John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, a lasting admiration (I)

I was first introduced to John of Gaunt, first Duke of Lancaster, early in 2012, perhaps earlier.  If I hadn't let Anya Seton's fabulous novel gather dust on my bookshelf for many years it would have been earlier.  I fell in love with the book, the story and most of all with the Duke.  Ever since then I've not only had an obsession with him but his entire period of history, mainly King Edward III's court and everyone involved in its sphere.  I've actually written a series of very historically inaccurate short stories about John of Gaunt and his elder brother Edward of Woodstock (popularly called these days the Black Prince).

First of all let's go straight to historical accuracy and the man himself rather than the marvelously chivalric version Anya Seton created.  John of Gaunt was born in March 1340 in the town of Ghent in what is now modern day Belgium but then in Flanders.  His mother, Queen Phillipa of England (born Phillipa of Hainault or Hainaut depending on the spelling) was the daughter of William I, Count of Hainault, and his wife Joan of Valois.  I don't really want to go into that nice spiralling european royal lineage because it is so so complicated, so let's just say his mother was from a very distinguished lineage, as she ought to be else she would never have married the future King of England.

Phillipa of Hainult, John of Gaunt's mother

This is where we mention Gaunt's equally fabulous father, King Edward III of England.  Eldest son of the poor, misunderstood but equally unsuitable King Edward II who was deprived of his throne due to his own mistakes and his wife, the immortalised Isabella of France (I don't want to quote Shakespeare here, although I love him he has become overused in popular culture).  Due to many small mistakes, ill judgments and listening to people he shouldn't have (that's right, Despenser family, I'm talking about you), Edward II was swiped from the throne and imprisoned and eventually ended up dead.  There is a hot debate about how he died at Berkeley castle where he was kept, and even arguments that he didn't die at all and escaped to live life elsewhere, but I won't get into that here.  If you are interested in Edward II or like history as much as I do, Katherine Warner's brilliant blog is dedicated to this long misunderstood and condemned King so I definitely recommend going and reading the hundreds of posts she's put about the man himself, his life and times and anyone who was anyone in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

Edward II blog by Katherine Warner

Continuing along my lines, John of Gaunt, first Duke of Lancaster came from distinguished lineages.  He was born as the 4th son of Edward III and Phillipa of Hainault, but the third to survive infancy and reach adulthood.  He had three elder brothers and two older sisters, one of the most prominent is, of course, Edward of Woodstock, the Prince of Wales.  I love this man as well but it's more of a passing admiration and mostly concerns that he never married until thirty and then it was to Joan of Kent.  He was a fearsome warrior, proving himself at a young age, 16, at the battle of Crecy at the start of the Hundred Year War England had with France.  There is ten years between Gaunt and his eldest brother and apparently they were quite close.  I can imagine a young John being enraptured by his elder, distinguished brother, perhaps even wanting to become just like him.

Edward of Woodstock,
Prince of Wales

Isabella, Gaunt's eldest sister, is another character I have passing interest for and solely because she refused to agree to an arranged marriage and that her father spoiled her rotten.  I think it was in the book "The First Princess of Wales" by Karen Harper that she really came alive for me and I know it is a fictional portrayal but I mean what sort of brass did the woman have to defy her father and king, refusing an arranged political marriage in a time when women, especially royal ones, were for that exact purpose, to forge alliances?

Let's scroll back to topic.  Edward III and his Queen had a lot of children and I have the utmost respect and admiration for Phillipa for surviving and enduring as many pregnancies as she did.  It was due to her many children that less than a hundred years later the War of the Roses broke out, and we all know what happened there.

Let's jump to 1359, the year of our Duke's marriage to the great and desirable Blanche of Lancaster.

The couple were third cousins descended from King Henry III of England, no surprise there then.  He would have been 19 and she about 14.  Reading Abbey was the place and the marriage was thanks to Edward III who was clever enough to match his younger sons to heiresses to ensure their security, and perhaps their loyalty?  Poor Henry II of England should have perhaps gone down the same path, but alas, he didn't and had to pay the wretched consequences but more on that in a later post.  Blanche of Lancaster was joint heiress to the marvellous Henry of Grosmont, first Duke of Lancaster, who had an interesting life I know, or can remember, shockingly little about.  Katherine Warner has three posts on him so again go there, she is much more knowledgeable than me.

Blanche had an older sister, Maud, who was co-heiress to their father's estates and worldly goods.  At the time of Blanche's marriage her father was still alive but he died in around 1361 making her husband, John, and her brother-in-law, rich.  Blanche had seven children during her marriage to John but sadly only three survived infancy and lived to adulthood.  The eldest of these children was the illustrious Phillipa, named after her paternal grandmother, who would later go onto become the Queen of Portugal and have very impressive offspring.  The second to survive was the passionate Elizabeth who married three times and had a few indiscretions but again I forget the details.  The final child to survive was of course King Henry IV of England, or at the time known was Henry of Bolingbroke.  She had other children but their were either stillborn or died young.

Henry Bolingbroke

Although most of my knowledge comes from fictional books and wikipedia I have read Alison Weir's non-fiction book about Katherine de Swynford (more on her later) which included information on John's life before her.
Every source I've laid my eyes on agrees that John was faithful to Blanche, that their marriage could have perhaps even have been a happy one.  That's what makes her death so tragic.  Blanch died at 23 at Tutbury whilst John was absent.  There is no exact cause of death, some say Black Death as it was ripping its way through Europe at the time but I suppose we'll never know for sure.  What we do know is that John took her death to heart, even commissioning "The Book of the Duchess" a work written by the famous Jeoffrey Chaucer that was also an attempt by the author to encourage John to cease his obsessive grieving over his first wife.

Phillipa of Lancaster

Now, let's have a look at England's political status in Europe at around the time of Blanche's death.  The year is 1368, long gone are the glory days of England's triumph over France at Crecy and Poitiers; it is the sunset years of Edward III's reign.  In 1369 the king sends John to France to take control of the refreshed military campaign in France.  Unfortunately this ended in disaster and was the first in a series of failures for Gaunt in war.

That's it for this post but I will continue John of Ghent's story in the next installment.