This change was undoubtedly in the highest degree acceptable to the great body of tho people, among whom the vices and misgovern ment of Richard bad made him an object cf hatred or contempt, while Henry of Lancaster had long been the idol of their affections and hopes. The new settlement was first disturbed by a plot of a few of the nobility, the lords who had appealed the Duke of Gloucester, and who for that act bad now been deprived of the titles and estates they bad received as the reward of their services from Richard. Their sohemo to assassinate the new king however was detected in time, and when they afterwards flew to arms they were everywhere fallen upon and easily overpowered by the spontaneous loyalty of the people. A ear with France, of which some apprehension was for a moment entertained, from the feelings naturally excited in the king and people of that country by the treatment of Richard IL, who had lately married Isabella, the young daughter of Charles VI., was averted by the restoration of that princess. Military operations however speedily commenced on the side Loth of Wales and Scotland, in the former of which countries an insurrection, headed by the famous Owen Gleudwr, bellied all Henry's efforts during several successive campaigns to put it down [0 LENDWR, OWEN]; while two Scottish armies, that marched across the borders, pretending that they came to restore king Richard, who, it was said, was still alive and resident at the northern court, were defeated, the first on the 22nd of June 1402, at Nesbet Moor, the second on the 14th of September, in the same year, iu the much more destructive fight of Homildon 11 i 1 1. The victorious commander in this last affair was Harry Percy, the renowned Hotspur, eldest sou of the Earl of Northumberland, the nobleman to whom more than to any other individual Henry owed his throne. That great house, conockma of Be power and its services, now broko with the king of its own malaise, on his refusal to permit the ransoming of Henry Percy's wife's brother, Sir Edmund Mortimer, who had been taken prisoner by Olendwr, and whom, as the uncle and natural guardian of the young Earl of March, the legitimate heir by lineal descent to the crown, Henry had his own reasons for wishing out of the way. [See the genealogical table in EDWARD nr. ; but alter the line drawn from Lionel, duke of Clarence, so as to fall upon Philippa, and not upon her husband, Edmund Mortimer, as there printed.) A most formidable rebellion followed, in which the Percles were joined by Hotspur's undo the Earl of Worcester, and Scroop, archbishop of York, and leagued both with Owen Glendar, who now gave his daughter in marriage to his prisoner Mortimer, and with the Scottish Earl Douglas, whom Percy liberated without ransom, on condition of his aiding them with all his power. The mighty confederacy however was annihilated, 21st of July 1403, by the battle of Shrewsbury, in which henry Percy, the commander of the rebel force, was himself slain. This decisive victory established the throne of Henry of Lancaster. Some further hostilities with the Sects and the Welsh, the latter being assisted by a force from France, continued to give him occupa tion for two or three years longer ; but before the end of 1405 Owen Gleudwr was effectually put down, principally by the activity and military skill of Henry, prince of Wales, tho eldest son of the English king, and a truce with Scotland had restored quiet for the present in that quarter. It was hi the time of this truce that on the 30th of March 1403, an English cruiser captured the ship in which James, tho eldest son of King Robert of Scotland, was proceeding to France, ou which Henry retained possession of the young prince, who, becoming king the following year by the death of his father, remained a prisoner in England till 1424. About the same time Henry detected a conspiracy against his life, one of the principal persons engaged in which was his cousin Edward, duke of York, whose estates were imme diately forfeited to the crown, and quelled another insurrectionary attempt of tho Percies, headed by Scroop, archbishop of York, who expiated his treason by a death on the scaffold. A third northern
insurrection, the last effort of the crafty old Earl of Northumberland, who had some years before been deprived of his estates and outlawed, was put down, 2Sth of February 1408, at the battle of Branham Moor, near Tadenster, in which the earl himself fell.
Meanwhile an irregular war with France, which had at first been carried on principally at sea, had led at last to some military operations in Guienue, where the English possessions were attacked by the French ; and this involved Henry to a slight degree iu the contest between the two great factions that then distracted Frame, the Bourguignoaa and the Orleanists, or Armagnac*. Having first sent a small body of troops to the assistance of the former in 1411, the next year he changed sides and entered into alliance with the latter, his principal object apparently being to keep up the anarchy which their quarrel occasioned ; but these transactions led to no important national results during this reign.
In his latter years Henry, whose character the more it became known developed a harsher and more unamiable aspect, lost all the popular favour that had greeted his accession; and he had the unhap piness of seeing not only his chief friends transformed into enemies, but the affections of his subjects generally transferred to his son. To ill-health of body is also said to have Leen added remorse for many of the actions of his unscrupulous career, and especially for the means by which he had acquired a crowu that eat so heavy on his brow, and which he superstitiously dreaded Heaven would not permit to be long worn by his descendants. He had endeavoured to soothe his conseieuco with the project of a crusade to the Holy Land, but death took him off before he could execute that design. He breathed his last on tho 20th of March 1413, in the forty-seventh year of his age and the fourteenth of his reign.
By his first wife, Mary de Bohuu, Henry IV. had the following children :-1, Henry, who ancceeded him; 2, Thomas, bore 13S9, created earl of Albemarle and duke of Clarence 1411, died 1421 ; 3, John, created earl of Kendal and duke of Bedford, 1414, afterwards regent of France, died 1435; 4, Humphrey, created earl of Pembroke and duke of Gloucester 1414, died 1446 ; 5, Blanch, married succes sively to Lewis Barbatua, elector palatine and duke of Bavaria, to the king of Aragon and to the Duke of Bar ; and 6, Philippa, married to Erie X., king of Denmark and Norway. By a second wife, Joanna, daughter of Charles II., king of Navarre, and widow of John V., duke of Brittany, whom he married in 1403, he had no issue.
Of the laws made in this reign the most memorable is tho statute against the Lollards (the 2 Henry IV., c. 15), one of the enactments of which was that persons guilty of heresy, and refusing to abjure, or relapsing after abjuration, should bo publicly burned. It is commonly supposed however that the writ ' De Ilecretico Comburendo' was a common-law process before the passing of this statute. Several exe cutions took place upon tho new law in the course of the reign. In Henry's first parliament also the law of treason was brought back (by the 1st llenry IV., c. 10) to the state in which it had been placed by the net of the 25th of Edward. Ill., certain new treasons created in the 21st year of the preceding reign being all repealed. The defects of Henry's title to the crown, and the repeated applications he was obliged to make to parliament for the means of putting down the insurrections by which the now settlement was assailed, had the effect of greatly enhancing the importance and power of the House of Commons under this king and the other Lancastrian princes.