John of Gaunt (6 March 1340-3 February 1399) was an English nobleman and member of the House of Plantagenet who served as Duke of Lancaster and Duke of Aquitaine. He was the third surviving son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault, and he distinguished himself as a commander during the Hundred Years' War.
Biography[]
John of Gaunt was born in Ghent, Flanders on 6 March 1340, the third surviving of five sons of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault. He married Blanche of Lancaster in 1359 and inherited the lands of his father-in-law, the Duke of Lancaster, upon his death in 1361. Because of his rank, he was one of England's principal military commanders during the Hundred Years' War, conquering and sacking Limoges in 1370 before being given the responsibility of defending Aquitaine after his brother, Edward the Black Prince, surrendered his lordship of the duchy. In September 1371, John returned to England, as he did not have the resources to defend the duchy from French attacks; that same year, he remarried to Constance of Castile. In 1373, John returned to France and attempted to relieve Aquitaine by the landward route, launching a great chevauchee from Calais to Aquitaine with 9,000 horsemen under his command. On 24 December 1373, the English reached Bordeaux, but their army had lost a third of its strength to French ambushes and starvation, and it had achieved little more than a series of impressive maneuvers. His final campaign in France took place in 1378, when he took part in a failed attempt to capture the port of St. Malo.
Regent of England[]
Following the deaths of Edward III and the Black Prince, the Black Prince's son became King Richard II of England. John, as the king's uncle, became head of government as regent in 1374, and he soon became the wealthiest man in England. He built the Savoy Palace in The Strand section of London and made several other ostentatious displays of wealth, and he was despised by the Parliament for his proposals to levy massive taxes to fund further campaigns in France. He became immensely unpopular among the commoners of England, and his Savoy Palace was razed during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
Campaigns in Spain[]
Following his marriage to Constance of Castile in 1371, John insisted that others call him "my lord of Spain", and he gathered around himself a small court of refugee Castilian knights and ladies. In 1386, after King Joao I of Portugal concluded an alliance treaty with England, John of Gaunt decided to press his claims to the Spanish throne. On 9 July 1386, he set sail from England with a huge Anglo-Portuguese fleet carrying about 5,000 troops, and he drove off a French siege of Brest in Brittany before landing at Corunna in northern Spain on 29 July. John set up a rudimentary court at Ourense and received the submission of the Galician nobility and most of the towns in the region. In 1387, he convinced Joao to assist him with an Anglo-Portuguese invasion of central Spain, but they wasted their time besieging towns and foraging for food, with the Castilians avoiding battle. John's adventure came to an end as hundreds of John's close retainers died of disease and exhaustion, and he renounced his claim to the Castilian throne in exchange for a large annual payment.
Duke of Aquitaine[]
John in 1398
John remained in Aquitaine until his return to England in 1389, and King Richard invested John with the Duchy of Aquitaine in March 1390. Despite finally receiving an overseas territory, John was an absentee duke, devolving power to seneschals. He spent 1394-1395 convincing the nobles of Gascony not to secede, and he planned to take part in the crusade leading up to the Battle of Nicopolis, only to return home due to his illness. For the rest of his life, he was a loyal supporter of the Crown and a trusted adviser of the King, maintaining this posture of loyalty to protect his son, Henry Bolingbroke. In 1398, Richard had Bolingbroke exiled, and on John of Gaunt's death the next year he disinherited Bolingbroke completely and seized John's vast estates for the crown.