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- The play opens one year after the death of Richard II, and King Henry is making plans for a crusade to the Holy Land to cleanse himself of the guilt he feels over the usurpation of Richard's crown. But the crusade must be postponed when Henry learns that Welsh rebels, led by Owen Glendower, have defeated and captured Mortimer.
www.shakespeare-online.com › plays › 1kh4_1_1Shakespeare's King Henry IV 1.1 - plans for a crusade to the ...
My purpose is to discuss how Shakespeare takes a sketchy and confused historical record of Henry's career and his association with the Holy Land, and in Richard II and the two parts of Henry IV makes out of that record something of great constancy-a pilgrimage not just of remorse or of politics, but of the heart.
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Apr 21, 2024 · Henry IV was born around 1366 and he died in 1413, leaving the kingdom to his son, Henry V. Why was Henry IV exiled? Henry went on crusade to Prussia and on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, thereby winning a reputation for chivalry and militant piety.
- Robbie Mitchell
Henry also announced he was planning to launch a crusade to the Holy Land. [322] He addressed a letter to Hugh of Cluny. In it he explained to his godfather he intended to "make good the ruin of the Church, which was caused by us, through the restoration of peace and justice". [ 330 ]
- Overview
- Early years
Henry IV, (born November 11, 1050, Goslar?, Saxony—died August 7, 1106, Liège, Lorraine), duke of Bavaria (as Henry VIII; 1055–61), German king (from 1054), and Holy Roman emperor (1084–1105/06), who engaged in a long struggle with Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII) on the question of lay investiture (see Investiture Controversy), eventually drawing exc...
Henry’s father, Henry III, had retained a firm hold on the church and had resolved a schism in Rome (1046), opening new activities for the reformers. At Easter 1051, the boy was baptized after the German princes had taken an oath of fidelity and obedience at Christmas 1050. On July 17, 1053, he was elected king at Tribur (modern Trebur, in Germany) on condition that he would be a just king. In 1054 he was crowned king in Aix-la-Chapelle (modern Aachen, in Germany), and the following year he became engaged to Bertha, daughter of the Margrave of Turin. When the emperor died in October 1056, at the age of 39, succession to the throne and survival of the dynasty were assured. The princes of the realm raised no objection when nominal government was handed over to the six-year-old boy, for whom his pious and unworldly mother became regent. Yet the early death of Henry III was the beginning of a fateful change that marked all of his son’s reign. In his will, the late emperor had appointed Pope Victor II as counsellor to the empress, and the pope solved some of the conflicts between the princes and the imperial court that had endangered peace in the empire.
After Victor’s early death (1057), however, the politically inept empress committed a number of decisive mistakes. On her own, and without the benefit of the advice of a permanent group of counsellors, she readily yielded to various influences. She turned over the duchy of Bavaria, which Henry III had given to his son in 1055, to the Saxon count Otto of Nordheim, thus depriving the king of an important foundation of his power. She gave the duchy of Swabia to Count Rudolf of Rheinfelden—who married her daughter—and the duchy of Carinthia to Count Berthold of Zähringen; both of them eventually became opponents of Henry IV. The death of the emperor also marked the disruption of German influence in Italy and of the close relationship between the king and the reform popes. Their independence soon became apparent in the elections of Stephen IX and Nicholas II, which were not influenced (as under Henry III) by the German court; in the new procedure for the election of the popes (1059); and in the defensive alliance with the Normans in southern Italy. That alliance was necessary for the popes as an effective protection against the Romans and was not directed against the German king. Yet the Normans were considered usurpers and enemies of the Holy Roman Empire. The pact thus resulted in strained relations between the pope and the German court, and those strains were aggravated by papal claims and disciplinary action taken by Nicholas II against German bishops. While the German king had so far been known as a supporter of the reformers, the empress now imprudently entered into an alliance with Italian opponents of church reform and brought about the election of Cadalus, bishop of Parma, as antipope (Honorius II) against the reigning pope, Alexander II, who had been elected by the reformers. But since she did not give effective support to Honorius, Alexander was able to prevail. Her unwise church policy was matched by an obscurely motivated submissive policy at home, which, by unwarranted cession of holdings of the crown, weakened the material foundations of the king’s power and, in addition, encouraged the rapacity of the nobles. Increasing discontent reached a climax in a conspiracy of the princes led by Anno, archbishop of Cologne, in April 1062. During a court assembly in Kaiserswerth he kidnapped the young king and had him brought to Cologne by ship. Henry’s attempt to escape by jumping into the Rhine failed. Agnes resigned as regent, and the government was taken over by Anno, who settled the conflict with the church by recognizing Alexander II (1064). Anno was, however, too dominating and inflexible a man to win Henry’s confidence, so that Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, granting more freedom to the lascivious young king, gained increasing and finally sole influence. But he used it for such unscrupulous personal enrichment that Henry, who was declared of age in 1065, had to ban him from court early in 1066. That incident marks the beginning of the king’s own rule, for which he was badly prepared. Repeated changes in the government of the empire had an unsettling effect on the boy king and had, moreover, prevented him from being given a regular education. The selfishness of his tutors, the dissolute character of his companions, and the traumatic experience of his kidnapping had produced a lack of moral stability during his years of puberty. In addition, his love of power, typical of all the rulers of his dynasty, contributed to conduct often characterized by recklessness and indiscretion.
In 1069, after three years of marriage, he suddenly announced his intention of divorcing his wife, Bertha. Following protests by high church dignitaries, he dropped his plan, but his mercurial behaviour incurred the displeasure of the reformers. At the same time, he was faced with domestic difficulties that were to harass him throughout his reign. After his mother had freely dispensed of lands during her regency, he began to increase the royal possessions in the Harz Mountains and to protect them by castles, which he handed over to Swabian ministerials (higher civil servants directly responsible to the crown). Peasants and nobles in Saxony were stirred up by the ruthless repossession of former royal rights that had long ago been appropriated by nobility or had become obsolete and by the high-handed and severe measures of the foreign ministerials. Henry tried to stop the unrest by imprisoning Magnus, the duke of Saxony, and by depriving the widely respected Otto of Bavaria of his duchy, after having unjustly accused him of plotting the murder of the king (1070). Then a rebellion broke out among the Saxons, which in 1073 spread so rapidly that Henry had to escape to Worms. After negotiations with Welf IV, the new duke (as Welf I) of Bavaria, and with Rudolf, the duke of Swabia, Henry was forced to grant immunity to the rebels in 1073 and had to agree to the razing of the royal Harz Castle in the final peace treaty in February 1074. When the peasants, destroying the castle, also desecrated the church and the tomb of one of the king’s sons, Henry declared the peace broken. That incident assured him of support from all over the empire, and in June 1075 he won an overwhelming victory that resulted in the surrender of the Saxons. It also forced the princes at Christmas to confirm on oath the succession of his one-year-old son, Conrad.
Britannica Quiz
- Franz-Josef Schmale
If Henry is to be the master of the "soldier" sent to the Holy Land, then he needs a focused mind, just as Hal is going to need to be focused in order to be king. Henry’s crusade is a way of providing a single goal for his followers to focus on.
Henry was involved in the 1388 revolt of Lords Appellant against Richard II, his first cousin, but he was not punished. However, he was exiled from court in 1398. After Henry's father died in 1399, Richard blocked Henry's inheritance of his father's duchy.
The play opens one year after the death of Richard II, and King Henry is making plans for a crusade to the Holy Land to cleanse himself of the guilt he feels over the usurpation of Richard's crown. But the crusade must be postponed when Henry learns that Welsh rebels, led by Owen Glendower, have defeated and captured Mortimer.