Excerpt from The Succession to the Crown of England in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries From Edward III to George I: With Genealogical Tables and References to Shakespeare's Historical Plays The first of these usurpers was Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, John of Gaunt's oldest son, who, when Richard ll was deposed by act of Parliament in 1399, was recognized as King under the name of Henry IV. He was Opposed by the Duke of Northumberland and his son Henry Percy, called Hotspur. But he defeated them, and the Scotch army they had joined, in the battle of Shrewsbury, fought in 1403, in which Hotspur was slain. He was succeeded by his son and grandson, Henry V and Henry VI. These three Henrys are the Kings of the House of Lancaster. The real excuse for this usurpation was the misgovernment of Richard ll. But Henry pretended that his mother's great-grandfather, Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, a younger brother of King Edward I, was really an older brother, and that his descendants were the rightful heirs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.