John Of Guant

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JOHN OF GAUNT (1340-1399)




This prince, the fourth son of King Edward III and Queen Philippa, was born at Ghent (or Gaunt) in Flanders, in 1340. In his infancy, he was created Earl of Richmond and, by that title, admitted into the Order of the Garter upon the death of Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent, one of the original knights. In 1359, at Reading Abbey (Berks), he married Blanche, the younger of the two daughters and co-heirs of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, and upon the death of his father-in-law, in 1361; he was advanced to that Dukedom. He held also, in right of his wife, the Earldoms of Derby, Lincoln and Leicester, and the high office of Steward of England.

Blanche, dying in 1369, the ambition of the Duke - who had taken an active part in the war carried on by the his brother, Black Prince, for the restoration of Peter, King of Castile and Leon - induced him to direct his views towards Constance, the elder of the two daughters of that monarch, then lately slain by his illegitimate brother, Henry of Transtamare, his successor under the title of Henry II. In 1372, the Duke married this princess and thus assumed the regal style of those kingdoms. These titular honours were ascribed to him in the writs of summons to Parliament from that year until 1386, when, by an arrangement with King John I of Castile and Leon, the son and successor of Henry, Catherine, the only daughter of the Duke of Lancaster by Constance, was betrothed to Henry, Prince of Asturias, his heir-apparent, and the crown settled upon the issue of that alliance.

Although John of Gaunt had been engaged in warlike enterprises from his earliest years, yet his martial achievements did not increase the lustre of British glory or secure for himself the character of a great commander. In three expeditions into France, in 1369, 1370 and 1373, he gained no laurels and the peculiar misfortunes, which attended the last, when a considerable number of his ...