Mary de Bohun

Mary de Bohun
Countess of Northampton
Countess of Derby (by courtesy)
refer to caption
Psalter celebrating Mary's marriage
Born c. 1369
Died 4 June 1394 (aged about 25)
Peterborough Castle, Northamptonshire
Burial The Collegiate Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke, Leicester
Spouse
Issue
Father Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford
Mother Joan Fitzalan

Mary de Bohun (c. 1369 – 4 June 1394) was the first wife of King Henry IV of England and the mother of King Henry V. Mary was never queen, as she died before her husband came to the throne.

Early life

Mary was the daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford, and Joan FitzAlan (1347/48–1419),[1] the daughter of Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel, and Eleanor of Lancaster. Through her mother, Mary was descended from Llywelyn the Great.

Mary and her elder sister, Eleanor de Bohun, were the heiresses of their father's substantial possessions. Eleanor became the wife of Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, the youngest child of Edward III. In an effort to keep the inheritance for himself and his wife, Thomas of Woodstock pressured the child Mary into becoming a nun.[2] In a plot with John of Gaunt, Mary's aunt took her from Thomas' castle at Pleshey back to Arundel whereupon she was married to Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV.[2]

Marriage and children

Mary married Henry—then known as Bolingbroke—on 27 July 1380, at Arundel Castle. At the time of her marriage, Mary was perhaps little more than twelve years old.

It was at Monmouth Castle, one of her husband's possessions, that Mary gave birth to her first child, the future Henry V, on 16 September 1386. Her second child, Thomas, was born probably at London shortly before 25 November 1387.[3]

Her children were:[lower-alpha 1]

Death

Mary de Bohun died at Peterborough Castle, giving birth to her last child, a daughter, Philippa of England. She was buried in the collegiate Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke, Leicester.

Ancestry

Notes

  1. ↑ According to some sources,[4] in 1382 she had a son who died shortly after birth. This is incorrect, as it's based on a misreading of a contemporary account book, by J.H. Wylie, in his biography of Henry IV (published in the 19th century). Wylie missed a line which made clear that the boy in question was Mary's nephew, Humphrey, 2nd Earl of Buckingham. There is no evidence that there was any child born to her at this time (when Mary de Bohun was only about 13).[3]

References

  1. ↑ Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 1066-1500, transl. & ed. Jennifer C. Ward, (Manchester University Press, 1995), 21.
  2. 1 2 Anthony Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe, (Routledge, 2013), 276.
  3. 1 2 Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV (London, 2007), appendix 3
  4. ↑ Jennifer Ward, Women in England in the Middle Ages, (Hambledon Continuum, 2006), 49.
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