Six

Cat of the Court

‘With that there ran a rout of rats at once,

And small mice with them, more than thousand,

And came to a council, for their common profit;

For a cat from the Court, came when he liked

And o’er leaped them lightly, and caught them at will,

Played with them perilously, and pushed them about.

For dream of divers dangers, we dare not look about;

If we grumble at his game, he will attack us all,

Scratch us or clutch us, and in his claws hold us’.

William Langland, Piers Plowman

In a drawn-out Council meeting, John of Gaunt was formally endowed with the title ‘King of Castile and Leon’ by right of his wife. He was addressed as ‘Monseigneur d’Espagne’ and adorned Constance with jewels – emeralds, rubies, pearls and a gold circlet (a small thin crown) – in the fashion of a Queen. He also expanded his retinue to include a body of Castilians, some even becoming part of his inner circle.¹ It was probably around this time, as Gaunt settled into his new position of power at the Savoy, that he also began a long-term love affair.

Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt met whilst she was in the service of his first Duchess, Blanche, as a chamber servant.² During this time, the two women were on close terms, for Katherine’s own daughter, Blanche Swynford, was placed in the same chamber as both Philippa and Elizabeth – the daughters of Blanche of Lancaster – and Gaunt was appointed as her godfather.

Katherine was married to one of Gaunt’s retainers, Sir Hugh Swynford, who held a manor in Kettlethorpe in Lincolnshire.³ ‘Beyond the seas on Thursday after St. Martin in the Winter last’ Hugh Swynford suddenly died, whilst serving John of Gaunt in Aquitaine. He left Kettlethorpe in the possession of Katherine and his son and heir Thomas, who was four years old.^{4 5} Hugh Swynford’s land and house were part of the Duchy of Lancaster, and as his Lord, John of Gaunt dutifully ensured the welfare of his family. He employed Katherine in his household as a ‘maistresse’ – a governess – to his daughters, and appointed her sister, ‘the well loved damoysele, Philippa Chanse’, to serve the new Duchess, Constance.^{6 7} ‘Philippa Chanse’ was Philippa Chaucer, the wife of Geoffrey. It is possible that Philippa and Geoffrey met the same way as Chaucer and Gaunt: through Elizabeth de Burgh, who also employed a ‘Philippa Pan’ in her service – perhaps the daughter of Paon de Roet.⁸ The Chaucers’ service and loyalty were important to John of Gaunt. He sponsored their children Thomas and Lewis and placed their daughter, Elizabeth, in an esteemed nunnery, St Helen’s in Bishopsgate. Gaunt also sent Philippa gifts such as a hanape, a large drinking goblet, made by his favourite goldsmith, Rauland.⁹

In spring 1372, shortly after John of Gaunt paraded Constance through London, he gifted Katherine a generous sum of money.¹⁰ This is the first record of his direct association with her, and it is likely that around this time she became his mistress. In 1373, their first son, John, was born and given the surname Beaufort after Gaunt’s French lands, Montmorency-Beaufort. Following his birth, Gaunt granted Katherine more money as well as a lucrative marriage agreement for her daughter Blanche.¹¹ Critics of Gaunt scorned the relationship, whispering that it had begun before Blanche of Lancaster’s death. This is not the case. Nearing the end of his life, John of Gaunt confirmed to the Pope that he had never committed adultery with Katherine whilst Blanche – or Katherine’s husband, Hugh – had still been alive.¹² Their relationship was a very public affair, inviting the gossip and bad favour. From the Abbey of Saint Albans, Walsingham regularly chastised the Duke for his scandalous relationship, calling him a ‘fornicator and adulterer’.¹³

Ignoring the whispers and criticism that circulated around the affair, John of Gaunt remained wholly focused on the development of his new title and carrying out domestic responsibilities on behalf of the King. Gaunt maintained his own court – independent to his father’s – at the Savoy Palace. Described by Thomas Walsingham as ‘a house unrivalled in the Kingdom for its splendour and nobility’, the Savoy was emblematic of Lancastrian leadership. The Palace stood between Westminster and the City, on a road named ‘La Straunde’ and built on a slope that led down to the Thames.¹⁴ The original house, built of limestone, had been crenelated and fortified by Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and later filled with spoils of war by Henry, Duke of Lancaster.¹⁵ The Palace boasted battlements and towers, and was protected by a portcullis and surrounded by domestic buildings. There was a great hall at the Savoy – the key feature of a medieval manor house or castle – and a chapel. Gardens and orchards stretched from the Palace walls to the foot of the river, maintained by a well-paid gardener, Nichol.¹⁶

Through the 1370s Gaunt conducted the majority of his administration from the Savoy Palace, peppered with short visits to Hertford Castle.¹⁷ As part of establishing the Savoy as his principal power base, Gaunt invited influential Spaniards into his retinue and the Savoy Palace took on some of the glamour of a continental court: dazzling, wealthy and European. As he established his ‘Castilian’ court, his position at his father’s court developed and Gaunt was requested to conduct a series of diplomatic missions and sign documents on behalf of the King, whilst also seeing to his extensive Lancastrian lands.¹⁸ As Edward III’s dependency on Gaunt increased, so did Gaunt’s power and, in 1373, he was again trusted to lead his own expedition into France to try to remedy the dire situation in Aquitaine.

A year after Gaunt had relinquished his Lieutenancy in Aquitaine, Poitou and Saintonge – the two most productive provinces in the region – fell to Bertrand du Guesclin.¹⁹ On 17 July 1373 Gaunt crossed the Channel with a force of 6,000 men at arms and archers, together with Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, and followed by the Duke of Brittany. On landing at Calais, the army split into two columns and marched through France, taking separate parallel routes south, then reunited on the Somme near to the town of Bray. The army rested near the River Avre where John of Gaunt wrote a furious letter to Charles V. He warned the French King, ‘do not be surprised if I come now to injure you and your supporters and avenge the wrongs you have done to me’. Despite Gaunt’s antagonism, Charles V continued the trope of avoiding pitched battle against the English on French soil. Gaunt could not persuade Charles to fight and much of his army was picked off by French raids as it marched 500 miles through the already barren countryside, from Calais to Bordeaux. As Gaunt’s army moved closer to Aquitaine, the French tried to contain it at Moulins, where a small stone bridge formed the only crossing into Bordeaux. In a pincer move, Bertrand du Guesclin followed Gaunt into Moulins from the rear, the Duke of Burgundy directed his army towards Moulins from the south-east and the Duke of Anjou raced south from Paris with a large force, intending to enter the town from the north. As the French closed in, Gaunt desperately tried to push his army over the swelling river to avoid annihilation.

Finally, the English army safely crossed, but the wagon train filled with supplies was left sinking in the mud. The close encounter at Moulins prompted a truce: Charles V permitted the Duke of Anjou to discuss terms with John of Gaunt.²⁰ As part of traditional chivalric diplomacy, a truce was agreed until the following spring, to be followed by a battle on Easter Monday on land at the confluence of the rivers Garonne and Tarn. Having avoided battle during every English incursion since Poitiers, the French believed that this time they could defeat Gaunt on the field.

Respite from the hard march was needed. By December, the fatigued and dwindling English army lay in tatters. They had lost their armour – thrown off to escape its weight – and they were thin, exhausted and many had been taken as prisoners or killed during French ambushes along the march to Bordeaux. When John of Gaunt and his army finally reached Bordeaux – many them on foot – they found the city devastated by famine and plague. Wealthy English landowners who had accompanied Gaunt on campaign were forced to grovel for scraps of food on the streets. In England, the campaign was thought to be running successfully, for in the opening of Parliament in November 1373 the Chancellor, Sir John Knyvet, referred to Gaunt’s expedition: ‘by their good and noble governance and feats of arms, great damage and destruction have been done to the enemies overseas’. It was not until January 1374 that the terrible gravitas of the situation was made known, when Gaunt’s messenger arrived in Westminster. As Edward III came to terms with the failing campaign, Gaunt waited in Bordeaux for funding – desperately needed to gather an army that would be fit to fight in the spring.

Neither funding nor reinforcements arrived. The King did order money sent to Gaunt to pay the soldiers’ wages, but his ministers never followed through – they claimed they did not know where to send it. With no resources coming in from England, John of Gaunt directed his intentions towards Castile, and travelled to Dax for a meeting with Charles of Navarre and Gaston Phoebus, the Count of Foix. He wanted to discuss passage to Castile through the Pyrenees. Whilst John of Gaunt was in talks at Dax, the Duke of Anjou was waiting for troops sent by Enrique Trastámara in Castile. Enrique was marshalling an army on the other side of the Pyrenees to aid Anjou in the forthcoming battle at the rivers. As the agreed time for battle approached, however, the promised Castilian army was not ready. Reliant on Castilian support to achieve a victory, the Duke of Anjou panicked and pulled out of the battle. John of Gaunt returned to Bordeaux, still with his mind set on an invasion of Castile with the promised support of the Count of Foix and the King of Navarre, and crucial funding from England. However, within a month the Count’s support had waned, Charles of Navarre had reneged on his promise and no support had arrived from England. Forced to accept the failure of the campaign, Gaunt returned home.

The Duke of Lancaster returned to a country teetering on the brink of political breakdown. Threads had come loose from what was once a tightly woven infrastructure of monarchical power in England. The King was growing older and the Black Prince was incapable of managing the country. John of Gaunt was thrust into the position of being the leading authority in the realm, and was expected to deal with the fallout of a failed war and face emerging political unrest. The political tension that mounted in the first part of the 1370s manifested in what became known as the Good Parliament.

 

The Good Parliament of 1376 changed the course of English politics for a decade, shifting political power from the King and aristocracy in favour of the Commons. By spring 1376, Parliament had not sat for three years – the longest period of adjournment since the beginning of the century. A single roll of thirty-two membranes (vellum pages) survive as a record of the Good Parliament – more than for any other English Parliament of the period. There are also two chronicle accounts, the Anonimalle Chronicle – whose writer may have been present, or at least in Westminster, when the Good Parliament took place – and that of Thomas Walsingham.²¹ Both accounts are generally in favour of the Commons, but Thomas Walsingham’s is particularly partisan against John of Gaunt. Walsingham was a Benedictine monk from the monastery at St Albans who was clearly well-informed regarding the proceedings.²²

By 1376, aged sixty-three, Edward III retreated further and further away from active participation in Parliament. For over ten years, the King had been embroiled in an affair with the Queen’s lady in waiting, Alice Perrers. Alice was considerably younger than the King – and eight years younger than John of Gaunt. Edward III was besotted. Alice provoked the clergy and the nobility by conducting herself like a Queen, dressed in cloth of gold and dripping in the jewels that the doting King had gifted her – some of which had belonged to the late Philippa of Hainault.²³

The Black Prince was sicker than ever, and primarily kept himself away from court politics, living at Kennington Palace in Vauxhall with Princess Joan and their son and heir, Richard. This left John of Gaunt the authority at court, acting as a go-between for the King and his Council. Ordinarily, any actions of the King, his Council and his immediate family would be raised in Parliament should they be cause for concern – the upcoming Parliament would prove no exception. The King’s governance, once revered and celebrated, had become a liability and so, by 1376, tensions ran high in anticipation of what was expected to be a catalogue of grievances from the Commons.

The Commons – knights and burgesses – sat in a separate chamber from the Lords (the nobles and high clergy). On 28 April they gathered in the King’s Chamber at Westminster Palace, in the presence of the King and of the Black Prince, who had come to the opening session before sailing back across the Thames to his palace, too sick to witness the full proceedings. Edward III – who had avoided calling Parliament for the previous three years but was now in desperate need of funds – soon made himself scarce. He was acutely aware of the bubbling tensions. Instead of facing the inevitable backlash over his actions and those of his councillors, he left John of Gaunt as his representative, as ‘lieutenant of the King to hold Parliament’. In Piers Plowman, William Langland characterises John of Gaunt as ‘the cat of the court’, borne from the belief of many – following his actions during this very Parliament – that he was devious and not to be trusted. The Good Parliament would prove to be a test of his diplomacy as well as of his loyalty to Crown and family: with the King’s interests at odds with the Commons’, Gaunt would inevitably be making enemies.

After the opening session of Parliament, the Commons were reminded of their duty: to enhance the position of the realm in the face of continued war in France, or elsewhere. With the power to agree or withhold taxation, they had the final say over the continuation of the war effort. The Commons left for the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey to conduct their discussions, and the lords and clergy vacated to the White Chamber. The King’s taxation request was discussed for around ten days, and the outcome was not in his favour. The Commons concluded that Edward would not be in such financial difficulty as to need further funding for his campaigns had he not been so poorly advised. It was common practice in the Middle Ages for the blame for mismanagement of the realm to be directed towards the King’s ‘wicked advisors’, resulting in baronial rebellions and uprisings, such as the attack on Piers Gaveston in the reign of Edward II. As the King was regarded as being divinely appointed, he escaped direct culpability. Any explicit attack on the King would leave a person open to a charge of treason, with dreadful penalties to follow. In 1376, this pattern continued, for the Commons targeted Richard II’s close advisors, accusing them of deceit and corruption. In order to represent their views, they chose from amongst themselves the first ever Speaker of the House of Commons, someone well able to withstand scrutiny and pressures from the nobility. Peter de la Mare – the ‘rat of renoun’ in Plowman – was a knight of the shire for Hertfordshire and a steward of the Earl of March. For the next three months the ‘rat of renoun’ stood in staunch opposition to the ‘cat of the court’.

The Commons made their way from the Chapter House at Westminster to the Palace, where the general assembly was to be held. When they arrived they were shocked to discover the ageing King nowhere to be seen, but in his place sat John of Gaunt. He spoke uneasily: ‘Which of you has the task of setting out what you have decided among yourselves?’ Peter de la Mare stepped forward to accuse some of the King’s closest advisors of crimes against the Crown. Those named were William Latimer, the King’s chamberlain; John Neville of Raby, the steward of the household; and Richard Lyons, Warden of the Mint – all were accused of deceit and fiddling the Crown’s purse. The King’s mistress, Alice Perrers, was also accused of stealing the shocking sum of almost £3,000. Peter de la Mare stated, ‘It would be a great profit to the Kingdom to remove that lady from the King’s company so that the King’s treasure could be applied to the war’.²⁴

The greatest charges were brought against the corrupt and expedient advisors, Latimer and Lyons. They were blamed for selling licences to merchants that allowed them to export wool without taking it first to Calais, the location of the Staple.²⁵²⁶ They were also accused of taking a cut of loans that had been arranged between the Crown and the Exchequer and of conspiring with the French, resulting in the loss of territory. The last accusation caused such a ruckus in Parliament that the accused, William Latimer, was challenged by a knight who had once owned part of the land that Latimer lost in France. This was the first time the Commons brought legal action against lords, who of course traditionally held more power and influence than they. This assertion of the people’s rights was, for its time, radical.

Initially, John of Gaunt tried to co-operate with the Commons, adhering to their requests and grievances. He agreed to the imprisonment of Lyons and the stripping of land and title from Latimer, as well as the removal of Alice Perrers. After gentle persuasion by John of Gaunt, the King agreed to exile his mistress from Court following the Commons’ inquest into her squandering of Crown funds. This – for a time – halted their long-term affair. It is unlikely that John of Gaunt approved of Alice Perrers and following her exile – in an attempt to permanently force her from the King’s bed – he made a private arrangement for a senior courtier, William Windsor, to marry Alice.²⁷ The wedding took place later in the year but was made public only after the King’s death. Despite ensuring the removal of the King’s unpopular mistress, Gaunt was furious that the King’s dirty laundry had been aired before Parliament. He argued for the preservation of royal dignity and freedom. In arguing for such dignity and freedom on behalf of his father, it is possible that Gaunt was also defending himself. In his account of the Good Parliament, Thomas Walsingham accuses John of Gaunt of moral hypocrisy, for despite the King’s exile of Alice Perrers his own relationship with Katherine Swynford sailed on.

While John of Gaunt was becoming increasingly unpopular in his defence of the Crown, the Black Prince – from his sickbed – continued to command the admiration and love of the people. He had little involvement in the Good Parliament, but made a personal effort to see that Alice Perrers was removed from the King’s side. Once the model of an uxorious King, Walsingham describes a man in old age ‘drawn downward with lechery and other sins’. During Parliamentary proceedings, the Black Prince had Alice privately investigated, suspecting that she was guilty of witchcraft with the help of an ‘evil magician dedicated to evil doing’. After the Prince discovered that Alice employed a physician, the accusation spiralled and she was accused of initiating her affair with the King with the help of a necromancer.²⁸ Alice’s ‘magician’ was in fact a practising physician from the Order of Preachers – now the Dominican Order. Following the accusation, John of Gaunt dispatched two knights to fetch the physician from Pallenswick, Alice Perrers’ estate near London. He was arrested and brought before Gaunt who transferred the man into the care of the Archbishop of Canterbury, where he narrowly avoided being burned at the stake for heresy. The physician was forced to answer accusations that he ‘made wax effigies of the King and Alice’ and used juices of magical herbs and words of incantation to enable Alice to get whatever she wanted from the King. After Perrers was informed that her physician had been arrested, Walsingham describes her to ‘be very afraid and her face fell’.

Alice Perrers, a ‘shameless, impudent harlot’ of ‘low birth’ had significant influence over the King.²⁹ She was not a member of the nobility; she came from a family of goldsmiths and was representative of the body of merchant classes that had infiltrated court and Parliament. John of Gaunt heavily resented the growing influence of characters like Alice. She had risen in power, but so had the Commons who opposed her. To the Duke of Lancaster, they were the same entity that threatened the authority, autonomy and sanctity of the Crown, which he sought to defend.

On 8 June 1376, in the middle of Parliamentary proceedings, John of Gaunt was faced with a deep personal loss, on top of the strenuous inquisitions and demands of the Commons. The Black Prince – ‘the flower of chivalry’ – passed away at Westminster Palace. He had finally lost his battle with the illness that had plagued him over the previous eight years. It is uncertain exactly what killed him; he was described by Thomas Walsingham as having a ‘bloody flux’, which left him weak and often drifting in and out of consciousness.³⁰ It has been supposed that he was afflicted with dysentery, contracted whilst in Spain at around the time of the Battle of Najéra, for the illness was rife amongst the army on that campaign. However, this is unlikely. Death by dysentery comes fast and agonisingly, whereas the Black Prince suffered for years before his final decline. It is possible a form of cancer was the real cause.³¹ The King was grief-stricken at the loss of his eldest son and heir, and left for his countryside castle at Havering, whilst John of Gaunt continued to represent him at the Good Parliament.

The Black Prince’s death devastated John of Gaunt. They had lived together, fought together, and Gaunt had been trained in war, chivalry and duty by him – they were quite literally brothers in arms. The Prince had been the most influential figure in his life and Gaunt dearly loved and respected him. This was made evident when he took on the enormous task of trying to repair the situation in Aquitaine in 1370. John of Gaunt always came to his brother’s aid, but faced with his death amid a precarious political period, he was left little time or space to mourn.

Despite the death of the Prince, John of Gaunt continued with his role in Parliament, provoking further suspicion regarding his intentions for the future of the realm. Only weeks after the Prince’s death, his son and heir Richard was brought before Parliament, after the Commons requested that he be endowed with the title Prince of Wales. This was a clear stab at John of Gaunt, whom they suspected had designs on the Crown himself. The distrust was unfounded. John was unbendingly loyal to his brother, his family and the Crown – he would not compromise his honour, and there is no hard evidence that he ever considered trying to subvert the line of succession. At the Black Prince’s bedside he swore to his brother that he would oversee Richard’s ascent to the throne.

After over three months of proceedings, new councillors were appointed and the Good Parliament finally broke up on 10 July. The Commons held a feast to celebrate the end of Parliament and the ousting of corrupt court officials. The younger sons of the King respectfully attended; however, John of Gaunt, notably, did not, confining himself to the Savoy.³² Perhaps this was out of spite, arrogance and rage that the Commons had prevailed; however, John of Gaunt had also just lost his brother, whilst managing the most politically fraught Parliament of the reign of Edward III. It is more likely that he suffered emotional exhaustion, frustration and immense grief.

The Commons dispersed, feeling safe in the knowledge that their requests had been upheld and a better future lay in store for the remaining years of Edward III’s reign. However, over the next two months, John of Gaunt developed a bitter animosity towards the decisions implemented at the Good Parliament and began to undo all that it had achieved.

In November 1376, the King took a turn for the worse, possibly suffering a minor stroke. To the horror of the Commons Alice Perrers was restored to his bedside: John of Gaunt had revoked her banishment. Alice returned to the King – according to a furious Thomas Walsingham – ‘as a dog to its vomit’ and the Speaker of the Commons, Peter de la Mare, was imprisoned in the cold, dark cells of Nottingham Castle. He had been arrested on Gaunt’s orders, probably to prevent him protesting as Gaunt set about undoing the actions of the Good Parliament.

De la Mare’s employer, the Earl of March, was also removed from his post as Marshal of England, to be replaced by Henry Percy, the future Earl of Northumberland.

In under six months, John of Gaunt began to unravel the actions of the Good Parliament, with the intention of undermining the Commons and restoring dignity and freedom to the Crown. Thomas Walsingham stated that he was ‘under pretence of responsibility which he bore for the realm’.³³ However, Gaunt was under no pretence; he was the only member of the royal family who was truly able to reinvigorate the authority of the monarchy – but the cost was to his personal reputation and the liberty of the Commons.

During this time, John of Gaunt’s standing went from bad to worse in the court of public opinion. His actions over the previous four years had a cumulative effect. In London he grew increasingly unpopular, yet within the Duchy of Lancaster he continued to protect the interests of the people.^{34 35} By the end of a politically fraught year, Gaunt’s projection of Crown authority against the revolutionary free will of the Commons resulted in what would be an explosive outcome.

In the New Year, another Parliament was held, and this time John of Gaunt’s official, Sir Thomas Hungerford, was appointed Speaker. Gaunt was accused of ‘packing’ the Commons with his loyal supporters, replacing those who sat the previous year. However, there is no evidence of an obviously pro-Lancaster Parliament; there may have even been more Lancastrian retainers present in the Good Parliament.³⁶ A poll tax was implemented by this Parliament and, in celebration of the King’s jubilee, a general pardon was extended to those who had committed criminal offences.

The only person in the realm excluded from the pardon was William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England.³⁷ After the Good Parliament, William Wykeham was appointed to the Royal Council and given the post of chancellor to replace the impeached Lord Latimer. However, as part of John of Gaunt’s reversals, he was soon charged with financial mismanagement and relieved of his position: the post was returned to Latimer. This chain of events chipped away at the Church’s good feeling towards John of Gaunt and infuriated Wykeham’s fellow bishops.

The feud was catalysed after the Bishop of London brought a priest called John Wycliffe to trial for heresy. Wycliffe was an Oxford theologian whose reformist sermons were attracting growing interest across England. Wycliffe attacked Church wealth, denied the doctrine of transubstantiation – the transformation of bread and wine to the body and blood of Christ during the Eucharist – and promoted the idea that the Bible should be translated into English from Latin. The Lollards – the name deriving from the Dutch word lollaert, ‘to mutter’ – were the religious group that emerged under Wycliffe. Their style of worship was based on reading scripture and they too would be accused of heresy for denying Catholic doctrine. The Lollards propagated Wycliffe’s controversial views and, by 1377, he had gained popularity and John of Gaunt’s patronage. In the early 1370s, Gaunt acquired a reputation for supporting Lollards, probably out of mutual concern over clerical wealth. Emotive rhetoric condemned Wycliffe and his supporters as a dangerous ‘heretics’ in the medieval Christian world. Wycliffe – known to contemporaries (even critics) as the ‘Flower of Oxford’, and to posterity as the ‘morning star of the Reformation’ – paved the way for the religious reform that was to turn the world upside down in the sixteenth century.

 

A crowd gathered outside St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London on 19 February 1377 to witness the trial of John Wycliffe before an assembly of bishops. He was charged with speaking against Church endowments. The priest had been brought to trial by William Courtenay, Bishop of London, for two reasons: he wished to make an example of Wycliffe and his Lollard views, and to attack John of Gaunt, Wycliffe’s patron. It is unclear exactly what John of Gaunt’s motivations were in his open support of Wycliffe. He had always displayed conventional piety: charity for the poor, funding schools, colleges and hospitals, bequeathing land and various expensive and ornamental furnishings to a variety of religious houses, including St Paul’s.^{38 39 40} He traditionally patronised the Carmelites, an Order which prioritised careful contemplation and simple piety and provided all of his confessors.⁴¹ John of Gaunt was not a religious reformer, but he did sympathise with the humble ranks of clergy and made gifts to various churches in need.⁴² However, in the 1370s, he developed a reputation for anticlericalism. This was largely political. Gaunt disliked the wealth, power and influence the clergy had over the Crown and government; through his patronage of Wycliffe, he likely sought to mitigate this power. Yet the chronicler Henry Knighton offers another perspective: ‘he believed them [Lollards] to be holy, because of their appealing speech and appearance, but he was deceived as were many others’. As a monk in Leicester – a Lancastrian town – Knighton’s reading would inevitably be a generous one. Lollardy was, for a time, popular in Leicester and even Knighton’s own Abbot, Philip Repingdon, was an enthusiastic follower of Wycliffe until the 1380s when Wycliffe came under investigation for heresy. By 1382, Gaunt had also rejected Lollard views – thus avoiding being labelled a heretic – and returned to a conventional form of piety in his support of the Carmelite Order. It appears that his temporary interest in Lollardy was largely political and Wycliffe’s doctrine was too radical for Gaunt who, in the end, upheld orthodox worship.

However, in February 1377, John of Gaunt was prepared to fight Bishop Courtenay and summoned four doctors of divinity to defend Wycliffe against the attacks of the clerical court gathered at St Paul’s. Gaunt also installed the Marshal, Henry Percy, to oversee the proceedings and maintain order amongst the crowd clamouring to witness the action. As the trial began Henry Percy advised Wycliffe to sit down, for ‘there were many questions to be answered, he would need a soft seat’.⁴³ The Bishop of London objected, demanding the priest remain standing. As an argument broke out, John of Gaunt furiously stormed into the Lady Chapel of St Paul’s Cathedral with an armed following. Before the shocked convocation of clergymen, he threatened to drag Bishop Courtenay outside by his hair.⁴⁴

Wycliffe managed to escape further questioning but John of Gaunt’s threat against the Bishop of London proved incendiary in the City. Following the conflict with Bishop Courtenay in Saint Paul’s, John of Gaunt dined with Henry Percy on fresh oysters in the City. As they ate, Gaunt received news that angry rebels were seeking him out at that very moment, threatening to kill him. He apparently jumped up so fast he banged his shins on the table, before they both made a quick getaway by boat, down the Thames to Kennington, where they sought refuge with Princess Joan.

The situation escalated. In a small-scale but violent rebellion, angry Londoners attacked Gaunt’s men, besieged the Savoy and hung his arms reversed, the sign of a traitor. Gaunt’s arms were also reversed at St Paul’s Cathedral, the resting place of Blanche. And a new rumour circulated through the City, possibly begun by the slighted William Wykeham: that Gaunt was not the true-born son of Edward III, but rather the offspring of a Flemish butcher, who had been snuck into the birthing room in a switch for a stillborn girl.⁴⁵ John of Gaunt was warned in a letter from Maud (the former maid of his daughter, Philippa) that he was being maliciously slandered by ‘various friars and preachers’.⁴⁶ This new accusation represented a deeply personal attack, for it brought into question the legitimacy of the very royal heritage that defined him. In order to avoid anarchy, Bishop Courtenay tried to calm the angry mob as John of Gaunt – furious with the Londoners for attacking his property, his men and his honour – was soothed by his sister-in-law. Princess Joan successfully moderated the situation and persuaded Gaunt to take the moral high ground, rather than seek revenge.

The Good Parliament precipitated years of tension and animosity between John of Gaunt on one hand and the Commons and the people of London on the other. Under the pressure of a political revolution, Gaunt tried to salvage the reputation, rights and privileges the royal family was accustomed to. He wanted the royal family to be respected and loved by the people – whose rightful place he considered to be far beneath them – and to protect his nephew’s traditional rights as future King.

John of Gaunt never sought to disallow the Commons a voice; in fact he endeavoured to hear their pleas. However, he would not entertain the notion that someone could rise so far above their birth station as to impose their will upon a King. Despite the actions of Latimer and Lyons and the corrupt coterie that circled King Edward, John of Gaunt chose to pardon them, in order to rehabilitate royal authority. Alice Perrers, however, was a compromise. Initially, Gaunt attempted to remove the King’s mistress for good, through his pact with William Windsor. But, eternally loyal to his father, Gaunt complied with his dying wish for Alice’s return, again to the detriment of his reputation.

With the animosity between the City and John of Gaunt still fresh, a speaker on behalf of the Londoners sought an audience with ten-year-old Prince Richard at Kennington Palace, where he was living with his mother. They asked him to assure them that, in his kingship, he would ‘defend their liberties’. Richard was beloved by the people – he was a prince they believed would make a good King. With the Black Prince dead, the Duke of Lancaster was Richard’s leading advisor and protector. In a gesture of goodwill and hope for a peaceful future, John of Gaunt also came to see his nephew at Kennington. On his knees he requested that Richard pardon the citizens for their crimes against him. In an effort to control a situation spiralling out of control, Peter de la Mare was freed and William Wykeham restored. John of Gaunt had made enemies, but he ensured that Richard’s reputation remained golden and that, as Edward III became weaker, the people were ultimately loyal to their future ruler.

John of Gaunt’s loyalty to his family, to the dying request of the Black Prince and to the authority of the Crown meant sacrificing his reputation with the people. His actions at what became known as the Bad Parliament, however clumsy, or explicable, were never forgiven or forgotten. He was able to enhance the love, respect and security of his nephew Richard among the people, but he could never redeem himself.