Mary de Bohun

Mary de Bohun was born in 1369/70; she was one of the two surviving daughters of Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford, by his wife Joan FitzAlan.

Mary and her elder sister, Eleanor, were the only heiresses to their father's substantial possessions. When Eleanor became the wife of Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, the youngest child of Edward III, he tried to keep the inheritance for himself and his wife by pressuring the child Mary into becoming a nun. He had her exclusively instructed in religious doctrine in hopes that this would encourage her to enter a convent.

However, Mary's aunt foiled the plot, taking Mary from Thomas' castle at Pleshey back to Arundel, whereupon she was married to Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, on July 27, 1380.

The marriage produced six children:

Henry, future Henry V

Thomas of Lancaster

John of Lancaster

Humphrey of Lancaster

Blanche

Philippa

It was during the birth of Philippa in 1394 that she died. She was buried in the collegiate Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke, Leicester, on July 6, 1394.

Picture: Psalter celebrating Mary's marriage

Sources:

Henry V, Christopher Allmand

Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, ed. Jennifer C. Ward