Previously known as Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, King Henry IV asserted his claim to the thrown as the heir of the house of Lancaster, usurping the throne of King Richard II. During his reign, Henry IV successfully gathered power, despite repetitive uprisings by English nobles. However, the administrative and financial issues faced by Henry IV's rule eventually led to the demise of the Lancaster dynasty.

Popular English actor who, after the death of David Garrick, took on the mantle of the greatest Shakespearean actor.

French writer, historian, President of the Chamber of Inquiries, and friend of Voltaire. Hénault's most notable work was his Abrégé chronologique de l'histoire de France, a popular history of France's political and military spheres.

Coming of age during the Napoleonic wars, Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans was regarded as a sort of prodigy, though her first published volume, Poems, by Felicia Dorothea Browne (1808), did not meet with critical approval. She eventually became well-known for her patriotic, religious, sentimental, and historical poetry, song lyrics, and translations, eventually attaining popularity with the reading public as well as critical acclaim.

Born in Emesa in Syria, author Heliodorus wrote The Æthiopica or Theagenes and Charicleia in the third or fourth century CE. He became Bishop of Tricca or Trieca in Thessaly.

Greek mythology attributes the cause of the Trojan War to Helen, daughter of Zeus and Leda, who though married to Menelaus, King of Sparta, ran away with Paris, the young, handsome Prince of Troy.

A Trojan prince at the time of the fall of Troy, from Greek mythology and the poetry of Homer.

Sir Arthur Hesilrige, 7th Baronet, d. 1763 (Bernard Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage) presided over the demise of Noseley Hall, the family seat. The story of Hesilrige and his wife Hannah was one of several suggested as the original for Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740-1).

Among the better-known productions of the almost inexhaustible actor and writer Eliza Haywood are the novels Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry (1719-1720), The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751), and The Invisible Spy (1755). Her Anti-Pamela; or, Feign'd Innocence Detected, in a Series of Syrena's Adventures (1741) satirized Samuel Richardson's popular novel. Haywood penned a large number of plays as well, and conducted an essay periodical loosely modeled on Joseph Addison's Spectator which she called Female Spectator (1744-1746).

A close friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, feminist, philosopher, biographer, historian, literary critic, novelist, and educational writer Mary Hays was among the most radical of British women writers during the 1790s. Mary Hays's early education reflected the views of her parents, rational dissenters John and Elizabeth Hays, and was heavily informed by debates at the Dissenting meeting house.