#sees the matter of the mortimer right to the throne as a no brainer...
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une-sanz-pluis · 5 months ago
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Henry was in an unenviable position throughout the 1390s. His own political views are in some respects irrelevant. It was a matter of what he represented. Richard showed no warmth to him. He probably never forgave him his role in the humiliation of 1387-8. In his own identification with Edward II, Richard could not fail to see Henry as the political heir of Thomas of Lancaster. Since Richard certainly viewed Henry as a possible successor, he can perhaps be forgiven if, like Elizabeth I three centuries later, he found it hard to love his own winding-sheet. A London chronicler explained Richard's animosity towards his cousin in terms of some divination in which Henry was identified as his nemesis. Henry's standing in the realm at large, however, was the obverse of his status in the king's affections. Where Richard looked balefully and apprehensively, an increasing number of his subjects looked in hope of deliverance. The heir of six of the old earldoms - Lancaster, Hereford, Derby, Lincoln, Leicester and Northampton - and the stewardship of England, Henry would necessarily loom large in any future political landscape. Many people, even a doctor of canon law with Mortimer loyalties such as Adam Usk, saw Henry in 1399 as the hero of prophecy who would unseat Richard. There must have been a sizeable body of people, too, who regarded him as having the best claim to the throne on Richard's death.
— Michael Bennett, “Henry of Bolingbroke and the Revolution of 1399”, Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399-1406
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