thomas of Lancaster, Duke of Clarence (1387–1421)
- John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford (1389–1435)
- Humphrey of Lancaster, Duke of Gloucester (1390–1447)
- Blanche of England (1392–1409) married in 1402 Louis III, Elector Palatine
- Philippa of England (1394–1430) married in 1406 Eric of Pomerania, King of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Use of the swan as a Badge derives from the legend of the Swan Knight, today most familiar from Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin. The Crusade cycle, a group of Old French songs, had associated the legend with the ancestors of Godfrey of Bouillon, King of Jerusalem and hero of the First Crusade. Godfrey had no legitimate children, but his wider family had many descendants among the aristocracy of Europe, many of whom made use of the swan as a heraldic emblem after his death. The de Bohun family of the Earls of Hereford were one such family.
Surviving examples of usage of the Bohun Swan include:
- The Counter Seal of Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford attached to the Barons' Letter, 1301, shows the Bohun Swan above the escutcheon and supporting its strap.
- Two Bohun swans collared and chained with necks entwined at the feet of the effigy of Margaret de Bohun (1311–1391), daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford and wife of Hugh de Courtenay, 2nd Earl of Devon, on her tomb chest in the south transept of Exeter Cathedral.
After the marriage of Mary de Bohun to Henry Bolingbroke, the Swan was adopted by the royal House of Lancaster, which continued to use it for over a century. The Swan had a Crown round its neck (gorged) to which a Chain was attached and echoes the white Hart similarly gorged and chained used by King Richard II, which he began to use as a livery badge from 1390. Richard II's treasure roll of 1397 includes, together with several of his own white hart badges, a swan badge with a gold chain, perhaps presented by one of his Lancastrian enemies. Richard declared to Parliament that he had exchanged liveries with his uncles as a sign of friendship at various moments of reconciliation.
After Henry Bolingbroke seized the throne in 1399, the use of the Swan Badge was transferred to his son, the future King Henry V (1413–1422), who was made Prince of Wales at his father's coronation, and whose tomb in Westminster Abbey displays motifs of Swans.
The Dunstable Swan Jewel, now in the British Museum, was made in about 1400 and is presumed to have been intended as a livery badge possibly given to his supporters by the future Henry V as Prince of Wales. It was excavated in 1965 on the site of Dunstable Friary. The jewel is a rare medieval example of the then recently developed and fashionable white opaque enamel used in en ronde bosse to almost totally encase an underlying gold form and is a unique survival of the most expensive form of livery badge, even though it lacks the ultimate luxury of being set with gems, for example ruby eyes. No one is quite sure whether it was made in London or Paris.
Thomas of Lancaster, Duke of Clarence
Thomas, Duke of Clarence (1387 – 22nd March 1421) was born before 25th November 1387 as his father's accounts note a payment made to a woman described as his nurse. In late 1411 he married Margaret, widow of his uncle John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, and daughter of Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent. No children were born from this union, though Thomas was stepfather to her six children from her first marriage, who were, in fact, his first cousins. He had a natural son, Sir John Clarence, the "Bastard of Clarence", who fought by his father's side in France. After his father's death, he participated in his brother's military campaigns in France during the Hundred Years' War. Left in charge of English forces in France when Henry returned temporarily to England after his marriage to Catherine of Valois, Thomas led the English in their disastrous defeat at the hands of a mainly Scottish force that came to the aid of the French at the Battle of Baugé. In a rash attack, he and his leading knights were surrounded, and Thomas was killed. |
Margaret Holland, Duchess of Clarence
Margaret Holland (1385 – 30th December 1439) was a medieval English noblewoman. She was a daughter of Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent, who was the son of Joan "the Fair Maid of Kent" (granddaughter of Edward I of England, wife of Edward the Black Prince and mother of Richard II of England). Thomas’s father, also Thomas, was a founder Knight of the Garter. Margaret's mother was Alice FitzAlan, daughter of Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel and Eleanor of Lancaster, who was in turn descended from King Henry III. Margaret herself was invested as a Lady Companion, Order of the Garter in 1399. She died on 30th December 1439 at St. Saviour's Abbey, Bermondsey, in London, England. Margaret and both her husbands are buried together in a carved alabaster tomb in Canterbury Cathedral that shows her lying between the two of them. |
John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford
John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford (20th June 1389 – 14th September 1435) was a general and statesman who commanded England's armies in France during a critical phase of the Hundred Years' War. Bedford was the third son of King Henry IV of England, brother to Henry V, and acted as regent of France for his nephew Henry VI. Despite his military and administrative talent, the situation in France had severely deteriorated by the time of his death. Bedford was a capable administrator and soldier, and his effective management of the war brought the English to the height of their power in France. However, difficulties mounted after the arrival of Joan of Arc, and his efforts were further thwarted by political divisions at home and the wavering of England's key ally, Duke Philip of Burgundy and his faction. In the last years of Bedford's life, the conflict devolved into a war of attrition, and he became increasingly unable to gather the necessary funds to prosecute the conflict. |
Bedford took on the split ermine and fleury Label of his father and grandfather.
Conversely, on his Seal his Supporters are an Eagle and a Wild Boar.
John's first marriage was to Anne of Burgundy (d. 1432), daughter of John the Fearless, on 13th May 1423 in Troyes. This was a strategic marriage, but the couple were happily married, by all accounts, despite being childless. Anne died of the plague in Paris in 1432.
John's second marriage was to Jacquetta of Luxembourg, on 22nd April 1433 at Thérouanne in northern France. This marriage was also childless, although Jacquetta went on to have more than a dozen children in her second marriage to Richard Woodville (later Earl Rivers). Her eldest child, Elizabeth Woodville, became Queen consort of England as the spouse of Edward IV in 1464.
Humphrey of Lancaster, Duke of Gloucester
Humphrey of Lancaster, Duke of Gloucester (3rd October 1390 – 23rd February 1447) was (as he styled himself) "son, brother and uncle of kings", being the fourth and youngest son of Henry IV of England, the brother of Henry V, and the uncle of Henry VI. Unlike his brothers, Humphrey was given no major military command by his father, instead receiving an intellectual upbringing. Created Duke of Gloucester in 1414, he participated in Henry V's campaigns during the Hundred Years' War in France, fighting at Agincourt in 1415 and at the conquest of Normandy in 1417–9. Following his brother’s death in 1422, Gloucester became one of the leading figures in the regency government of Henry VI. He proved a troublesome figure, quarrelling constantly with his brother, John, Duke of Bedford, and uncle, Cardinal Henry Beaufort, and went so far as to violently prosecute a dispute with the Duke of Burgundy, a key English ally in France. At home, Gloucester never fully achieved his desired dominance, while his attempts to gain a foreign principality for himself were fruitless. |
However, a staunch opponent of concessions in the French conflict, and a proponent of offensive warfare, Gloucester increasingly lost favour among the political community and King Henry VI himself after the end of his minority. The trial in 1441 of Eleanor Cobham, his second wife, under charges of witchcraft, destroyed Gloucester's political influence. In 1447, he himself was accused, probably falsely, of treason, and died a few days later while under arrest.
Joan of Navarre
She was Duchess of Brittany by marriage to Duke John IV, as his third wife and the only one with whom he had children, and later Queen of England by marriage to King Henry IV (for which a papal dispensation was necessary). She served as regent of Brittany from 1399 until 1403 during the minority of her son. She also served as regent of England during the absence of her stepson, Henry V, in 1415. Four years later he imprisoned her and confiscated her money and land. Joan was released in 1422, shortly before Henry V's death.
Her fortune was returned to her and she lived the rest of her life quietly and comfortably with her own court at Nottingham Castle. She died at Havering-atte-Bower in Essex, and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral next to Henry IV.
Her Arms show her father's Kingdom of Navarre (the golden net of chain on red) quartered with Évreux (France with a Bendlet of white and red). Philip, Count of Évreux became King of Navarre by his marriage to Joan II of Navarre, daughter of Louis the Headstrong, and their son Charles the Bad (Joan’s father) and their grandson Charles the Noble were also Kings of Navarre. The latter ceded his counties of Évreux, Champagne and Brie to King Charles VI of France in 1404.