A king’s son who never became king
John of Gaunt was born in 1340 in Ghent, which is the origin of his name, an English form of Gand. He was the third surviving son of Edward III, and so close to the throne but not first in line. His eldest brother, Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, was the heir, though he died in 1376, a year before their father. When the Black Prince’s son Richard became king as a child, Gaunt spent much of his remaining life as the uncle, and for some years the most powerful adviser, of a young king.
The title “king” attached to him in some older accounts is misleading. Gaunt did claim a crown, that of Castile, through his second marriage, but he was never king of England, and the English throne passed from Richard II to Gaunt’s own son, not to Gaunt.
The Lancastrian inheritance
Gaunt’s wealth began with his first marriage, in 1359, to Blanche of Lancaster, a daughter of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, who was a cousin of the king. When Blanche’s father died, her inheritance came to Gaunt through her, and he was created Duke of Lancaster in 1362. This brought lands spread across England and Wales, including important castles and manors, with the associated rights of lordship. It made him the greatest landowner after the king, with his own household, council and retainers.
The income and followers that came with these estates gave him real noble power, and the Lancaster lands later became a durable royal possession as the Duchy of Lancaster. Blanche died in 1368 or 1369, probably during an outbreak of plague, an episode that reminds us how the Black Death kept returning after 1348. The poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote an elegy associated with her death, and Gaunt was a patron of the poet, who also had family connections to his household.
War, Castile and marriages
Gaunt took part in campaigns during the Hundred Years War, with mixed success. His long march across France in 1373 was costly and achieved little. His second marriage, in 1371, was to Constance, a daughter of the late king of Castile, and he began styling himself king of Castile. In 1386 he led an expedition to the Iberian Peninsula to press the claim. It did not succeed, but a settlement followed in which his daughter was married to the king of Castile, and another daughter, Philippa, married the king of Portugal.
His third marriage, in 1396, was to Katherine Swynford, who had been his long-term partner and the mother of several of his children. They had been born before the marriage and were given the surname Beaufort. They were legitimated by royal and papal authority, with a later qualification that barred them from the succession. Their descendants matter because the Tudor line traces its claim through this family.
Influence over a young king
When Edward III died in 1377, his grandson Richard II became king at the age of ten. Gaunt was by far the most powerful adult in the realm. He was unpopular with many Londoners and with some courtiers, partly because the government was seen as ineffective and partly because rumors circulated that he wanted the throne. There is no good evidence that he did, and he in fact often acted as a stabilizer, protecting the young king from enemies at court. At the same time he used his place to protect his friends and his own position, and he was out of the country for long periods.
His relations with the church were also complicated. He sheltered the reformer John Wycliffe from London clergy hostile to him, perhaps out of a political interest in curbing church power, but historians do not usually treat this as personal agreement with Wycliffe teachings.
The Peasants’ Revolt
The great crisis of the early reign came in the summer of 1381. A poll tax, imposed to fund the war, set off risings across southeastern England, and rebels marched on London. Gaunt was a prominent target for the Peasants Revolt, because he was seen as an architect of a failing government and because of his wealth. His Savoy Palace on the Strand, one of the grandest houses in London, was burned, and its contents destroyed or thrown into the river, according to chroniclers who stress that the rebels were not simply stealing. Gaunt himself was away on the Scottish border, and he had a difficult time finding safety until the crisis passed. The experience seems to have left him more careful about how he handled the crown and the commons.
Later years and the Lancastrian dynasty
In the 1390s Gaunt served as a senior adviser to Richard II and worked on diplomacy with France. He died in February 1399. Richard II then declared Gaunt’s lands forfeit to the crown and extended the exile of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. This action alarmed many nobles who feared for their own inheritances. Henry returned to England, and Richard was deposed in the same year. The crown went to Henry IV, the first of the Lancastrian dynasty, whose claim ran through Gaunt. In that sense, the duke who never became king was the founder of a royal line.