The man known to history as John of Gaunt
was born on the 6th of March 1340 at St Bavo’s Abbey in the town of Ghent in what was then
the County of Flanders, but which forms part of Belgium today. John forever became associated with the town,
and his name ‘of Gaunt’ actually means ‘of Ghent’ and is an adaptation of the
town’s name. His father was King Edward III of England. Edward had ascended the throne back in 1327
when he was still a teenager, but by the 1330s he had come to firmly rule England, as well
as being Lord of Ireland, ruler of Wales and the holder of considerable territories in
western France. John’s mother was Philippa of Hainault,
whom Edward had taken as his queen back in 1328. Born as John Plantagenet, John of Gaunt was
his parents’ third surviving son, his older brother Edward of Woodstock, was born in 1330
and named after his father, he would subsequently become known as the Black Prince and for much
of John’s life, his elder brother was the heir to the throne of England. Next in line after him was John’s other
elder brother, Lionel, who was born in 1338, and was known as Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of
Clarence. In addition to these, Edward and Philippa
had two more sons, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, born in 1341, and Thomas of Woodstock,
Duke of Gloucester, born in 1355. The five brothers had four sisters, though
of these, only the eldest, Isabella, would live into her adult years but she would enjoy
a long life. Their mother Philippa gave birth 12 times
in total but only 9 of those children lived past childhood. As well as Isabella, his sisters included
Mary and Margaret, as well as Joan who would die of the Black Death on her way to be married. The King was delighted at the birth of his
third son, John, and gave thanks for him and for his recent victory at the Battle of Sluys,
at the shrine of the Lady of d’Ardenburgh in Ghent on his way home to his Queen, following
the battle.
On his return Edward III presented Philippa with lavish gifts, following John’s safe
arrival, including robes of cloth of gold lined with miniver as well as red velvet,
John was also presented with bedding of red and green and a robe made of silk. John was given a nurse to care for him, Isolda
Newman, who was rewarded handsomely for her services, as well as his own ‘rocker of
the cradle’ and eleven servants. But despite the number of carers the young
infant had, he was also cared for by his mother, who made sure she was heavily involved in
the upbringing of her new arrival. His elder brother the Black Prince was a revered
military leader and proved a great friend and an inspiration to John growing up. Having returned to England shortly after John’s
birth, the Queen set up John’s nursery at Woodstock Palace. Isabella de la Mote was in overall charge
of the nursery and assigned nurses to the Royal children in her care, Margery La Laundere
managed the linens or nappies and the washing of the princes and Margery de Monceaux was
nurse to both John and his older brother Lionel. John also had his own wet nurse and as he
grew older, he was assigned a page, a tailor and a valet. For his education, John was given a tutor
who taught him from an early age in religious matters such as ceremony and prayer but when
he was 8 years old, he was placed in the care of his eldest brother Edward of Woodstock
who would act as his mentor, preparing him for his expected military service which would
begin from as early as 12 years of age. His experienced and accomplished brother would
teach John, the skills required for leadership and this time they spent together forged a
bond between the two brothers. Because he had two elder brothers who were
in good health in their youth it seemed somewhat unlikely that John would ascend to the throne
of England one day, but all eventualities had to be accounted for. As early as 1342 he was granted his first
noble title when he was made the Earl of Richmond at two years of age. He grew up in the household of his older brother,
the heir to the throne, Prince Edward. Growing up in the mid-fourteenth century,
the emphasis in educating the sons of a monarch was not on producing scholars but warriors. As such Edward, Lionel, John, Edmond and Thomas
were raised from a young age to learn to fight on horseback and the rudimentaries of military
campaigning and strategy. John was first exposed to military combat
when he was just ten years old. Yet there was also a growing emphasis on providing
royal children with a more robust education in Latin, the scholastic philosophy which
dominated European thought at the time, theology and politics in order that they might better
navigate the political affairs of the realm. Unfortunately the details of how Edward III’s
children were educated are somewhat shadowy, but John, who in later life was a patron of
literature and a favourer of church reform was certainly not unenlightened when it came
to matters beyond the field of battle and this is perhaps reflective of keen tutoring
in his younger years.
John of Gaunt’s childhood was overshadowed by a great terror which struck England and
Europe when he was just a child of seven and eight. Beginning in 1347 a terrible disease spread
across the continent, having first arrived in Italy. Victims of it developed flu-like symptoms
first, but it quickly progressed to the appearance of buboes or blackish lumps around the extremities
in the groin, armpits and other places. These would often break open expelling foul
smelling pus, while the victim’s fingers and toes would begin to turn black even as
their breathing failed and they vomited up blood. The bubonic plague, better known as the Black
Death, had arrived in Europe. Between its arrival in 1347 and the end of
the first horrendous wave of it spreading across the continent in the mid-1350s it would
kill over 25% of the people of Europe. Even ages which have lived through pandemics
of a relatively serious kind cannot conceive of the sheer terror which must have gripped
countries like England in the middle of the fourteenth century as the plague devastated
Europe. John would certainly have been old enough
to be aware of the immense fear which gripped those around him and the preventative measures,
however slight they might have been, which were put in place to limit the exposure of
the royal children to the disease, though this could still not prevent it from claiming
the life of John’s elder sister Joan in the summer of 1348. His entire childhood and early teenage years
would have been lived under this shadow, though by the time he entered his late teens in the
mid-1350s the initial devastation was receding. Disease was just one of the threats to the
life of an Englishman in the mid-fourteenth century. War was another. John was born just as his father had launched
England into a great conflict which would define much of its history over the next century. Ever since William the Conqueror had taken
control of England in the middle of the eleventh century, the Kings of England had occupied
a strange position as rulers of much of Britain, but also with considerable landholdings across
northern and western France such as the Duchy of Normandy and parts of Gascony and Aquitaine. As rulers of these latter territories William
and his successors were theoretically subject lords of the Kings of France, despite being
monarchs themselves on the other side of the English Channel. This situation had been diluted considerably
in the course of the thirteenth century as King John I of England and King Henry III
lost much of England’s territory in France to the French crown. By the early fourteenth century the only major
possession of the English crown on the continent was a substantial block of land in western
France centred on Bordeaux and encompassing much of Gascony and Aquitaine. Small though this territory might have been
by comparison with what his forbears had once held in France, it nevertheless provided King
Edward III with a crucial foothold in the country.
This became of especial significance following the death of King Charles IV of France without
a direct male heir in 1328. Edward III was theoretically his closest relative
and had a strong claim to the French throne, but with Edward still a teenager and the French
unwilling to accept an English king as their new monarch, Philip, Count of Valois, was
given the French crown and ruled thereafter as King Philip VI. Edward was willing to accept this for a time,
but when in 1337 Philip attempted to seize Gascony from the English king Edward went
to war with his French overlord. It was the beginning of what has become known
as the Hundred Years War, but it was not fought over the limited territory of Gascony alone,
but rather for all of France. This was owing to Edward’s decision shortly
after the conflict commenced to resurrect his dormant claim to the French throne, arguing
that in law he was the rightful successor as King of France to Charles IV who had died
in 1328. The next ten years witnessed one of the most
intense periods of the entire war. Edward attempted to build a large alliance
of smaller princes and counts who ruled territories in the Low Countries and along the Rhineland. It was for this very reason that John was
born in the town of Ghent in the Low Countries in 1340. Major battles ensued at Crecy and Calais in
1346 and 1347, before the arrival of the Black Death interrupted matters. Thus, by the time John was entering into his
teenage years and was being considered by his father for a command in France, the war
was still raging between Edward and King John II of France, who had succeeded his father,
Philip VI, in 1350. John was soon involved in his father’s campaigning
in France. As early as the summer of 1355, when he was
fifteen years of age, he accompanied the king on a raiding campaign around Normandy in the
north of the country, during which he was knighted. He was also present for a strike towards Calais
later that year, before returning to Britain to participate in a campaign against the Scots,
France’s perennial ally throughout the Hundred Years War. However, while the Scots provided a useful
distraction for the French the overall campaign in 1356 was a disaster for them as The Black
Prince won a victory over the French at the Battle of Poitiers in September, during which
King John II of France was taken captive. The French Estates-General refused to countenance
large concessions, but John’s presence in England strengthened Edward’s hands in the
late 1350s. Hostilities continued even as negotiations
were underway to try to bring an end to the war and have John returned to France. As part of this Gaunt was given command of
his own retinue in the campaign of 1359, serving in several of the major raids and skirmishes
which were carried out that autumn and winter. The campaign of 1359 to 1360 and the negotiations
which had been underway since 1356 ultimately bore fruit in the early summer of 1360 when
the Treaty of Brétigny was agreed to by both sides. Retrospectively it represented the highpoint
of English success in the Hundred Years War. Faced with the prospect of his father remaining
a prisoner of the English crown, the French Dauphin Charles agreed to a humiliating peace. Edward was acknowledged in his long-standing
possession of Guyenne and Gascony in western France, but in addition he received the County
of Poitou, the count-ship of Guines, the city of Calais and its hinterland in the north-east
of the country and a wide range of other territories including Saintogne, Agenais, Perigord, Limousin,
Ponthieu, Quercy and Sangatte. Importantly, Edward would not hold these lands
of the French crown, but rather in his own right. A massive ransom was also to be paid for the
release of King John. However, Edward would have to relinquish his
claim to the throne of France. Essentially this compromise would ensure that
King John was released and kept his crown and in return Edward revived much of the English
empire that had existed in France in the twelfth century. When the Treaty of Brétigny was ratified
in France in 1360 John of Gaunt was present, but it would prove an illusory peace and Edward’s
third son would be commanding military retinues in France again before long. By the time he attended the peace signing
in 1360 John was also a married man. From his earliest years the subject of John’s
marriage had been a major topic of diplomatic concern for the king and the government. Early on, when John was still little more
than an infant, a union with the daughter of King Alfonso IV of Portugal had been mooted
in the mid-1340s, followed by a possible marriage to Marguerite, the heir of Louis, Count of
Flanders in the Low Countries. These continental unions were eventually abandoned,
though, in favour of a marriage between John and Blanche of Lancaster, the daughter and
co-heir of one of the king’s most senior and trusted nobles, Henry, Duke of Lancaster,
and his wife Isabella Beaumont. The couple were eventually married in May
1359 when John was nearing his twentieth year and Blanche was thirteen. The Duke of Lancaster did not have a male
heir, just two daughters. Thus, when he died two years later in 1361
John was granted temporary custody of much of the enormous Duchy of Lancaster. Then, a year later, the elder of his two daughters,
Maud, also died, leaving Blanche, and along with her, John as her husband, as the sole
heirs to the Lancaster estate. With this John succeeded as Duke of Lancaster,
and Earl of Derby, Lincoln and Leicester. John’s marriage to Blanche in 1359 had been
organised in light of Blanche’s father’s lack of a male heir, but even so the king
and his son cannot have imagined that John would reap the dividends of the arrangement
quite so quickly. In 1362, at just twenty-two years of age,
Gaunt became the richest nobleman in all of Edward III’s dominions. He would retain this distinction for the remainder
of his life down to the end of the fourteenth century and the Lancaster estate would continue
to enrich the extended English royal family well into the fifteenth century and beyond. The Lancastrian estates generated an annual
revenue of over £10,000, an enormous sum during the late medieval period and one twice
as large as any other English magnate at this time. This effectively made John the most powerful
individual in England next to the monarch, a peculiar situation given his position as
Edward’s third son. As a consequence, already in the 1360s plans
began to emerge for installing John as monarch of some foreign realm, the better to temper
his power in respect of Prince Edward, who he could not be seen to overshadow as the
heir. For instance, in the mid-1360s plans were
entertained to install John as King of Scotland in succession to the childless King David
II. This came to nothing, but projects to make
John monarch of some other Western European On a more practical level, John was dispatched
to Aquitaine in France in January 1367 to bring reinforcements to his older brother,
Prince Edward, who the previous year had agreed to aid Peter of Castile in his efforts to
secure the throne of the Kingdom of Castile in a civil war which was raging during the
1350s and 1360s for control over the major Iberian kingdom. In the military campaign which followed Gaunt
established a reputation as one of England’s most effective military commanders, leading
the English forces over the Pass of Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees and then driving off an attack
by the forces of Peter’s rival for power in Castile, Henry of Trastamara. John also contributed to the comprehensive
victory which the English and their Castilian allies won at the significant Battle of Nájera
in April 1367, though the success of the military campaign did not lead to Peter’s immediate
victory in the civil war. Thereafter Gaunt returned home with his military
reputation burnished by the intervention in Iberia. However, within months he had lost his wife. Blanche died on the 12th of September 1368,
possibly from a wave of the Black Death which had first terrorised England in her and John’s
youths. By the time of her passing, they had had several
children, many of whom died in infancy, but three of which, Philippa born in 1360, Elizabeth
born in 1363 and Henry born in 1367, would live long lives. Henry, who was just one year old when his
mother died, was henceforth John’s heir and the designated successor to the vast Lancastrian
patrimony. Blanche’s death occurred as the peace which
had been established between the English and French crowns in 1360 was beginning to crumble. This process had been ongoing ever since the
French Dauphin Charles succeeded his father as King Charles V in 1364. He was a more able ruler than his father and
unwilling to accept the humiliating terms which had been arranged through the Treaty
of Brétigny in 1360. Accordingly the French had been rebuilding
their armies and resources throughout the 1360s and towards the end of the decade Charles
began escalating tensions concerning English suzerainty over Aquitaine, the same issue
which had led to the outbreak of war all the way back in 1337. War resumed in 1369 on the basis of these
tensions and soon involved a resumption of all the old points of conflict, with the French
looking to seize the territory lost in 1360 and Edward’s earlier claim to the French
throne being resurrected again. However, from the very beginning Charles adopted
a shrewder strategy than his father and grandfather had, seeking allies and to wear down the English
presence in France by attritional warfare against regions such as Poitou. It was a strategy which would bear considerable
fruit in the long run. With the resumption of the conflict, Edward
III now needed to begin reacquiring allies himself and he was fortunate to find that
one of his sons, and one with a huge estate and wealth at that, had recently become a
widower. Thus, in September 1371 John contracted a
second marriage, this time to Constance of Castile, the elder daughter of Peter of Castile
on whose behalf the English had intervened in Spain in 1367. Peter had been murdered in the aftermath of
the campaign in March 1369, ostensibly bringing the civil war in Castile to an end. Now John married his daughter, a union which
brought the English crown ties to many parties in Spain who viewed her as the legitimate
Queen of Castile following her father’s death. This marriage provided John with a claim to
the Castilian throne himself. Indeed the Duke was conscious of this claim
from the beginning and from the early 1370s onwards he maintained a group of Castilian
officials who issued documents in his and Constance’s names as the King and Queen
of Castile. More immediately the union of Peter of Castile’s
daughter with King Edward III’s son provided a means to try to undermine the alliance between
the Castilian ruler Henry of Trastamara and the French crown. This was compounded shortly afterwards when
John’s younger brother, Edmond, married Constance’s younger sister. More broadly the resumption of the war against
France saw John playing an increasingly significant role in his father’s government during the
early 1360s. The king was in his sixties by now and his
health was deteriorating. Furthermore, Edward’s second eldest son,
Lionel, had died from unclear causes in 1368, while the heir to the throne, Prince Edward,
was himself in poor health, having probably contracted dysentery while in Spain in 1367,
a condition from which he would never fully recover. The upshot of this was that the task of commanding
England’s overseas armies in France and elsewhere largely fell to John in the 1370s. Indeed, in late 1370, he was even established
as Prince Edward’s lieutenant in Aquitaine, as the Black Prince headed back to England
to try to recuperate from his illness. This was a largely thankless task as the campaigns
in 1370 and 1371 involved trying to bolster the English defences of their French territories
against superior French forces. Gaunt’s main concern throughout was with
a lack of resources and money in particular, as the English parliament was resoundingly
reluctant to provide extensive funding for a renewed war in France in the early 1370s. Indeed, so difficult was the position of the
English at this time that Gaunt was forced in 1372 to surrender the earldom of Richmond,
which he had been granted when he was just two years old, so that the same could be bestowed
on the Duke of Brittany, John de Montfort, as the price for his continuing alliance with
the English in France. In 1373 Gaunt led the most acclaimed military
campaign of his life, though one which was also contradictorily unsuccessful. This was to be a chevauchée, meaning ‘horse
charge’, a type of military campaign whereby a feudal host would raid deeply into enemy
territory, burning and pillaging key targets in order to reduce the enemy’s strength
without engaging in protracted sieges or a major field battle. In 1373, with his father and elder brothers
indisposed, the honour fell to John to carry out such a chevauchée through France and
try to break the current deadlock in the Hundred Years War. In July 1373 he led a force of approximately
6,000 men to France, with John de Montfort, the Duke of Brittany, who had fled to England
months earlier after being forced out of his lands by the French, acting as his deputy. They landed at Calais with the intention of
conducting a raid towards Paris and then striking westwards into Brittany in order to restore
de Montfort there. As they headed towards Paris, though, they
encountered large French forces which did not engage them directly. As a result John abandoned the original plan
and instead spent the autumn and early winter marching through France south-west towards
Gascony. On the way they carried out a series of attacks
against settlements loyal to the French crown and managed to arrive largely unscathed to
Bordeaux in December. By then Gaunt’s men were nearing starvation,
but the damage induced by their march and the length of it through territory held by
the French crown gained widespread acclaim. It has become known as John of Gaunt’s Great
Chevauchée, despite the fact that strategically it had not achieved very much at all. While the war in France was undulating through
periods of crisis and minor successes a much greater emergency was building in England
itself. Edward III was entering the final stages of
his life. That was clear by the mid-1370s. But what was also clear was that his eldest
son and heir seemed likely to die soon himself. His own health had continued to decline following
his return from France in the early 1370s and eventually on the 8th of June 1376 he
succumbed to his malady, which as we have seen was most likely dysentery. His nine year old son Richard was now next
in line to the throne, a situation which triggered a political crisis at the heart of the English
government. With his brother dead, his father dying and
his nephew still a child, John was foisted to the centre of the action. Already in the spring and summer of 1376 he
had effectively presented himself as the defender of the crown’s interest at the Good Parliament,
during which attacks against the monarchy and the royal government had been strenuously
made. His goal in the aftermath of the death of
his brother was to reverse these attacks and ensure the smooth transition from his father’s
reign to that of his nephew. In response to the developments of 1376 John
summoned a new parliament at the beginning of December 1376. What has subsequently become known as the
Bad Parliament met for five weeks between late January 1377 and early March. This sought to repeal the impeachment of several
royal officials which had been imposed in the Good Parliament the previous year, while
also introducing a poll tax to help pay for the government during the period of crisis
following Prince Edward’s death and also because King Edward too was nearing his final
days. This was assessed at a rate of four pence
for every individual over 14 years of age and effectively sought to keep the government
running and the war in France above water as the country hurtled through the crisis. Despite its name, the Bad Parliament was a
success from the point of view of the crown, reversing the setbacks of the previous year
and stabilising the ship of state in the midst of a profound crisis. It was one of John’s major successes and
ensured that when his father, King Edward III, died a few months later on the 21st of
June 1377, Gaunt’s ten year old nephew, Richard, succeeded as king to a more stable
situation than might otherwise have been the case. Despite his dual position as Richard’s senior-most
uncle and the leading peer of the realm, John was not selected to act as regent for his
nephew during his minority. There were, quite simply, too many people
within government circles and the wider political community who were suspicious of what John’s
ambitions actually were. Many feared he would try to make himself king
if he were given a free hand to do so. As such John did not become the stand-in ruler
of England in 1377. However, he could not but be given a significant
role while Richard was still a child. For instance, from 1377 until Richard began
to rule himself in the mid-1380s, Gaunt was the senior representative of the English aristocracy
within the wider government. Moreover, while he was omitted from several
councils which were established to oversee certain government affairs, his status nevertheless
afforded him some unofficial prominence, while he had easy access to Richard’s household
throughout these years. Thus, for instance, when the king clashed
with some of his magnates in the early-to-mid-1380s it was Gaunt who acted as arbitrator and whenever
the war with France was discussed Gaunt was paramount in discussions of what should occur. It was at his peril that the earl of Northumberland,
Henry Percy, attempted to challenge Gaunt’s authority as the realm’s leading magnate
in the autumn of 1381. Gaunt forced him into a humiliating public
apology soon after. Despite this power, or in fact because of
it, rumours continued to abound in the 1380s that John had ambitions beyond merely being
the foremost magnate of the realm. For instance, one chronicler of the times,
Thomas Walsingham, in his Chronicon Angliae, stated that the king “now wholly laid down
the government of the Kingdom and put it into the hands of the duke, allowing him to do
all that he wanted.” This was a fanciful rendering of what was
a perfectly normal situation, namely that a boy king who was not yet even a teenager
was not ruling in his own stead. Nevertheless, John became the target of many
of those who were discontented in England in the late 1370s and early 1380s, and there
were many people who were disillusioned, above all with continuingly high levels of taxation
to pay for the war in France. Moreover, unlike in the 1340s and 1350s when
Edward III could point towards considerable victories against the French when complaints
were raised about excessive taxes, in the 1370s and 1380s the government had no such
accomplishments which it could boast of, but rather, only the gradual loss of territory
to the French which had been hard won through the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360. Eventually this unrest would boil over in
1381 into what has become known as the Peasant’s Revolt. The outright cause of this was the extension
of the poll tax which Gaunt had first imposed through the Bad Parliament early in 1377. Furious with this, the ongoing taxation they
had been experiencing for years, news of the military reverses suffered in France and ongoing
social and economic problems wrought by the Black Death, thousands of peasants went into
armed rebellion in Kent and Essex that summer. Within weeks a large peasant army under the
command of a tradesman named Wat Tyler, a radical preacher by the name of John Ball,
and one Jack Straw had assembled at Blackheath near London. In the days thereafter their followers murdered
the archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, and the Lord High Treasurer of England, Robert
Hales. Gaunt was also a stated target of their insurrection
and they burned down his London residence, the Savoy Palace, after entering the capital. Ultimately Gaunt was lucky that the Peasant’s
Revolt collapsed in chaos in the second half of June after Tyler was killed by the Mayor
of London during negotiations. Had it not, one of the main stated aims of
the peasants had been to arrest and execute John, such was the level of popular disapproval
of him by the early 1380s. Nor did this resentment subside following
the Peasant’s Revolt. In 1382 the citizens of London presented a
pointed petition to the crown in which they requested that they should be ruled by one
king and one alone. The inference was that Gaunt was King of England
in all but name. John was also heavily involved in the years
of Richard’s minority in the controversy surrounding the clerical reformer, John Wycliffe. Wycliffe was a theologian, priest and Oxford
scholar who had emerged in the 1370s as a major critic of the established Roman Catholic
Church. For instance, he claimed that the hierarchy
of the church in Rome and elsewhere was corrupt and that practices such as the selling of
clerical offices and the granting of church positions to relatives of nobles and senior
churchmen were unacceptable, while he was also opposed to many aspects of theological
interpretation, notably the reliance on Latin to celebrate the Mass. Wycliffe argued the vernacular languages such
as English should be used, he was also critical of the worship of the saints and the interpretation
of the seven sacraments. In the mid-1370s he had produced his monumental
work of church reform and commentary De Civili Dominio, meaning On Civil Dominion. This had brought him into conflict with the
established church authorities and many within the government and aristocracy, but Wycliffe
also had some firm supporters. Foremost amongst them was Gaunt, who in 1377
had appeared before a synod where Wycliffe was asked to defend his views before the church
authorities in London. The alliance between Wycliffe and Gaunt was
obvious from this point onwards. What John’s motive was seems relatively
clear. He perceived that too many important political
offices within England were held by church officials appointed by Rome and he wished
to reduce their influence considerably. By the early 1380s Wycliffe’s range of supporters
had increased massively, with his anti-clerical stance and criticism of the excessive worldliness
of the church winning him supporters amongst the lower classes as well as sections of the
nobility. But Wycliffe’s writings and pronouncements
were also becoming more extreme. In particular his statements on the nature
of the Last Supper in the summer of 1381 were radical for their time. In these he claimed that the traditional doctrine
of transubstantiation, whereby the body and blood of Christ were deemed to be actually
present in the Eucharist and sacramental wine, was a falsehood and that the wafer and wine
were merely symbolic of the Last Supper. This latest theological heresy proved a bridge
too far for Gaunt who now abandoned his clerical ally. Moreover, the radical religious ideas espoused
by Wycliffe and their egalitarian undertones were perceived to have been at least partially
responsible for the Peasant’s Revolt, although Wycliffe had not incited his followers in
this regard. As such from 1381 onwards Wycliffe was an
increasingly maligned figure and by the time he died from a stroke in 1384 his followers,
known pejoratively as the Lollards were facing growing state persecution. They remained a significant force, though,
in English political life to come, due to the support of Gaunt and others in the 1370s
who had allowed Wycliffe’s ideas to spread before he was silenced. Gaunt’s support for several years for Wycliffe
was indicative of his wider character. He was independent minded, rational and open
to new ideas, certainly not the species of individual who was bound by tradition or popular
thought. It was this which had allowed him to realise
that the war in France was futile from an early date. Much of his character was probably accurately
depicted by William Shakespeare in how he depicted Gaunt in his play Richard II. Here John is seen as a man who is deeply loyal
to the king, honour bound to uphold the prerogatives of the crown, yet unafraid to express his
views about how Richard ought to behave to better manage the realm. Curiously, Shakespeare does not present him
as a particularly charismatic or charming military leader or political figure, but rather
as a solid peer of the realm and the wealthiest one at that. Perhaps the bard was right in this. John lived much of his life in the shadow
of more colourful characters, from his father and elder brother to his own son and his nephew
the king. Next to these it is easy to forget that John
had claims to kingship himself and was in effect the most stable and consistently effective
peer of his day. John of Gaunt was also a significant figure
for his patronage in his later years of Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was an English poet, author and government
official who is famous today for composing The Canterbury Tales, a collection of 24 stories
about different medieval English characters, though Chaucer is also noteworthy for several
other works including Troilus and Criseyde and The Book of the Duchess. Literary figures and minor government officials
such as Chaucer were reliant for their rise and maintenance in medieval and early modern
times on nobles and leading church figures such as Gaunt. John not only provided for Chaucer’s ascent
as an official, but much later in Gaunt’s life they became related when Gaunt took as
his third wife Katherine Swynford de Roet, Chaucer’s sister-in-law. Chaucer in turn responded to Gaunt’s patronage
by referring to him in his work and praising members of Gaunt’s family. The Book of the Duchess, for instance, was
written in commemoration of Gaunt’s first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, and refers to
John and Blanche throughout, albeit using allegorical references whereby the identity
of those being discussed is not immediately clear. Further works in the 1380s and 1390s refer
to Gaunt and commemorate his relationship with one of the leading literary figures of
late medieval England. The Peasants Revolt had in part been caused
by the unremittingly bad news from France in the late 1370s and early 1380s. With a child king on the throne, an inability
to pay for major campaigns on the continent and the French having a secret weapon in the
shape of Bertrand du Guesclin, a Breton military commander who had served as Constable of France
since 1370, England had lost most of the territories it had won through the Treaty of Brétigny
by 1380. Only the core lands in Gascony and Aquitaine
remained under English control, along with the port of Calais in the north-east and its
hinterland. Worse still had occurred in the early 1380s
when Gaunt’s brother, Thomas of Woodstock, at that time the Earl of Buckingham, led a
military expedition to France to aid England’s ally, John de Montfort, in his efforts to
recapture the Dukedom of Brittany. However, the campaign met with mixed success. The French refused to give open battle and
an attempted siege of Nantes had to be abandoned, following which de Monfort reconciled with
the French crown early in 1381. This was the high-water tide of French success
in this stage of the war, though, and the death of du Guesclin in 1380, along with that
of King Charles V and the succession of his 11 year old son as King Charles VI created
problems of their own for France in the 1380s. The reverses of the 1370s had convinced Gaunt
by 1380 that the war in France could not be won. He was one of the earliest English commanders
to realise this. Had others done so the Hundred Years War might
not have dragged on for another seventy years. Nevertheless, there was no appetite in his
own day for a lasting peace which would relinquish the territories Edward III had so hard won
in the 1340s and 1350s. Thus, as one of England’s foremost voices
on any councils dealing with France he argued not for a strategy of peace, but of containment. Above all it was necessary to ensure that
the French did not manage to land an invasion force in England and to try to maintain peace
along the northern border. Scotland had long looked to France as its
natural ally against an English crown which had periodically sought to incorporate Scotland
into English crown territories. By the late 1370s there was a very real possibility
that the Scots would attempt to take advantage of English setbacks in France by allying with
the French crown and raiding into northern England. Border raids between the English Percys and
the Scottish Douglases had already been underway since 1376 and in the late 1370s Gaunt had
travelled personally to the Anglo-Scottish border to oversee the defences of the region. In 1379 Richard had appointed him as Lieutenant
of the Marches, signifying his increased responsibility for maintaining the security of the border. This need became even more pressing in the
early 1380s as a fifteen-year truce which had been agreed between the English and Scottish
crowns in the late 1360s neared an end. In response Gaunt led a military campaign
to the Scottish border in the autumn of 1380 in a show of force, one which led to a reaffirmation
of the existing truce and its eventual extension down to 1384. However, while the war with the French may
have entered a stalemate in France by the mid-1380s, the Scots nevertheless decided
not to renew the truce in 1384 when it expired and launched an attack on the English outpost
at Lochmaben in February 1384. Gaunt retaliated with a significant counterraid
over the border in April, during which he marched unopposed through much of southern
Scotland as far as Edinburgh. There he extracted a significant ransom in
return for not attacking the Scottish capital. However, worse followed when a small French
army arrived in Scotland months later, leading King Richard, who by now was in his late teens
to organise a major invasion force of Scotland the next year. The campaign of 1385 was of a limited success,
with a large English force entering Edinburgh in August, but failing to follow up the military
victory with political success. However, tensions were developing between
the French and Scottish in any event by that time and while the Scottish continued to plague
the English border, there was little risk of a major invasion of northern England by
the Scots for some years thereafter. The aftermath of the campaign into Scotland
in 1385 saw the re-emergence of Gaunt’s claim to the throne of Castile. He had never relinquished his claim to the
Iberian kingdom through his marriage to Constance of Castile in the early 1370s and had tried
to negotiate an alliance with a combination of the other Iberian kingdoms, Portugal, Aragon
and Navarre, against King Henry of Trastamara and after his death in 1379 his son King John
I of Castile. These had come to little in the 1370s, but
an alliance with the Portuguese was in the offing by the 1380s. Gaunt began to form plans to lead 5,000 men
from England to France and from there to Galicia in Spain. This plan was backed by a loan of 20,000 marks
from Richard’s coffers. And so the campaign to install John of Gaunt
as King of Castile was finally launched in the summer of 1386. It was initially successful and by the onset
of the winter Gaunt and his troops had arrived to Spain and had much of Galicia under their
control, while a formal alliance had been negotiated with King John I of Portugal, whereby
he would bring a further 5,000 troops into Castile in return for King John marrying Gaunt’s
daughter Philippa and Gaunt ceding some Castilian territory to Portugal once he had secured
the crown of Castile. With this arrangement in place Gaunt’s forces
along with the Portuguese invaded León in March 1387. The campaign, however, was hampered by a lack
of supplies and effective defences mounted by King John of Castile. The Portuguese soon abandoned Gaunt as a result. Faced with this situation Gaunt determined
to try to make the most of the territory he had taken under his control as well as the
presence of his troops in Iberia, and he entered into negotiations with King John of Castile. Peace terms were soon concluded at Trancoso
in July 1387. These were generous towards Gaunt, who seems
to have invaded Spain in 1386 with limited ambitions to claim the throne, but more with
the hope of exacting concessions from King John, much as his father had done in France
in the late 1330s. Under the terms of Trancoso Gaunt’s daughter
Katherine was to wed Prince Henry, the Trastamaran heir to the kingdom of Castile, thus cementing
the Lancastrian place in the succession to the Castilian throne. Moreover, King John was to pay a huge indemnity
to Gaunt of 600,000 francs and pay the Duke of Lancaster an annual pension of 40,000 francs. Thus, when Gaunt left Spain in the autumn
of 1387 he had resoundingly strengthened his financial position and his daughters were
now to be married to the kings of Castile and Portugal. It was flush with this success that he spent
the next two years in Aquitaine in western France attending to matters there, before
finally returning to England on King Richard’s request in 1389. Gaunt returned to a kingdom in which Richard
II had become ruler in his own right, but a highly unpopular one at that. No sooner had he begun to rule in his own
stead than he began to rely excessively on a number of close advisors and personal favourites. Chief amongst these was Michael de la Pole,
a member of an English merchant family that had risen to power and influence during the
reign of King Edward III by acting as the king’s chief financiers of his wars in France. Consequently, Sir William de la Pole, Michael’s
father, had been made the Chief Baron of the English Exchequer under Edward III and Richard
had continued the crown’s favour towards the De la Poles by appointing Michael as Lord
Chancellor of England in 1383. Two years later he ennobled him as the first
Earl of Suffolk. Other crown favourites included the Earl of
Oxford, Robert de Vere, while another was the Chief Justice of king’s bench, one of
the highest courts of the realm, Sir Robert Tresilian. Between them these figures had become lightning-rods
for discontent at Richard’s reign in the absence of Gaunt who had filled that role
in the late 1370s and early 1380s. What marked the discontent of the late 1380s
and 1390s as distinct from the popular unrest which had led to the Peasant’s Revolt in
1381, though, was that there was a coherent opposition movement amongst some of the most
senior lords, aristocrats and political figures within England. Indeed in his absence in Spain and France
these had coalesced around Gaunt’s son and heir, Henry Bolingbroke, born of his first
marriage to Blanche of Lancaster. By now holding the title of Earl of Derby
and an ambitious young man in his twenties, almost the same age as the king, Henry was
determined to flex his political muscles. During Gaunt’s absence he had joined with
another of the king’s uncles, Thomas of Woodstock, and several other nobles to form
what have become known as the Lords Appellant. This grouping petitioned Richard to remove
the evil counsellors around him who were leading him astray. In reality, though, these were demands from
a power group who were too strong for Richard to ignore. As such the king had to allow several of his
closest allies such as Tresilian to be tried and executed. Thereafter an uneasy peace came into existence
between the king and his leading nobles. It was into this situation that Gaunt returned
in 1389. The political environment of England in 1389
was one of a tense standoff between the king and the Lords Appellant. Gaunt attempted to act as a peacemaker at
a council in Reading in December 1389, as a reward for which Richard bestowed several
grants and concessions on him afterwards. Then at a parliament early in 1390 Gaunt was
awarded with the new honour of the title of Duke of Aquitaine in France. This cemented his position as effectively
being placed in charge of England’s war effort against the French. Following this decision Gaunt departed for
France where he was now determined to rule Aquitaine as a semi-independent duchy and
to secure it by bringing an end to the war with France. It was to this end which much of John’s
energies were directed throughout the early 1390s, even as an uneasy peace prevailed in
England between the king and the opposition party led by Gaunt’s son and heir. Richard was happy enough with this dispensation,
agreeing with a statement by parliament in the summer of 1391 that Gaunt should be given
sole responsibility for attempting to conclude peace terms with the French as he was, quote,
“the most sufficient person in the realm.”
Gaunt personally led an English delegation to peace negotiations at the city of Amiens
in the spring of 1392. Two months of diplomacy followed in order
to broker new terms by which the war might be brought to an end. Here the French presented a proposal in which
they argued that the English crown would officially surrender all of the lands which had been
won through the Peace of Brétigny in 1360 in return for a slight enlargement of the
Duchy of Aquitaine. The thorny issue of Richard paying allegiance
to the French crown for Aquitaine could be overcome by Gaunt instead paying homage to
King Charles VI of France as the Duke of Aquitaine. However, when news of this compromise reached
England worries were raised that this would veer too close to acknowledging Gaunt as a
ruler of Aquitaine. Further negotiations followed at Leulingham
in 1393 which centred on Richard instead paying homage to the French crown, but Gaunt’s
best efforts to bring the war to an end at this time were ultimately frustrated by parliament
and the government back in England, who raised objections to any course of action which he
attempted on some grounds or another. Ultimately the Hundred Years War would drag
on for many, many years to come, though the marriage of King Richard to Isabella of Valois,
the French king’s daughter, in 1396 did lead to a respite from the worst of the conflict
for some time in the second half of the 1390s. The restricted negotiations with France in
1392 and 1393 had opened John up to further attacks in England during his absence. Moreover, his creation as Duke of Aquitaine
had resulted in one of the least successful episodes of his entire life, as his Gascon
subjects in western France never took well to rule by the king’s uncle, believing he
was trying to supersede their loyalty to the English crown. As a result, when he returned to England in
1396 Gaunt found his role in the realm somewhat diminished, as Richard had yet again begun
to appoint a new cohort of favourites and allies to positions of prominence. When Richard launched a counter-coup against
some of his long-standing opponents in 1397 John signalled his continuing loyalty to the
crown when he sat on the trial which led to the execution of several peers including the
earls of Arundel and Warwick. Richard rewarded Gaunt for this by promoting
his son and heir, Henry Bolingbroke, to the title of Duke of Hereford, but this was not
enough to satiate Henry and before long he and the king would clash again. John’s last years saw him married for a
third time. For many years he had been involved in a relationship
with Katherine Swynford, a probable child of Paon de Roet, a herald and knight, though
much of Swynford’s back story is very obscure. She and Gaunt had been involved with each
other throughout his marriage to Constance of Castile and had several illegitimate children
together. The first of these, named John after his father,
was born in 1373 and granted the Beaufort surname on account of John having been born
at Beaufort in Champagne in France. Three further children, two boys named Henry
and Thomas who were born in the mid-1370s, and a daughter named Joan who was probably
born in 1379, also resulted from this illegitimate union, each of them given the Beaufort surname. Thus, John and Katherine’s relationship
had resulted in a brood of children in the 1370s and was a matter of public record. However, Constance’s premature death in
1394 at the age of 40 opened up the possibility of John marrying Katherine after so many years. They were married in 1396 and as we will see
the Beaufort children would play a critical role in English political history going forward. John spent his final years in loyal service
to his monarch. He continued to administer routine government
business for Richard and in the spring and summer of 1398 he was involved in negotiations
to establish a sustained peace with Scotland. He was rewarded by the king in August when
he was made Constable of the new crown principality of Chester, but a shock followed just weeks
later when Richard exiled Gaunt’s eldest son and heir, Henry Bolingbroke, whose ambitions
Richard was perennially suspicious of, to France with orders that he was not to return
for at least six years. This was an emotional blow to John, who had
spent over twenty years in loyal service to a monarch whose conduct had been questionable
on many occasions. By now nearing his sixtieth year, old age
by the standards of the late middle ages, his health declined precipitously following
Henry’s exile. He quickly retired to Leicester Castle where
he died on the 3rd of February 1399. A curious aspect of John’s will was that
he had requested that his body should lie unburied and un-embalmed for a period of forty
days after his death, a decision which undoubtedly resulted in a grizzly corpse being entombed
next to his first wife at St Paul’s Cathedral on the 16th of March. Blanche and John’s tomb was a magnificent
affair with alabaster effigies representing the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster, one which
unfortunately was destroyed at various intervals in the mid-seventeenth century, the final
parts of it incinerated during the Great Fire of London in 1666. The months following Gaunt’s death saw a
political crisis emerge in England. In the weeks that followed the king removed
Gaunt’s son and heir Bolingbroke from the royal succession. In response Henry gathered an army of those
who were disaffected from Richard’s rule in France and invaded England in the summer
of 1399. Although his invasion force was limited, when
he landed on British soil Gaunt’s son quickly began gathering supporters to his cause, such
was the level of unrest at Richard’s actions as king since the 1380s. As his own troops and allies melted away Richard
agreed to meet with Henry in mid-August and on the 19th of August 1399 surrendered to
Bolingbroke at Flint Castle, promising to abdicate the throne if Henry spared his life. This Henry agreed to, though Richard was placed
under arrest and is generally believed to have been starved to death the following February
on the new kings orders. Thus, Henry Bolingbroke, the grandson of Edward
III, a man who had refused all suggestions that he might usurp the throne, did just that
within a year of Gaunt’s death, becoming King Henry IV of England. The legacy of Gaunt’s role in English political
affairs did not end there. His son ruled until 1413 and after him Bolingbroke’s
own son, Henry V, held the throne until 1422. However, his son, King Henry VI, Gaunt’s
great-grandson, proved to be psychologically unstable. Moreover, because he succeeded at a young
age his reign was long and turbulent. Eventually civil war erupted in the 1450s
as those who opposed the Lancastrian monarchy, gathered around the flag of Richard, Duke
of York, the descendants of Gaunt’s younger brother, Edmond of Langley. The Wars of the Roses which raged from the
1450s through to the 1480s was thus a conflict between the descendants of John of Gaunt and
those of Edmond of Langley. It ended in a manner which few could have
expected. Henry IV had issued a decree shortly after
he had become king which had stated that the Beauforts, Gaunt’s illegitimate children
by Katherine Swynford, could not succeed to the throne, nor their descendants. But in 1485 it was one such descendant, an
upstart from Wales by the name of Henry Tudor, whose mother was Lady Margaret Beaufort, who
claimed the throne at the end of the Wars of the Roses. Thus, the Tudors were effectively a scion
of Gaunt’s extended marital and extra-marital affairs. John of Gaunt was one of the most remarkable
figures in the history of medieval England. This is particularly so given the rather inauspicious
circumstances of his birth. As the third son of King Edward III to survive
into adulthood it was unlikely he would succeed to the throne and indeed for much of the 1350s
and 1360s he was overshadowed by his elder brothers, particularly his eldest brother,
Edward, the Black Prince and heir to the throne. However, circumstance was everything in John’s
life. In the early 1360s it ensured that he succeeded
to the enormous Duchy of Lancaster not long after marrying Blanche of Lancaster, with
it becoming the wealthiest and most powerful magnate in all of England while still in his
early twenties. When Blanche died young he was propitiously
positioned to marry Constance of Castile and so inherited a claim to the Castilian throne. Gaunt would style himself as a king thereafter. Then, a further series of illnesses within
his own family ensured that his two elder brothers died prematurely just as their father
was declining himself. With the Black Prince’s son little more
than a boy John became the most senior member of the royal family and effectively the regent
for his ten year old nephew upon old King Edward’s death in 1377, a position of prominence
which John cannot have foreseen a decade earlier. Many people questioned John’s motives and
his ambitions in the years that followed and some considered him a traitor to the realm. Indeed at the time of the Peasants Revolt
one of the goals of the insurrectionists was to capture and execute John as the focus of
popular discontent. But this was unfair. Over the next two decades he proved himself
to be a loyal and dedicated subject of King Richard II, always supporting the right of
the crown even as Richard’s reign and his decisions became more and more problematic. Moreover, even Gaunt’s enemies were quick
to admit that he was a brilliant political figure and one possessed of his own mind when
it came to a great many issues, notably the religious tensions of the day and the war
in France. Where John’s ambitions did extend was to
Spain and he eventually took up arms to try to enforce his claim to the throne of Castile. But he never extended that ambition to England
itself, even as opposition to Richard grew in the 1380s and 1390s. In the end he lived and died a loyal subject
of the crown. It is the irony of his life that his own son
quickly usurped the throne from Richard II just months after John himself passed from
the world, while his various descendants, both legitimate and illegitimate, were central
to the civil wars which wracked England throughout the fifteenth century. It is debateable whether John would have approved
of the contesting of the prerogatives of the crown of which his father had been such a
champion. What do you think of John of Gaunt? Was he the greatest of the sons of King Edward
III? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
