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 IV of England male heir, but not the most senior in terms of agnatic descent from Edward III. Although he was heir to the throne according to Edward III's entail to the crown of 1376, Dr. Ian Mortimer has pointed out in his 2008 biography of Henry IV that this entail had probably been supplanted by an entail made by Richard II in 1399 (see Ian Mortimer, "The Fears of Henry IV", appendix two, pp. 366–9). Henry thus had to overcome the superior claim of the Mortimers in order to maintain his inheritance. This difficulty compounded when the Mortimer claim was merged with