Introduction

John of Gaunt – ‘What name on the roll of English princes is more familiar?’ When Sydney Armitage-Smith wrote the first complete biography of John of Gaunt in 1904, his rhetorical question would have had the effect intended: John of Gaunt was, then, a famous, familiar figure, central to English history. Yet in the more than a hundred years since Armitage-Smith’s book, Gaunt’s position in popular consciousness has waned. Though his impact on the destiny of the English crown is undeniable, his character, motivations and story are often marginalised. The Black Prince needs no introduction . . . not so the younger brother whose achievements – political, military, dynastic, cultural – were arguably all more significant.

During his life, John of Ghent, or ‘Gaunt’ – his name dictated by his birthplace – would witness plague, war, victory and revolt, a decades-long schism in the Catholic Church between rival Popes in Rome and Avignon and the popularising of the English language in poetry and literature. He would father a future English King, become a regent in all but name and claim the kingship of Castile, where his daughter would later reign.

The first Earl of Lancaster, Edmund Crouchback, planted red roses in the gardens of the Savoy Palace. These roses became the emblem of the House of Lancaster. When King Henry VI, John of Gaunt’s great-grandson, plunged the country into civil war, red rose badges were worn by combatants in some of the bloodiest battles ever to take place on English soil. Another Lancastrian, Henry Tudor, would finally end the war in 1485, landing at Mill Bay in Pembrokeshire, clutching the sand in his fingers and claiming legitimacy as King of England. The red rose Henry proudly wore as a Lancastrian King was eventually merged with the Yorkist white of his wife, creating the famous united Tudor Rose.

John of Gaunt fits uncomfortably in the historical narrative: the son of a famous King, the brother of a famous war hero. That brother, the Black Prince, is renowned for his victories on the battlefield yet Gaunt – the Red Prince – is marginalised for his. John of Gaunt has stood in the wings, but not taken centre stage: his life has been the sub-plot, yet it laid the foundations for the sequel. Historians continue to contest John of Gaunt’s legacy, helped and hindered by the polarising, conflicting accounts of his life offered by contemporary chroniclers. Where he is the righteous hero in one chronicle, he is the villain of another. To one historian he is a haughty politician, to another, a fair feudal magnate.

The novelist L.P. Hartley wrote, ‘the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’. This is particularly the case for the Middle Ages and there are limited sources that provide enough detail to piece together even fragments of his life. An existing catalogue of administrative sources relating to John of Gaunt survives mainly at the National Archives, with some additional information at the British Library and the Bodleian in Oxford. These sources – largely land grants, indentures (a type of contract), records of employment and charters – shed some light on Gaunt’s life as a leading magnate in the realm, and are best read alongside the chronicle accounts which provide colour and narrative. Medieval chronicle accounts, however, are inevitably flawed. The sources for the fourteenth century are fragments of the truth, interpretations often as a result of rumour, bound together to create an ‘idea’ rather than a linear explanation of how things were. With many lacunae in the records of the period, medievalists – even more than historians of later periods – are forced to be subjective and interpretive. The Reformation, the Great Fire of London, war and time have resulted in a massive loss of evidence, so historians rely on the fragments that are available to them – often contemporary interpretations.

England, France and Spain are littered with legends and rumours of John of Gaunt and the times he lived. In prose, poetry or stone, his legacy endures. He was the ‘cat of the court’ in Piers Plowman, the Black Knight in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, and Old Gaunt, the bereft, ageing uncle in Shakespeare’s history play, Richard II: it is thought that Shakespeare himself played the role of John of Gaunt in the early seventeenth century. Gaunt not only featured in literature but patronised it. He was known to have supported, even befriended, Chaucer – who late in life became his brother-in-law – keeping him employed by the royal household during both Edward III’s and Richard II’s reigns, and it is possible that the epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was commissioned by Gaunt around 1375. The astrologer Nicholas of Lynn dedicated his ‘Kalendarium’ to John of Gaunt in 1386, suggesting an interest in science and astrology, as well as literature and art.

Like many before me, I have found John of Gaunt intriguing. Forward-thinking, ambitious, honourable and loyal, yet deeply flawed; impulsive, arrogant and impatient. His ambition, motivation, familial care and emotions suggest a deeply complex character. His experiences were some of the most revolutionary, ground-breaking and dramatic moments in history. It is these experiences – war, revolution, politics and human relationships – that I have focused on to tell the life story of John of Gaunt, the Red Prince.