Five
Death, Duty and Dynasty
‘Allas, death, what ayleth thee
That thou coldest have taken me
Whan thou toke my lady swete
That was so fair, so fresh, so fre
So good that men may well se
Of al goodnesses she had no mete’.
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Book of the Duchess
In The Book of the Duchess, the ‘Man in Black’ is shrouded in grief. He is consumed by sadness, becoming a personification of sorrow. ‘White’ is lost, a fact the Man in Black cannot accept.1 The Man suffers from grief-induced insomnia and finally falls asleep reading Ovid’s story of Ceyx and Alcyone; he slips deep into a dream vision of hope beyond darkness. In the dream he is led into a clearing in a wood where spring returns to the earth and flowers grow abundant. He is shown that the darkness of winter does not linger but moves into spring.
On 12 September 1368, John of Gaunt’s ‘very dear wife’, Blanche of Lancaster, died at Tutbury Castle, either following childbirth-related complications – possibly the birth and death of an infant called Isabel – or from the plague. At twenty-six, the Duchess had already given birth seven times, with three babies surviving infancy by the time she died. Although Blanche had a relatively short life, she was revered at court for her kindness, beauty and grace, prompting Geoffrey Chaucer to compose the dream vision, The Book of the Duchess, between 1369 and 1374, when her tomb was constructed. It is in part through this book that we can begin to understand John of Gaunt’s grief over the loss of his young wife. Within the narrative, Chaucer offers an intimate understanding of the process of grief and moving on from the trauma of loss. The character of the Black Knight is trapped in sorrow, cutting the promise of hope short with ‘she ys ded’. He sits bereft at the foot of a tree, contemplating the loss of his wife: ‘I have of sore so get won, that joy gete I never non, Now that I see my lady bryght which I have loved with al my myght is fro me did and ys agoon’. The Book of the Duchess is the first narrative poem in the English language to begin with ‘I’, placing Chaucer as a subject – an observer of his patron’s emotional distress. Although the relationship between patron and vassal is distinguishable in The Book of the Duchess, Chaucer’s relationship with John of Gaunt did not develop exclusively through literary patronage. Chaucer was employed by John of Gaunt as a soldier – he possibly even accompanied Gaunt to Aquitaine in 1369–70 – and his son Thomas also had a flourishing career in Gaunt’s service. Despite Chaucer’s verse being regularly associated with John of Gaunt, it was rarely commissioned by him. The only poem Chaucer produced in connection to Gaunt was The Book of the Duchess.2
The Duchess of Lancaster’s body was carefully carried to London from Tutbury with a guard of 1,000 horsemen and interred in an alabaster tomb in St Paul’s Cathedral. Black cloth was draped across the walls of the cathedral and her tomb surrounded by men in white and blue hoods – the Lancastrian colours – holding burning torches. In the same deeply pious manner as her father’s Leicester funeral, Blanche was respectfully laid to rest. An altar was erected with a chalice and missal – a book containing the prayers, important chants and instructions for the mass – and two chaplains were paid to sing masses for her soul. For the rest of his life, John made sure that Blanche – the lady he loved with ‘all his myght’ – was remembered. The anniversary of her death was commemorated annually, a tradition that continued even into the reign of their son, Henry IV.
After Blanche’s death, Gaunt suffered further personal tragedy. In 1368, his brother Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, remarried, his first wife having died in Dublin five years earlier. Violante Visconti was the daughter of the Italian nobleman Galeazzo Visconti, Lord of Pavia and Duke of Milan. The Visconti family was extremely wealthy and Lionel’s marriage was meant to secure an Anglo-Milanese alliance between Edward III and the Italian dynasty. The marriage was lucrative: Violante’s dowry was so large it took two years to negotiate. Finally, the couple married in Milan in June and the ceremony was followed by an elaborate thirty-course banquet. There was apparently enough food left over to feed 1,000 men. Four months after the wedding Lionel died at Alba in Piedmont. It was rumoured that the prime cause was excessive consumption at the wedding feast.
The death of Lionel of Antwerp prompted his deputy commander, Edward le Depenser, to threaten war on the Visconti family, in the belief that gluttony was not the real cause: le Despenser was convinced the Visconti had orchestrated the murder. Nothing came of his accusations and Edward’s grand plans for royal rule in Italy were thwarted. Lionel was initially buried in Pavia before being moved to England. He was reinterred at the convent of Austin Friars in Clare, Suffolk, beside his first wife, Elizabeth de Burgh.
Following the death of Blanche, John of Gaunt spent the last months of 1368 working closely with his father at court to broker a new marriage for himself. In another attempt to secure an alliance with Flanders, John was proposed to Margaret, the daughter of its Count; it was effectively the same marriage agreement that he had previously tried to achieve for his brother, Edmund of Langley. Again, this was refused and Margaret eventually wed the Duke of Burgundy, Charles V’s brother. The rivalry between England and France was catalysed by the marriage. And even as the French won the alliance with the Count of Flanders there were growing hostilities in Aquitaine. The Black Prince was losing control of his territory and faced an uprising from the Gascon nobility.
Prince Edward lay sick. Bedbound at his court in Bordeaux, he was attended by the leading physician Pierre de Manti. The Spanish campaign that proved so spectacular for John of Gaunt had taken its toll on his brother. The illness, possibly dysentery, that began in Spain had worsened and the fouage – the tax enacted to fund the Spanish campaign – had unsettling consequences back in Aquitaine. With Pedro dead, the Prince was never reimbursed. The nobility previously loyal to the Prince in Aquitaine began to air their grievances to Charles V. According to Chandos Herald, ‘those who he held as friends now became his enemies’.
The Black Prince’s failure to inject funds back into his Duchy following the expenses of the Spanish campaign presented an opportunity for the French King, eager as ever to undermine English influence in Aquitaine. Charles V invited Gascon noblemen to appeal against the fouage, promising protection against the Prince should he try to punish them. Some were cautious of Charles’s suspiciously generous olive branch; others were quick to accept his proposition. Despite the Prince living and ruling in France, many French aristocrats loathed him and his family. Louis, Duke of Anjou – an ally of the Spanish King, Enrique – commissioned a tapestry as a visual representation of his animus towards the Plantagenets. In an allegory woven into the tapestry, Edward III, the Black Prince, John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley were all demonised as a single beast surrounded by a swarm of locusts emerging from thick black smoke.3
The writer and courtier Christine de Pisan observed that ‘wars were better fought by the power of the mind than by brute force’. Her observation rang true for Charles V. John of Gaunt dismissed him as a ‘lawyer’, a politician rather than a military leader. Charles managed to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the Prince’s allies, recruiting the Count of Armagnac, the Count of Perigord and the Lord of Albret in his mission to oust the English from Aquitaine. The Treaty of Brétigny had stipulated that Edward III would renounce his claim to the French throne after the ransom for John II was paid. By 1369, the French had not paid the ransom in full and Edward III had not formally renounced the title King of England and France. With some English soldiers – deserters who joined the Companies – still wreaking havoc in France, Edward III too found himself in breach of the terms of the Treaty, which stipulated that the English had to remove all their fighting men from the country. This gave Charles V the opportunity to attack the Prince whilst he was in a weak position, by arguing that Brétigny was invalid, and Charles V was still the ultimate ruler of Aquitaine. Such a position would inevitably result in a renewal of the war. With Gascon nobles refusing to pay the Prince’s fouage, 800 English soldiers prepared to sail to Aquitaine to help the Prince restore order. In a secret arrangement the Gascon lords, formerly loyal to the Prince, swore allegiance to Charles V in exchange for his protection against the English in Aquitaine. In November, the Black Prince received a summons to the Parlement of Paris on 2 May 1369, to answer appeals made against him by the Gascon lords in response to the fouage. According to Chandos Herald, he angrily stated: ‘if God gives me comfort and I can get up from this bed, I will cause them harm enough yet’.
The Prince never made it to Paris. Despite his determination to defend his honour, title and authority, he was struggling to maintain control of his lands. The tax in Aquitaine had been described by the Anonimalle Chronicle as an ‘intolerable burden’. John Chandos delivered a letter to Edward III in which the Black Prince attempted to defend himself against the growing accusations, stipulating: ‘I have written so forwardly about this, because it affects me and my honour and standing so closely . . . I ask you, most honoured Lord, for the sake of such little power I have to serve you, to take these matters entirely to heart . . . for I will always be ready to carry out your orders as best I can’. The French closed in on the Prince, as the Duke of Anjou began recruiting troops across the Languedoc, intent on attacking before English support could arrive.4
Edward III called a Great Council at Westminster to determine the best course of action in France. He summoned the most powerful lords in the realm, including John of Gaunt; at almost sixty years old, Edward III was preparing for the ‘second war’. The objective was to help the ailing Black Prince and save Aquitaine from falling into French hands. Plans for a new campaign were formed, with John of Gaunt chosen to lead the English army into France for the first time. Following the success of Najéra, Edward III trusted Gaunt as a leading commander, offering a chance of victory in France akin to the Black Prince at the start of the Poitiers campaign. Over the spring and early summer of 1369, a muster of troops, arms and supplies was arranged with the intention of sailing to the garrison at Calais, from where Gaunt could conduct a fresh invasion.
As the army gathered at Southampton and prepared for the crossing, John of Gaunt was appointed Lieutenant in the March of Calais. The King sent ‘milord John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and the Earl of Hereford and the Lord of Mauby and other great Lords, along with a powerful force of valiant men, beyond the sea to Calais’.5 After landing, Gaunt advanced south at the head of 6,000 men to Picardy, then stopped in the valley at Tournehem. He planned to defeat the French in a surprise attack. According to a cleric from Rouen, the Duke of Burgundy, known as Philip the Bold, rode north from Rouen to face Gaunt, following the orders of his brother, Charles V. The French King’s leading advisors were his three brothers: the Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berry. They were his lieutenants in the war against the English, and in the following years led the French efforts against the Black Prince and Gaunt.
In early August, Philip the Bold left Rouen after attending a council held by the King. A week later, he arrived in Tournehem, where John of Gaunt and the English army were encamped. Gaunt and his men were dining in the camp when Philip the Bold led his army towards them. Taken by surprise, not having anticipated any French opposition at Tournehem, Gaunt dropped everything, crying out ‘To arms!’ before ordering the army into a defensive formation, ‘arraying their divisions and units skilfully’.6 Then, according to the cleric from Rouen, John of Gaunt refused pitched battle with the French, barricading his army from any possibility of attack: ‘the Duke of Lancaster and the English, who were very subtle and crafty in war, fearing the great chivalry and strength of the French, had fortified themselves in such a way that none could approach them’.7 The Anonimalle Chronicle argues the opposite, that Gaunt was eager for combat but the French refused him. Despite having the advantage by trapping the English in the valley, the French did not press their attack. Philip the Bold may have wished for combat but was under strict instructions from Charles V not to engage with the English in pitched battle. As part of his defensive plan, Charles adopted his former strategy: to avoid battle and wait for the English to run out of supplies, and for morale to plummet. With both armies locked in stalemate, Philip the Bold received information that John of Gaunt was expecting reinforcements. Edward III and the Earl of Warwick were due to arrive at Tournehem, having embarked from Sandwich in Kent. After a month of tension between John of Gaunt and Philip the Bold at Tournehem, the latter fled before the English reinforcements could arrive.
After the enemy appeared to move off, Gaunt and his men carefully took stock of their abandoned camp. It was clear the French had indeed vanished in a hurry, for they left behind a feast: ‘a good sixty tuns of wine and as many of beer, and plenty of bread and a great plenty of fresh and salted meat and of fish’. Despite Gaunt’s failure to engage the French, he managed to damage the morale of one of their leading noblemen, and ‘thereby did the realm of France suffer great shame and great harm’.8 John of Gaunt did well at Tournehem. The Rouen chronicler’s assertion that he deliberately avoided battle with the French is probably untrue. Following his experience of months teasing the French to fight, it is unlikely that Gaunt would have missed the opportunity with men who were fresh out of Calais and eager for war. But neither did he give up his defensive position to pursue the Duke of Burgundy. Although he lost the opportunity for a grand victory like Poitiers, Gaunt demonstrated strategic nous, patience and level-headed command.
Despite his intention to meet his son at Tournehem, Edward III never joined the campaign in France, sending the Earl of Warwick in his place. In August 1369, as Edward was preparing for departure, the Queen, Philippa of Hainault, ‘who had such boundless charity for all humanity’, died at Windsor Castle. According to Jean Froissart, who was in the Queen’s service: ‘when the good lady perceived her end approaching, she called to the King, and, extending her right hand from under the bed clothes, put it into the right hand of the King, who was very sorrowful at heart, and thus spoke: “We have enjoyed our union in peace and prosperity.” ’ In her final moments, Philippa implored the tearful King to care for the legacies that she had charitably endowed and, finally, she requested that upon his death, he ‘lie by my side in the cloisters of Westminster’.
The Queen was mourned throughout England, but Froissart describes John of Gaunt in particular as ‘greatly afflicted’ after he received the news whilst camped at Tournehem with his army. Moving out, he marched his men through Picardy raiding, burning and pillaging, although he never achieved any formal combat. Thomas Walsingham, the Benedictine monk of St Albans, chided in his chronicle account of the war that there was a lack of direction in Gaunt’s campaign. Gaunt arrived at Harfleur and immediately attacked. He ordered wave after wave of assaults, but could not breach the walls as the defenders of the city rained crossbow bolts down on his men. John of Gaunt had the time and the means to take Harfleur but disease – dysentery and possibly plague – now spread through his camp like wildfire, killing the Earl of Warwick, who had come to Gaunt’s aid at Tournehem. Forced into a stalemate after only four days outside Harfleur, Gaunt marched back to Calais through the smoking landscape he had created. By December 1369 he was back in Westminster, where he found the court in deep mourning for the Queen.
The Black Prince was informed of his mother’s death in late September. His mood, along with his health, was rapidly deteriorating and he began to delegate power to those he trusted, particularly Sir John Chandos. However, in the New Year the Prince was crushed by another loss.
As Gaunt led the offensive in the north of France, another wave of fighting broke out on the borders of Aquitaine, between the French – in alliance with defecting Gascon nobles – and the English with loyal Gascon nobles under the Black Prince. In defence of the Prince’s territory, John Chandos orchestrated an ambush against a group of French soldiers. On the road between Limoges and Poitiers, there was a bridge near the village of Lussac in Poitou spanning the Vienne river. John Chandos prepared to ambush the French party before they could cross the bridge. As they approached, Chandos and his men – who outnumbered the French – blocked their path at the foot of the bridge. Chandos, wearing a ‘great robe, richly emblazoned’ dismounted and ordered his banner to be unfurled and waved before the French troops. He strode confidently towards the French and proudly announced, ‘I am John Chandos, look at me well, for, if God pleases we will now put to the test, your great deeds of arms that are so renowned’. In the middle of winter, the ground was sheeted with a thin layer of ice and John Chandos suddenly slipped, tripping on the heavy material of his robe and falling to the ground. Before Chandos could collect himself, the French party advanced and the ill-fated knight received a lance blow directly to his face, having had no time to pull down his visor. And so, the ‘noble John Chandos’ met an ignoble end.
Chandos was one of the most effective English military commanders in Aquitaine and the Prince’s closest friend. After his death Edward III dispatched John of Gaunt to Bordeaux to help his brother manage its defence. Around 1,000 men travelled to Aquitaine with Gaunt, largely recruited from the Lancastrian retinue. With a resurgence of the war, the English coastline was vulnerable again and Edward III needed to keep part of the army at home to protect the realm. John of Gaunt landed at Bordeaux with his relief force in the middle of August 1370. He marched to Cognac where he met with his younger brother, Edmund of Langley, and the Black Prince. This was the first time Gaunt had seen his beloved older brother since the end of the Najéra campaign and he was forced to face the fact that the Black Prince was crippled with illness. After he arrived in Cognac, John of Gaunt embraced the Prince, who was carried in a litter to greet him as he did not have the strength to walk.
The Black Prince and John of Gaunt launched a new strategy to reassert control in Aquitaine. They agreed to reward loyalty by redistributing the lands belonging to defecting lords to those who had remained faithful to the English. The Prince also offered a second chance to deserters by ‘pardoning their crimes’ and permitting them to return to his service.9 He also suggested that John of Gaunt should be granted the full power of Lieutenant in Aquitaine, for he was unable to lead his men, let alone fight.
The first course of action for the brothers was to reclaim the city of Limoges, which had fallen to the French through the disloyalty of its bishop, a man the Prince had previously trusted.
Limoges was a wealthy city in the heart of Aquitaine, situated between Poitiers and Bergerac, and on the right bank of the Vienne river. The city was well fortified, wrapped in a defensive circuit of high walls built in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, with over twenty towers and eight portcullis gateways. It was also split into two: the cité and the chateau. The cité – on the lower ground of Limoges – was occupied by the clergy and formed a religious community with a monastery, a convent, the Bishop’s residence and the Basilica St Etienne. Above the cité was the chateau, which had a burgeoning enamel industry, a busy food market and a castle – the Place de la Motte. There was also another church in the chateau, the church of St Michael. The population of Limoges was around 15,000 and was controlled by its bishop, Jean de Cros, who – previously on good terms with the Black Prince – had been appointed godfather to his firstborn son, Edward. In August 1370, Limoges surrendered to the Duke of Berry, a brother of Charles V. The Duke of Berry was a renowned aesthete. He collected fine things: art, jewellery, expensive artefacts and chateaux, and commissioned tapestries and exquisite books of hours such as the Très Riches Heures, designed by the esteemed Limbourg brothers. The Duke adored excess; he had over 1,000 hunting dogs, and a menagerie with a camel, a leopard and a monkey.
On 21 August, the Duke of Berry marched his army outside Limoges and set up camp in the suburbs of the town amongst the vineyards. For the next three days, the Duke opened negotiations with the defender of the town, Jean de Cros. The Bishop was easily persuaded to submit the cité to the Duke, for, on lower ground and with no garrison, it was in a weaker defensive position than the chateau that loomed above. The residents of the chateau, however, were not convinced and agreed to stand firm, loyal to the Black Prince. Having promised the Duke of Berry control of the town, Jean de Cros pleaded with the citizens of the chateau to surrender. In his desperation he fabricated a rumour that the Black Prince was dead. The citizens of the chateau were unconvinced, continuing their stand against the Duke of Berry. With the gates of the chateau firmly closed, Berry had two choices: to besiege the hostile part of the town, or leave. With the English army on the march, he chose the latter and prepared to move out. Having surrendered the cité, Jean de Cros begged the Duke of Berry to stay and defend Limoges from the advancing English, to no avail. Instead, Berry donated a division of soldiers to the Bishop’s defence. Soon afterwards, he fled.
From the moment Black Prince had heard that Limoges had been seized, he was determined to reclaim it. With an army of 4,000 soldiers, the Prince and John of Gaunt marched out. The army was a mixed bag of Gaunt’s men, noblemen from Aquitaine who remained loyal to the Prince and some of the Companies, including Eustace d’Auberchicourt. On 14 September, the English army arrived at the walls of Limoges, behind John of Gaunt. The Black Prince delivered orders from his litter. What happened next is subject to contention, Jean Froissart’s interpretation of the events at Limoges has tarnished the reputation of the Black Prince as a violent aggressor. However, recent evidence suggests that it went the following way.10
John of Gaunt led the offensive against Limoges in a siege that lasted five days. After discovering that one part of the city wall was built on soft ground, Gaunt ordered his men to tunnel beneath. As they dug, the French defenders of the town – left by the Duke of Berry – responded by digging their own mine in retaliation. Gaunt was caught inside the tunnel as the two sides encountered each other in a messy hand-to-hand underground skirmish, forcing Gaunt and his men to back out. Gaunt then had siege engines wheeled outside the walls, launching missiles that took down part of the external wall, allowing him to lead a small force of men at arms into the city through the breach. As the English and Gascon soldiers charged, Jean de Villemur, commander of the small French garrison left by the Duke of Berry, charged straight at John of Gaunt. Froissart describes the two men fighting hand-to-hand until Gaunt, highly impressed by his opponent’s swordsmanship, paused to ask him his name.
After the first wave of the attack, the lower wall outside the cité collapsed, and the full might of the English and Gascon army was able to push through the cité towards the gate of the chateau. The people of the chateau had remained loyal to the Black Prince and, as the English approached, they opened the gate. The French garrison, furious that the citizens of the chateau compromised their defence, perpetrated the massacre of the people of Limoges that followed. As the English flooded in, they pursued the French soldiers into the main square where John of Gaunt led the advance. Outnumbered and with no alternative, the French surrendered and a few were taken prisoner, including Jean de Villemur. Terrified, Jean de Cros was brought before the Black Prince’s litter. Seething with rage at the man who had betrayed him, the Black Prince was tempted to show him no mercy; however, true to his vow of clemency, the Bishop was spared.
At the end of September, the Black Prince wrote to the Count of Foix to inform him of the recovery of Limoges, stipulating that 100 soldiers and 200 civilians had been killed in the fighting as Limoges was reclaimed by the English. The Black Prince also granted a pardon to the citizens and the clergy of Limoges. He wished to ‘not see them further punished as accomplices in this crime, when fault lay clearly with the bishop’.11 The account of the siege of Limoges as delivered by Jean Froissart has been, until recently, the principal account of the massacre of the people of the chateau. It suggests that the Prince, cruelly and sparing none, slaughtered the innocent citizens of Limoges. By this time, Jean Froissart – previously in the employ of Queen Philippa of Hainault – had come to France under the patronage of Guy II, the Count of Blois. This allowed him to write book two of his chronicles, but Guy – who was for a time held hostage in England after the Treaty of Brétigny – was hostile to the Black Prince. Froissart’s account of Limoges naturally painted the Prince as a monster to appease his patron, but the slaughter of innocent citizens was actually conducted by the Duke of Berry’s men. For Charles V, Limoges was a disaster. Appalled at the ineptitude shown by his brother, Berry, the King stripped him of military authority.
The Black Prince, John of Gaunt and their army returned to Cognac where the Prince received another devastating blow: his eldest son, Edward, only five years old, had died of plague at Angoulême on 29 September. The Black Prince was no longer able to cope with the pressures of leadership in Aquitaine. Chronically unwell and heartbroken at the loss of his little son, he passed all authority over to Gaunt and granted him the Lordship of Bergerac. According to Jean Froissart, the Prince parted with the Lords of Aquitaine with a sorrowful speech, ‘during the time that he had been their prince, he had always maintained them in peace, prosperity and power, as far as depended on him, against all their enemies; but that now, in the hope of recovering his health, of which he had great need, he intended to return to England; he therefore besought them earnestly to put their faith in, and to serve and obey his brother, the Duke of Lancaster, as they had before served and obeyed him; that they would find him a good and courteous Lord’.
In what was known as an homage de bouche, a ceremony in which the Lord or sovereign receives a kiss from the nobles of Aquitaine which binds them to fight for him in the defence of his lands, John of Gaunt was accepted as the new Lord of Aquitaine. This was formalised in an agreement with the Black Prince granting John the title Lieutenant of Aquitaine. The Black Prince – again carried in a litter – embarked from Bordeaux with his grieving wife, the Princess Joan, and their surviving son, Richard. Their situation was so bleak they were unable to stay for Edward’s funeral, a responsibility taken on by Gaunt who ensured that it was a magnificent affair. Despite the prestige that came with his new responsibility, Gaunt was not content with the position. He agreed to take on the Prince’s role only on condition he was released the following summer. To mitigate his request, the Black Prince offered John the town and Castle of La Roche Sur Yon – an offer he accepted.12 Aquitaine was in a bad state of affairs: it would be a complex and incredibly difficult job to return the English territory to the profitable province it had once been.
The Black Prince’s relationship with the Lords of Aquitaine was precarious. As the Prince had lost his grip over his territory, the nobility were forced to choose between remaining loyal to England and the Prince, or defecting to the French. Consistently loyal to his brother, and to the Crown, John of Gaunt took his authority in Aquitaine seriously and set about recovering the land that had been lost. He started with a small walled town east of Aquitaine called Mont Pon. William, Lord of Mont Pon, had been a loyal subject of the English. As the Black Prince’s position grew weaker, however, he went over to the French, permitting the Duke of Anjou entry into the town. William’s betrayal was an example of the consistent defection of disloyal lords in the latter part of the Black Prince’s leadership of Aquitaine, which Gaunt now sought to mitigate. Gaunt led an army against Mont Pon. Anticipating punishment, William fled, leaving only four knights to protect the castle. John of Gaunt arrived at Mont Pon and ‘with great vigour’ led an offensive siege against the castle. His force scaled its walls and quickly forced the small contingent of French knights to surrender. According to Froissart, John of Gaunt initially refused to take prisoners and wished to make an example of the disloyal William of Mont Pon, and any man who had aided his flight. The four French soldiers captured by Gaunt’s men appealed to the Duke for their lives and were eventually successful in changing his mind. Gaunt set about repairing the damage caused in the brief attack on the walls and left shortly after, installing two knights as governors and forty soldiers to keep the peace.
The rest of the year went a similar way for John of Gaunt. He spent most of his time trying to restore the financially crippled government in Aquitaine and, even after informing the King of the situation, was still largely left to deal with the problematic territory himself. During the final year of the Black Prince’s reign in Aquitaine, over half of the army had deserted due to lack of payment. To prevent the inevitable pillaging, raping and torching in English territory, John of Gaunt paid the restless soldiers himself. On 23 September 1371, he formally resigned his post into the hands of the Prince’s officers and planned his journey home. Of the 800 men who came with him from England, fewer than half remained. Those who did were his retainers and held lands in the Duchy of Lancaster. John of Gaunt had completed the time he promised the Prince he would spend in Aquitaine and was eager to pursue his own promising cause: to take back Castile and there, crown himself King.
The idea of invading Castile and taking the throne probably manifested itself during the time John of Gaunt was based in Aquitaine in the early spring of 1371. Froissart claims that it was the barons of Aquitaine, whom Gaunt had come to know well, who suggested the idea of marrying the eldest daughter of the murdered Pedro the Cruel. Gaunt had, by this time, been a widower for over two years and a new marriage was inevitable. He had been occupied – up until then – governing Aquitaine and demonstrating loyalty and obedience to the will of his family. However, he was tempted by the opportunity to become King of Castile through Pedro’s daughter, Constance.
Following the death of their father, the daughters of Pedro and his mistress Maria de Padilla (whom he secretly married prior to Blanche of Bourbon) were kept at Bayonne. With nowhere to go, Princesses Constance and Isabella lived under the protection of the Black Prince, having initially served as collateral for Pedro’s promise of payment. The payment never came, and the Princesses now lived in exile as potential heirs to the throne of Castile. According to Froissart, Sir Guiscard d’Angle approached Gaunt with the idea of marrying into Castile: ‘My Lord, it is time you should think of remarrying. We know of a very noble match for you, one from which you or your heirs will be Kings of Castile. It will be a charitable deed to comfort and advise damsels who are daughters of a King, especially when in such a pitiable state as those ladies are. Take therefore, the eldest as your bride’. It is possible that John of Gaunt had already considered Princess Constance as a potential wife: in his will Pedro had stipulated that the husband of his eldest daughter would have a rightful claim to the throne.
John of Gaunt sent four knights to bring both princesses to Bordeaux. However, he was impatient to secure the match. Rather than waiting and marrying Constance in a grand court ceremony, he rode out to meet her on the road. On 21 September 1371, thirty-one-year-old Gaunt married seventeen-year-old Constance at Roquefort, near Mont de Marsan, and she became the new Duchess of Lancaster. By the time Gaunt relinquished his Lieutenancy in Aquitaine in September, he was eager to return home and introduce his new wife to his family, and to the realm. Around the end of the month he sailed from Bordeaux with Constance and her sister Isabella on a salt ship, requesting the ship’s master remove a cargo of bay salt to make the ship available for their voyage. Having shouldered a significant financial burden in Aquitaine, John of Gaunt had little wealth to spare on the luxury of a fine ship; when they arrived in England, Constance was even forced to pawn some of her belongings. Two weeks after landing, John of Gaunt returned to the Savoy Palace and to Westminster, where he was remunerated and described the desperate situation in Aquitaine to the King. He insisted that if the territory were properly defended it would invite a return of loyalty from the lords who had deserted the Prince. It is likely they also discussed his new objective – to reinvade Castile and take the throne.
On his way to Westminster, Gaunt left Constance at Hertford Castle, close to London, one of his favoured country residences. It was a small castle, but crenelated and fortified with a large outer wall and spacious keep. Hertford was a comfortable but safe location from which the new Duchess could familiarise herself with England. After three months in England, Constance of Castile was formally and publicly received in London as the new Duchess of Lancaster; she was also pregnant. Constance was greeted with a procession through Cheapside, and the Black Prince rose from his sickbed to escort his new sister-in-law to the Savoy Palace, where John of Gaunt intended to formally install her as his Queen of Castile. When Constance gave birth to a baby girl, Catherine, in 1372, the future looked promising for the new couple. Their union, however, was purely political and never developed into a loving or close relationship. The marriage survived out of ambition and hatred: John of Gaunt’s ambition for the throne, and Constance’s hatred for her uncle, Enrique. However, the real thorn in their marriage was John of Gaunt’s continuing love affair with another woman – Katherine Swynford.