Henry IV of England Henry IV of England Henry IV (15 April 1367 – 20 March 1413), also known as Henry Bolingbroke (), was King of England from 1399 to 1413, and asserted the claim of his grandfather, Edward III (himself a maternal grandson of Philip IV of France), to the Kingdom of France. Henry was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire. His father, John of Gaunt (1340-1399) (created 1st Duke of Lancaster in right of his wife), was the fourth son (third to survive to adulthood) of King Edward III and enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of
Henry VI of England fear was the possibility of another noble utilizing the mentally unstable king to further their own agenda. According to the "Historie of the arrivall of Edward IV", an official chronicle favorable to Edward IV, Henry died of melancholy on hearing news of the Battle of Tewkesbury and his son's death. It is widely suspected, however, that Edward IV, who was re-crowned the morning following Henry's death, had in fact ordered his murder. Sir Thomas More's "History of Richard III" explicitly states that Richard killed Henry, an opinion he might have derived from Commynes' Memoir. Another contemporary source, "Wakefield's Chronicle", gives