Henry IV. of England, the first king of the House of Lancaster, was born 3d April 1367, the son of John of Gaunt, and was surnamed Bolingbroke, from his birthplace in Lincolnshire. His father was the fourth son of Edward III., his mother the daughter of Duke Henry of Lancaster. In 1386 Henry was made Earl of Derby, and married Mary de Bohun, the second richest heiress in England. For some years he led a roving life. He was present at the taking of Tunis in 1390, fought against the heathen on the shores of the Baltic, made an attempt to reach Jerusalem in 1392-93, and commanded some English lances in the disastrous battle against the Turks at Nicopolis (1396). In 1397 he supported Richard II. in the revolution which destroyed the Duke of Gloucester, and was created Duke of Hereford; in 1398 he was banished, and in the following year, when his father died, his estates were declared forfeit to Richard. Thereupon, in July 1399, Henry landed in Yorkshire with three small vessels. He met with no opposition; and on September 29, in the Tower, he induced Richard, who had been deserted and betrayed, to sign a renunciation of his claims to be king. On the next day Henry rose in his place in parliament and claimed the kingdom and crown, all present assenting. The act was a usurpation, for Henry's claim to succeed by right of birth was barred by the six-year-old son of the Earl of March, who was descended from an older branch. Richard was shut up in the castle of Pomfret. There was an attempted rising on the part of his friends in the following January, but it was easily suppressed, the leaders being beheaded by the mob; and in the middle of January 1400 Richard died in his dungeon, probably from starvation. Yet his death was more than once denied by the disaffected party, and many cruel executions were necessary before the report that he had escaped to Scotland could be silenced. Henry's reign was one of trouble and commotion. There were incessant rebellions, and more than one treacherous attempt was made upon his life, until in his last years he was reduced to a state of constant fear. Lawlessness, rising partly out of the great poverty and heavy taxation, was rife in every quarter; piracy crippled commerce, though not much more so than the increased duties laid on staples; and frequent descents were made upon the coast by expeditions from France—for the country of Richard's young queen was Henry's implacable enemy. The king's movements, too, were constantly hampered for want of money, there being no funds available for anything beyond the most ordinary expenses of the country; and 'war treasurers' were ultimately appointed by the impatient Commons to watch the disbursement of the sums voted. In 1404 the Illiterate Parliament, to which it had been directed that no lawyer should be returned as a knight of the shire, proposed to confiscate the property of the clergy; but the necessity under which Henry found himself of supporting the authority of the church led him not only to discountenance all such proposals, but also to permit severe enactments against heretics. On 2d March 1401 the first case in England of burning for heresy occurred, when a clergyman named William Chatrys was burned at Smithfield.
The chief disturbances of the peace of the reign, however, were occasioned by the Welsh and the Scots. Under Owen Glendower (q.v.) the Welsh maintained their independence throughout this reign, and kept up a harassing warfare against the English. Scotland Henry invaded in 1400, besieging Edinburgh Castle until compelled by famine to retire. In 1402, while Henry was engaged against the Welsh, the Scots in turn made an irruption into Northumberland with 40,000 men; but a body of some 10,000 of them were encountered by the Earl of Northumberland and his son Harry Percy, with a force computed at 12,000 lances and 7000 archers, and met with a crushing defeat (14th September) at Humbleton (or Homildon), where Earl Douglas and the Duke of Albany's son were taken prisoners. Harry Percy (Hotspur) and his house shortly after broke with the king, and leagued with Douglas and Glendower against him; but the king met the Percies at Shrewsbury (21st July 1403), where the insurgents were utterly defeated, Hotspur slain, and Douglas again taken prisoner. Two other insurrections followed, but were easily suppressed; and the remainder of the reign was comparatively free from domestic troubles. In 1406 Prince James of Scotland (afterwards James I.) was captured on his way to France, and was detained and educated in England. The civil wars in France gave Henry an opportunity to send two expeditions (1411 and 1412) to that country; but in his later years he was a miserable invalid, afflicted with epileptic fits, the last of which seized him while in Westminster Abbey. He died on 20th March 1413, in the Jerusalem Chamber; and this was taken to explain a prophecy which had said that he was to die at Jerusalem—and as late as the preceding November he certainly had hoped to go once more on crusade. Henry's last days were embittered by a dread that he would be supplanted by his eldest son. He had commenced his reign energetic and determined to govern on constitutional principles; to this resolve he remained steadfast, as he maintained also his devoutness and purity of life; but disappointment and perhaps disease latterly made him cruel, vindictive, suspicious, and irritable. The labour and sorrow of founding a dynasty were his, and his usurped crown he found a heavy burden.
See Stubbs, vol. iii.; Gairdner, The Houses of Lancaster and York, in 'Epochs of History' series (1874); and especially Wylie, History of England under Henry the Fourth (1884-98). To these must be added, for this and the next two reigns, and for Henry VIII., Shakespeare's historical plays, which are based mainly on the Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed (q.v.). For their value as history, see Courtenay's Commentaries on the Historical Plays of Shakespeare (2 vols. 1840).