John of Gaunt

John of Gaunt was the fourth son, and third surviving son of King Edward III and Philippa of Hainault.

He gained the name ‘John of Gaunt’ because he was born in Ghent, which was then called Gaunt in English. He was born in the abbey of Saint Bavo in Ghent (modern-day Belgium), on 6th March 1340. John’s father Edward III, had been king of England for 13 years when he was born and would go on to rule for half a century, the 5th longest reigning monarch in English history after Elizabeth II, Victoria, George III and Henry III. John’s father bestowed the earldom of Richmond on him in 1342 when he was just 2 years old.

In the early 1350s, John lived in the household of his eldest brother, Edward of Woodstock, nicknamed the Black Prince. The Black Prince would die before their father, and his son would become the next King of England, crowned Richard II.

In 1359 at Reading Abbey, 19-year-old John married his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. She was the semi-royal daughter of Henry of Grosmont, the first Duke of Lancaster. Duke Henry died in 1361 and Blanche’s older sister Maud died childless in 1362. As a result, the entire Lancastrian inheritance, with lands across Wales and in 34 English counties, passed to Blanche and John. When Blanche died at the age of 26 she left three children. Thanks to a custom called the Tenure by Courtesy of England, which allowed a man who married an heiress to keep her entire inheritance provided they had a child, John of Gaunt was entitled to retain all of Blanche’s lands for the remainder of his life. At that point they passed by right to their only surviving son Henry, who would become the future King Henry IV.

During his second marriage to Costanza of Castile, John was involved in a long, intense and intimate relationship with Katherine Swynford. They had four children together, the Beauforts, in the 1370s. They were legitimised after John married Katherine as his third wife in 1396.

John of Gaunt died in 1399 aged 58, most likely of natural causes. He was buried in Old St Paul’s Cathedral in London next to his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. Sadly their tombs were lost in the Great Fire. A wall memorial in the crypt of the present Cathedral lists John’s as among the important lost monuments. His third wife Katherine Swynford outlived him by four years and was buried in Lincoln Cathedral.

The current British Royal family is descended from John of Gaunt, as is most of European royalty. As well as being the father of King Henry IV and the grandfather of King Henry V, he was also the grandfather of King Duarte I of Portugal and King Juan II of Castile and Leon.

John’s daughter, Joan Beaufort by his third wife Katherine, was the mother of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, who would be the mother of two kings of England; Edward IV and Richard III, making John their great-grandfather. John and Katherine’s son John, Earl of Somerset, was the grandfather of Margaret Beaufort, making John of Gaunt the great-great-grandfather of the first Tudor King, Henry VII.