Prologue

‘Though the man is almost a stranger to us, his name is a household word’.

Sydney Armitage-Smith

Just off the M1, en route to Leeds, lies the small industrial town of Rothwell. In the early 1980s Rothwell was well known for its coal-mining industry and community. Six local collieries employed most of the townspeople and the community thrived off a tradition that spanned six centuries, beginning in the early fifteenth century. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government shut down the mines in favour of cheap coal exports from abroad in the early 1980s. People sought employment elsewhere, making the most of the motorways that wrap around the town and account for the hum of traffic audible in the town centre today.

Rothwell is steeped in history and has, until fairly recently, been an important place on the map of England. As a settlement, listed in the Domesday Book, Rothwell was valued at £8, more than nearby Leeds. In the later Middle Ages it became an established royal hunting ground, known for fertile land and wildlife. Echoes of the medieval town remain – the market cross and street layout. However, the principal architectural feature to resist the vast concrete motorway expansion and the Industrial Revolution is Rothwell’s church. Holy Trinity is situated on a rise and it looms over the town. The building we see today is the result of years of restoration and repair, and is largely a Victorian edifice, but its foundations date to before the Conquest.

Filled with crafts, toys for children, advertisements for groups and committees and polished pews, filled on Sundays with local worshippers, the inside is typical of most churches today. However, at the back of the nave stands a unique relic: a clear case contains the waistcoat, or ‘jack’ (jacket) of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

John of Gaunt spent considerable time in Rothwell. It was where he came to hunt, to enjoy the simple pleasures of sport, woodland and time absent from the pressures of his prominent position. His waistcoat is large, quilted and has mostly disintegrated over time. It is similar to one that belonged his brother, the Black Prince – held at Canterbury Cathedral as a significant tourist attraction – yet is not presented with quite the same grandeur. Staring through the thick glass of the cabinet one tries to conjure up an image of the man who possibly wore it more than six centuries ago.

Gaunt was fond of the town and the church and patronised it, even building a covered walkway from the manor house in which he would stay to the church. During one stint in Rothwell, a story goes, John of Gaunt found himself embroiled in a furious duel with a local man, John de Rothwell, over a serving girl in the castle. It is also rumoured that on Stybank Hill, which overlooks the church, he personally killed the last wild boar in England. This is probably a myth, though the story endures and his reputation has become part of local folklore.

John of Gaunt’s surcoat is his surviving legacy in Rothwell, but if you head south on the M1 to London, you’ll find much more. The Savoy Hotel with its glittering green facade, an icon of luxury, takes its name from the Savoy Palace, Gaunt’s property in London, a byword for splendour, wealth and power. The streets around the Savoy Hotel lie on the original site of the palace – Savoy Street, Savoy Place, Savoy Court; there is even a pub called the Savoy Tap and another pub a few doors down which hangs Gaunt’s portrait from its door. The Savoy Palace is an indelible part of the fabric of London, yet the palace itself no longer exists. Lancaster has more references to John of Gaunt: streets, hotels and Ye Olde John O’Gaunt pub. Leicester has a hidden cellar that is dubbed ‘John of Gaunt’s cellar’, once part of the expansive Leicester Castle, the centre of Lancastrian Duchy administration. Hampshire, Hungerford, Cambridgeshire, Yorkshire . . . England is peppered with unassuming reminders of John of Gaunt, but the Rothwell waistcoat is personal and human. His relics may not hang in a museum, cathedral or famous castle, but they are woven into the fabric of our everyday lives in the same manner as his historic legacy.

The roots of John of Gaunt’s family tree are deeply intertwined with our monarchical history. Centuries after his death, contenders for the throne harked back to their famous ancestor Gaunt to endorse their righteous inheritance of the Crown. The Tudor dynasty was born out of John of Gaunt’s adultery. Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon were united as mutual descendants of John of Gaunt. A seemingly insignificant, crumbling relic in a small, unassuming English town holds a deeper and far more significant history – overlooked for too long.