John of Gaunt

John of Gaunt was the richest man in England after the king, was hated enough that a mob burned his palace to the ground, and founded the dynasty that took the throne the year after he died. He was Edward III's third surviving son, and became Duke of Lancaster through his first wife Blanche, inheriting an estate so large that it functioned as a second court with its own retainers and administration. He campaigned in France and Spain without much success, claimed the crown of Castile through his second wife Constance and spent years failing to make it good, and effectively governed England during his father's senility and his nephew Richard II's minority. That is what made him the focus of every grievance. In the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 the rebels went straight for the Savoy on the Strand and destroyed it, throwing the contents into the river rather than looting, which is a distinction they insisted on; he was in Scotland and survived by not being there. He protected John Wycliffe from prosecution, less from sympathy with his theology than from a quarrel with the bishops over church wealth. His children by Blanche produced Henry IV, who deposed Richard II in 1399; his children by his mistress and eventual third wife Katherine Swynford were legitimated as the Beauforts, from whom Margaret Beaufort and so Henry VII descended; and his daughters married into the royal houses of Portugal and Castile, which is why every Iberian monarch since is descended from him. Shakespeare gave him the speech about this sceptred isle, delivered on his deathbed, which is invention. He is buried in old St Paul s, and the tomb was destroyed in the Great Fire. The Duchy of Lancaster he built still exists as a private estate held by the sovereign. Gaunt is a corruption of Ghent, where he was born.

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