Parliament of England
The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England, existing from the early 13th century until 1707, when it merged with the Parliament of Scotland to become the Parliament of Great Britain after the political union of England and Scotland created the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1066, William of Normandy introduced what, in centuries, became referred to as a feudal system, by which he sought the advice of a council of tenants-in-chief and ecclesiastics before making laws. In 1215, the tenants-in-chief secured Magna Carta from King John, which established that the king may not levy or collect any taxes, save with the consent of his royal council, which developed into a parliament. Over the centuries, the English Parliament progressively limited the power of the English monarchy which arguably culminated in the English Civil War and the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649. After the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, the subsequent Glorious Revolution of 1688, the supremacy of Parliament was a settled principle and all future English and British sovereigns were restricted to the role of constitutional monarchs with limited executive authority.
The Act of Union 1707 merged the English Parliament with the Parliament of Scotland to form the Parliament of Great Britain. When the Parliament of Ireland was abolished in 1801, its former members were merged into what was now called the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Under a monarchical system of government, monarchs must consult and seek a measure of acceptance for their policies if they are to enjoy the broad cooperation of their subjects. Early kings of England had no standing army or police, so depended on the support of powerful subjects; the monarchy had agents in every part of the country. However, under the feudal system that evolved in England after the Norman Conquest of 1066, the laws of the Crown could not have been upheld without the support of the nobility and the clergy; the former had economic and military power bases of their own through major ownership of land and the feudal obligations of their tenants. The Church was a law unto itself in this period as it had its own system of religious law courts.
In order to seek consultation and consent from the nobility and the senior clergy on major decisions, post-Norman Conquest English monarchs called Great Councils. A typical Great Council would consist of archbishops, abbots and earls, the pillars of the feudal system; when this system of consultation and consent broke down, it became impossible for government to function effectively. The most prominent instances of this before the reign of Henry III are the disagreements between Thomas Becket and Henry II and between King John and the barons. Becket, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury between 1162 and 1170, was murdered after a long running dispute with Henry II over the jurisdiction of the Church. John, king from 1199 to 1216, aroused such hostility from many leading noblemen that they forced him to agree to Magna Carta in 1215. John's refusal to adhere to this charter led to civil war; the Great Council evolved into the Parliament of England. The term came into use during the early 13th century, when it shifted from the more general meaning of "an occasion for speaking."
It first appears in official documents in the 1230s. As a result of the work by historians G. O. Sayles and H. G. Richardson, it is believed that the early parliaments had a judicial as well as a legislative function. During the 13th and 14th centuries, the kings called Knights of the Shire to meet when the monarch saw it as necessary. A notable example of this was in 1254 when sheriffs of counties were instructed to send Knights of the Shire to parliament to advise the king on finance. Parliaments were summoned when the king needed to raise money through taxes. After Magna Carta, this became a convention; this was due in no small part to the fact that King John died in 1216 and was succeeded by his young son Henry III. Leading peers and clergy governed on Henry's behalf until he came of age, giving them a taste for power that they would prove unwilling to relinquish. Among other things, they made sure. Once the reign of John ended and Henry III took full control of the government, leading peers became concerned with his style of government his unwillingness to consult them on decisions he took, his seeming patronisation of his foreign relatives over his native subjects.
Henry's support of a disastrous papal invasion of Sicily was the last straw. In 1258, seven leading barons forced Henry to swear to uphold the Provisions of Oxford, the following year, by the Provisions of Westminster; this abolished the absolutist Anglo-Norman monarchy, giving power to a council of fifteen barons, providing for a thrice-yearly meeting of parliament to monitor their performance. Parliament assembled six times between June 1258 and April 1262, most notably at Oxford in 1258; the French-born nobleman Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, emerged as the leader of this characteristically English rebellion. In the years that followed, those supporting Montfort and those supporting the king grew more hostile to each other. Henry obtained a papal bull in 1263 exempting him from his oath and both sides began to raise armies. At the Battle of Lewes on 14 May 1264, Henry was taken prisoner by Montfort's army. However, many of the peers who had supported Montfort began to suspect that he ha
House of Lancaster
The House of Lancaster was the name of two cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet. The first house was created when Henry III of England created the Earldom of Lancaster—from which the house was named—for his second son Edmund Crouchback in 1267. Edmund had been created Earl of Leicester in 1265 and was granted the lands and privileges of Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, after de Montfort's death and attainder at the end of the Second Barons' War; when Edmund's son Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster, inherited his father-in-law's estates and title of Earl of Lincoln he became at a stroke the most powerful nobleman in England, with lands throughout the kingdom and the ability to raise vast private armies to wield power at national and local levels. This brought him—and Henry, his younger brother—into conflict with their cousin Edward II of England, leading to Thomas's execution. Henry inherited Thomas's titles and he and his son, called Henry, gave loyal service to Edward's son—Edward III of England.
The second house of Lancaster was descended from John of Gaunt, who married the heiress of the first house. Edward III married all his sons to wealthy English heiresses rather than following his predecessors' practice of finding continental political marriages for royal princes. Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster, had no male heir so Edward married his son John to Henry's heiress daughter and John's third cousin Blanche of Lancaster; this gave John the vast wealth of the House of Lancaster. Their son Henry usurped the throne in 1399. There was an intermittent dynastic struggle between the descendants of Edward III. In these wars, the term Lancastrian became a reference to members of the family and their supporters; the family provided England with three kings: Henry IV, who ruled from 1399 to 1413, Henry V, Henry VI. The House became extinct in the male line upon the murder in the Tower of London of Henry VI, following the battlefield execution of his son Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, by supporters of the House of York in 1471.
Lancastrian cognatic descent—from John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster's daughter Phillipa—continued in the royal houses of Spain and Portugal while the Lancastrian political cause was maintained by Henry Tudor—a unknown scion of the Beauforts—eventually leading to the establishment of the House of Tudor. The Lancastrians left a legacy through the patronage of the arts—most notably in founding Eton College and King's College, Cambridge—but to historians' chagrin their propaganda, that of their Tudor successors, means that it is Shakespeare's fictionalized history plays rather than medievalist scholarly research that has the greater influence on modern perceptions of the dynasty. After the supporters of Henry III of England suppressed opposition from the English nobility in the Second Barons' War, Henry granted to his second son Edmund Crouchback the titles and possessions forfeited by attainder of the barons' leader, Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, including the Earldom of Leicester, on 26 October 1265.
Grants included the first Earldom of Lancaster on 30 June 1267 and that of Earl Ferrers in 1301. Edmund was Count of Champagne and Brie from 1276 by right of his wife. Henry IV of England would use his descent from Edmund to legitimise his claim to the throne making the spurious claim that Edmund was the elder son of Henry but had been passed over as king because of his deformity. Edmund's second marriage to Blanche of Artois, the widow of the King of Navarre, placed him at the centre of the European aristocracy. Blanche's daughter Joan I of Navarre was queen regnant of Navarre and through her marriage to Philip IV of France was queen consort of France. Edmund's son Thomas became the most powerful nobleman in England, gaining the Earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury through marriage to the heiress of Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln, his income was £11,000 per annum—double that of the next wealthiest earl. Thomas and his younger brother Henry served in the coronation of their cousin King Edward II of England on 25 February 1308.
After supporting Edward, Thomas became one of the Lords Ordainers, who demanded the banishment of Piers Gaveston and the governance of the realm by a baronial council. After Gaveston was captured, Thomas took the lead in his trial and execution at Warwick in 1312. Edward's authority was weakened by poor governance and defeat by the Scots at the Battle of Bannockburn; this allowed Thomas to restrain Edward's power by republishing the Ordinances of 1311. Following this achievement Thomas took little part in the governance of the realm and instead retreated to Pontefract Castle; this allowed Edward to regroup and re-arm, leading to a fragile peace in August 1318 with the Treaty of Leake. In 1321 Edward's rule again collapsed into civil war. Thomas raised a northern army but was defeated and captured at the Battle of Boroughbridge in March 1322, he was sentenced to be hanged and quartered but because he was Edward's cousin he was given a quicker death by beheading. Henry joined the revolt of Edward's wife Isabella of France and Mortimer in 1326, pursuing and capturing Edward at Neath in South Wales.
Following Edward's deposition at the Parliament of Kenilworth in 1326 and reputed murder at Berkeley Castle, Thomas's conviction was posthumously reversed and Henry regained possession of the Earldoms of Lancaster, Derby and Lincoln, forfeit for Thomas's treason. His restored prestige led to him knighting the young King Edward III of England before his coronation. Mortimer lost support over the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton that form
Dictionary of National Biography
The Dictionary of National Biography is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated Oxford Dictionary of National Biography was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives. Hoping to emulate national biographical collections published elsewhere in Europe, such as the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, in 1882 the publisher George Smith, of Smith, Elder & Co. planned a universal dictionary that would include biographical entries on individuals from world history. He approached Leslie Stephen editor of the Cornhill Magazine, owned by Smith, to become the editor. Stephen persuaded Smith that the work should focus only on subjects from the United Kingdom and its present and former colonies. An early working title was the Biographia Britannica, the name of an earlier eighteenth-century reference work; the first volume of the Dictionary of National Biography appeared on 1 January 1885.
In May 1891 Leslie Stephen resigned and Sidney Lee, Stephen's assistant editor from the beginning of the project, succeeded him as editor. A dedicated team of sub-editors and researchers worked under Stephen and Lee, combining a variety of talents from veteran journalists to young scholars who cut their academic teeth on dictionary articles at a time when postgraduate historical research in British universities was still in its infancy. While much of the dictionary was written in-house, the DNB relied on external contributors, who included several respected writers and scholars of the late nineteenth century. By 1900, more than 700 individuals had contributed to the work. Successive volumes appeared quarterly with complete punctuality until midsummer 1900, when the series closed with volume 63; the year of publication, the editor and the range of names in each volume is given below. Since the scope included only deceased figures, the DNB was soon extended by the issue of three supplementary volumes, covering subjects who had died between 1885 and 1900 or, overlooked in the original alphabetical sequence.
The supplements brought the whole work up to the death of Queen Victoria on 22 January 1901. Corrections were added. After issuing a volume of errata in 1904, the dictionary was reissued with minor revisions in 22 volumes in 1908 and 1909. In the words of the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, the dictionary had "proved of inestimable service in elucidating the private annals of the British", providing not only concise lives of the notable deceased, but additionally lists of sources which were invaluable to researchers in a period when few libraries or collections of manuscripts had published catalogues or indices, the production of indices to periodical literatures was just beginning. Throughout the twentieth century, further volumes were published for those who had died on a decade-by-decade basis, beginning in 1912 with a supplement edited by Lee covering those who died between 1901 and 1911; the dictionary was transferred from its original publishers, Elder & Co. to Oxford University Press in 1917.
Until 1996, Oxford University Press continued to add further supplements featuring articles on subjects who had died during the twentieth century. The supplements published between 1912 and 1996 added about 6,000 lives of people who died in the twentieth century to the 29,120 in the 63 volumes of the original DNB. In 1993 a volume containing missing biographies was published; this had an additional 1,000 lives, selected from over 100,000 suggestions. This did not seek to replace any articles on existing DNB subjects though the original work had been written from a Victorian perspective and had become out of date due to changes in historical assessments and discoveries of new information during the twentieth century; the dictionary was becoming less and less useful as a reference work. In 1966, the University of London published a volume of corrections, cumulated from the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research. There were various versions of the Concise Dictionary of National Biography, which covered everyone in the main work but with much shorter articles.
The last edition, in three volumes, covered everyone who died before 1986. In the early 1990s Oxford University Press committed itself to overhauling the DNB. Work on what was known until 2001 as the New Dictionary of National Biography, or New DNB, began in 1992 under the editorship of Colin Matthew, professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Matthew decided that no subjects from the old dictionary would be excluded, however insignificant the subjects appeared to a late twentieth-century eye. Suggestions for new subjects were solicited through questionnaires placed in libraries and universities and, as the 1990s advanced and assessed by the editor, the 12 external consultant editors and several hundred associate editors and in-house staff. Digitization of the DNB was performed by the Alliance Photosetting Company in India; the new dictionary would cover British history, "broadly defined", up to 31 December 2000. The research project was conceived as a collaborative one, with in-house staff co-ordinating the work of
Middlesex (UK Parliament constituency)
Middlesex is a former constituency. It was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800, of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1885, it returned two members by various voting systems including hustings. This county constituency consisted of the historic county of Middlesex, in south-eastern England, comprising Spelthorne, South Mimms and Potters Bar in other modern counties, together with the north and north-west sectors of the present-day Greater London. Central London was removed from the seat, its southern boundary was the River Thames. The county seat returned two Members of Parliament; the place of election for the county was until 1700 at Hampstead Heath, thereafter at The Butts in the town centre of Brentford. Hustings were over a period of a fortnight when candidates set out their stall, visible bribery had become not uncommon in closer contests around the country in such larger seats at the time, inspiring William Hogarth’s series of four pictures titled ‘Four Prints of An Election’.
Until 1832 the county franchise was limited to forty shilling freeholders. The decrease in the value of money due to inflation and the expansion of the wealth and population as the urbanised area in the east around London and Westminster grew contributed to expanding the electorate; the county was estimated by Henning to have about 1,660 voters in 1681. Sedgwick estimated about 3,000 in the 1715–54 period. Namier and Brook suggested there were about 3,500 in 1754–90; the number had reached about 6,000 according to Thorne. Close elections between popular candidates would therefore be expensive - the worth of being a local magistrate, major landowner or other dignitary carrying little weight among such a urban and numerous upper-middle class forming the bulk of the electorate. For subsequent changes in the franchise see Reform Act 1832 and Reform Act 1867. From 1832 voters were registered; the geographic county until 1885 contained the borough constituencies of City of London and Westminster. In 1832 three two-seat Boroughs were added: Finsbury and Tower Hamlets.
In 1867 two new parliamentary boroughs each returning two MPs were constituted:'Hackney' represented in borough elections via Tower Hamlets and'Chelsea'. The single-member non-territorial University constituency of London University was somewhat connected to the county by having most of its graduates eligible to vote. Possession of a county electoral qualification, deriving from owning various types of property or having ecclesiastical'offices' in an area not otherwise represented, conferred the right to vote in the county elections. An 1885 redistribution of seats saw Middlesex and its early breakaway seats in and around the City reformed under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 reflecting the wider electorate of the Reform Act 1884 and need to'liberate' boroughs, i.e. urban areas without properly apportioned representation: Constituencies in the urban south-east part that returned 18 MPs were replaced by 38 single-member seats. The City of London constituency was reduced from 4 to 2 members.
The Middlesex constituency latterly covering the north and south-west of the county returning 2 MPs was replaced by 7 single-member seats. Local government bodiesIn 1889 the 40 urban constituencies that comprised the south-eastern part fell into a County of London save for the much smaller City of London which remained a separate quasi-county and legal jurisdiction; the seven county divisions in the north and west of the historic county came under a new local government body, the administrative county of Middlesex. Both counties were known by their governing bodies' name, County Councils; the seven successor seats were Brentford, Enfield, Hornsey and Uxbridge. These had MCC local governance until its abolition in 1965. Preliminary note: The English civil year started on Lady Day, 25 March, until 1752; the year used in the lists of Parliaments in this article have been converted to the new style where necessary. It should be noted that old style dates for days between 1 January and 24 March referred to days after 31 December.
No attempt has been made to compensate for the eleven days which did not occur in September 1752 in both England and Scotland as well as other British controlled territories, so as to bring the British Empire in line with the Gregorian calendar. Constituency created: See Montfort's Parliament for further details. Knights of the shire are known to have been summoned to most Parliaments from 1290 and to every one from 1320; some of the members elected during this period have been identified, but this list does not include Parliaments where no member has been identified before the reign of King Henry VIII. In the list the year given is for the first meeting of the Parliament, with the month added where there was more than one Parliament in the year. If a second year i
Henry VI of England
Henry VI was King of England from 1422 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471, disputed King of France from 1422 to 1453. The only child of Henry V, he succeeded to the English throne at the age of nine months upon his father's death, succeeded to the French throne on the death of his maternal grandfather Charles VI shortly afterwards. Henry inherited the long-running Hundred Years' War, in which his uncle Charles VII contested his claim to the French throne, he is the only English monarch to have been crowned King of France, in 1431. His early reign, when several people were ruling for him, saw the pinnacle of English power in France, but subsequent military and economic problems had endangered the English cause by the time Henry was declared fit to rule in 1437, he found his realm in a difficult position, faced with setbacks in France and divisions among the nobility at home. Unlike his father, Henry is described as timid, passive, well-intentioned, averse to warfare and violence, his ineffective reign saw the gradual loss of the English lands in France.
In the hope of achieving peace, in 1445 Henry married Charles VII's niece, the ambitious and strong-willed Margaret of Anjou. The peace policy failed, leading to the murder of one of Henry's key advisers, the war recommenced, with France taking the upper hand; as the situation in France worsened, there was a related increase in political instability in England. With Henry unfit to rule, power was exercised by quarrelsome nobles, while factions and favourites encouraged the rise of disorder in the country. Regional magnates and soldiers returning from France formed and maintained increasing numbers of private armed retainers, with which they fought one another, terrorised their neighbors, paralysed the courts, dominated the government. Queen Margaret did not remain unpartisan, took advantage of the situation to make herself an effective power behind the throne. Amidst military disasters in France and a collapse of law and order in England, the queen and her clique came under criticism, coming from Henry VI's popular cousin Richard of the House of York, of misconduct of the war in France and misrule of the country.
Starting in 1453, Henry began suffering a series of mental breakdowns, tensions mounted between Margaret and Richard of York over control of the incapacitated king's government, over the question of succession to the throne. Civil war broke out in 1455, leading to a long period of dynastic conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. Henry was deposed on 29 March 1461 after a crushing defeat at the Battle of Towton by Richard's son, who took the throne as Edward IV. Despite Margaret continuing to lead a resistance to Edward, he was captured by Edward's forces in 1465 and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Henry was restored to the throne in 1470, but Edward retook power in 1471, killing Henry's only son and heir in battle and imprisoning Henry once again. Having "lost his wits, his two kingdoms, his only son", Henry died in the Tower during the night of 21 May killed on the orders of Edward. Miracles were attributed to Henry after his death, he was informally regarded as a saint and martyr until the 16th century.
He left a legacy of educational institutions, having founded Eton College, King's College and All Souls College, Oxford. Shakespeare wrote a trilogy of plays about his life, depicting him as weak-willed and influenced by his wife, Margaret. Henry was the only child and heir of King Henry V, he was born on 6 December 1421 at Windsor Castle. He succeeded to the throne as King of England at the age of nine months on 1 September 1422, the day after his father's death. A few weeks on 21 October 1422 in accordance with the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, he became titular King of France upon his grandfather Charles VI's death, his mother, Catherine of Valois, was 20 years old. As Charles VI's daughter, she was viewed with considerable suspicion by English nobles and was prevented from playing a full role in her son's upbringing. On 28 September 1423, the nobles swore loyalty to Henry VI, not yet two years old, they summoned Parliament in the King's name and established a regency council to govern until the King should come of age.
One of Henry V's surviving brothers, Duke of Bedford, was appointed senior regent of the realm and was in charge of the ongoing war in France. During Bedford's absence, the government of England was headed by Henry V's other surviving brother, Duke of Gloucester, appointed Lord Protector and Defender of the Realm, his duties were limited to summoning Parliament. Henry V's half-uncle Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, had an important place on the Council. After the Duke of Bedford died in 1435, the Duke of Gloucester claimed the Regency himself, but was contested in this by the other members of the Council. From 1428, Henry's tutor was Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, whose father had been instrumental in the opposition to Richard II's reign. Henry's half-brothers and Jasper, the sons of his widowed mother and Owen Tudor, were given earldoms. Edmund Tudor was the father of Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII. In reaction to Charles VII's coronation as French King in Reims Cathedral on 17 July 1429, Henry was soon crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey on 6 November 1429, followed by his own coronation as King of France at Notre Dame de Paris on 16 December 1431, at age 10.
He was the only English king to be crow
Warden of the Mint
Warden of the Mint was a high-ranking position at the Royal Mint in England from 1216–1829. The warden was responsible for a variety of minting procedures and acted as the immediate representative of the current monarch inside the mint; the role of warden changed through history with the original task being the receiving and payment for bullion, while evolving into more of an administerial role. The office received a yearly emolument of £500 and up until 1685 wardens were given tenure meaning many wardens died while in office. Although technically subordinate to the Master of the Mint whose jobs was act as a contractor to the crown many wardens advanced on to become Master of the Mint with some wardens holding both offices at the same time; the most illustrious holder of the office of Warden of the Mint was Isaac Newton, warranted to this position on the recommendation of his friend, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1698. In 1699 however, Newton undertook the office of Master of the Mint, far more lucrative, as well as more technically challenging.
After the death of the final warden Sir Walter James, 1st Baronet in 1829 the office was abolished having existed for 613 years. Münzwardein Master of the Mint Galileo Project Biography of Newton Royal Mint Biography of Newton Institute of Historical Research – Wardens of the Mint
Henry IV of England
Henry IV known as Henry Bolingbroke, was King of England from 1399 to 1413, asserted the claim of his grandfather, Edward III, to the Kingdom of France. Henry was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, his father, John of Gaunt, was the fourth son of King Edward III and enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of his nephew King Richard II whom Henry deposed. Henry's mother was Blanche of Lancaster, heiress to the great Lancashire estates of her father Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster. Henry, having succeeded his father as 2nd Duke of Lancaster, when he became king thus founded the Lancaster branch of the Plantagenet English monarchy, he was the first King of England since the Norman Conquest whose mother tongue was English rather than French. One of Henry's elder sisters, Philippa of Lancaster, married King John I of Portugal, the other, Elizabeth of Lancaster, was the mother of John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter, his younger half-sister Katherine of Lancaster, the daughter of his father's second wife, Constance of Castile, was queen consort of the King of Castile.
He had four natural half-siblings born of Katherine Swynford his sisters' governess his father's longstanding mistress and third wife. These four illegitimate children were given the surname Beaufort from their birthplace at the Château de Beaufort in Champagne, France. Henry's relationship with his stepmother, Katherine Swynford, was a positive one, but his relationship with the Beauforts varied. In youth he seems to have been close to all of them, but rivalries with Henry and Thomas Beaufort proved problematic after 1406. Ralph Neville, who had married Henry's half-sister Joan Beaufort, remained one of his strongest supporters, so did his eldest half-brother John Beaufort though Henry revoked Richard II's grant to John of a marquessate. Thomas Swynford, a son from Katherine's first marriage to Sir Hugh Swynford, was another loyal companion. Thomas was Constable of Pontefract Castle. Henry's half-sister Joan Beaufort was the grandmother of Edward IV and Richard III. Joan's daughter Cecily married Richard, Duke of York and had several offspring, including Edward IV and Richard III, making Joan the grandmother of two Yorkist kings of England.
Henry experienced a rather more inconsistent relationship with King Richard II. First cousins and childhood playmates, they were admitted together to the Order of the Garter in 1377, but Henry participated in the Lords Appellants' rebellion against the king in 1387. After regaining power, Richard did not punish Henry, although he did execute or exile many of the other rebellious barons. In fact, Richard elevated Henry from Earl of Derby to Duke of Hereford. Henry spent the full year of 1390 supporting the unsuccessful siege of Vilnius by Teutonic Knights with 70 to 80 household knights. During this campaign he bought captured Lithuanian women and children and took them back to Königsberg to be converted. Henry's second expedition to Lithuania in 1392 illustrates the financial benefits to the Order of these guest crusaders, his small army consisted of over 100 men, including longbow archers and six minstrels, at a total cost to the Lancastrian purse of £4,360. Despite the efforts of Henry and his English crusaders, two years of attacks on Vilnius proved fruitless.
In 1392–93 Henry undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he made offerings at the Holy Sepulchre and at the Mount of Olives. He vowed to lead a crusade to'free Jerusalem from the infidel,' but he died before this could be accomplished; the relationship between Henry Bolingbroke and the king met with a second crisis. In 1398, a remark by Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk regarding Richard II's rule was interpreted as treason by Henry and Henry reported it to the king; the two dukes agreed to undergo a duel of honour at Gosford Green near Caludon Castle, Mowbray's home in Coventry. Yet before the duel could take place, Richard II decided to banish Henry from the kingdom to avoid further bloodshed. Mowbray himself was exiled for life. John of Gaunt died in February 1399. Without explanation, Richard cancelled the legal documents that would have allowed Henry to inherit Gaunt's land automatically. Instead, Henry would be required to ask for the lands from Richard. After some hesitation, Henry met with the exiled Thomas Arundel, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who had lost his position because of his involvement with the Lords Appellant.
Henry and Arundel returned to England. With Arundel as his advisor, Henry began a military campaign, confiscating land from those who opposed him and ordering his soldiers to destroy much of Cheshire. Henry announced that his intention was to reclaim his rights as Duke of Lancaster, though he gained enough power and support to have himself declared King Henry IV, imprison King Richard and bypass Richard's 7-year-old heir-presumptive, Edmund de Mortimer. Henry's coronation, on 13 October 1399 at Westminster Abbey, may have marked the first time since the Norman Conquest when the monarch made an address in English. Henry consulted with Parliament but was sometimes at odds with the members over ecclesiastical matters. On Arundel's advice, Henry obtained from Parliament the enactment of De heretico comburendo in 1401, w
