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John of Gaunt: Paradigm of the Late Fourteenth-Century Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Anthony Goodman
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Extract

Martin I of Aragon, who was no friend to John of Gaunt, wrote respectfully on hearing news of his death. The remarks of foreign writers such as Froissart and Wyntoun echo similar reactions in French and Scottish princely circles. But English chroniclers tended to be perfunctory. Gower, for instance, despite his Lancastrian connection, was to say merely that death had resolved everything for the duke. Another contrast with such indifference is provided by the hostility which Gaunt often encountered in England in his lifetime. The most fully informed native chroniclers of the later fourteenth century amply testify to this hostility which, they imply, was sometimes national in scale, sometimes regional (especially concentrated in London and south-east England) and which animated members of elite groups (magnates, courtiers, knights of the shire in parliament, London citizens) or embraced wide sections of the commons as well. The Anonimalle Chronicler reports these reactions in a matter-of-fact way, Henry Knighton sorrowfully, Thomas Walsingham for a number of years with righteous approval, the Westminster Chronicler sometimes approvingly, sometimes not. Their reports have some features in common.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 37 , December 1987 , pp. 133 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1987

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References

1 Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, reg. 2242, f. 104. I owe this reference to Mr Peter Rycraft.

2 euvres de Froissart, ed. Lettenhove, K. de, xvi (Brussels, 1872), 138–9Google Scholar; The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, ed. Laing, D. (Edinburgh, 1879), iii. 68–9Google Scholar.

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8 Ibid., 112.

9 Ibid., 74–5.

10 Ibid., 125.

11 alsingham regarded the Duchess Constance as a victim of Gaunt(ibid., 196). She and her company (including some Castilians) were received into the confraternity of St Alban in 1386 (B.I., ‘Liber Benefactorum’, MS. Cotton Nero D vii, ff. 132 v. 133 r.).

12 CA, 123–4.

13 A gift of oaks to the duke from the abbot of St Albans for the works at Hertford Castle rankled with Walsingham(ibid., 163–4;cf JGR, 1379–83, i no. 519).

14 P.R.O., Receiver General's Account, 1376–77, DL 28/3/1, m. 5; JGR, 1379–83, i. nos. 140, 284; ‘Liber Benefactorum’, ff. 83 r., 104 v. A medical recipe attributed to Rous is in York Minister Library, MS. XVI.E.32, ff. 82r.-82 v., lines 67–87. I owe this reference to Miss Antoinette Verveen.

15 AC, 138, 194. Haselden had been considered at the papal court in 1374 as one of those influential with Gaunt(Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland. Papal Letters, ed. Bliss, W. H. and Twemlow, J. A., iv (1902, 131–2, 136)Google Scholar.

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19 Simeon willed his burial in the church of Duke Henry's collegiate foundation of St Mary in the Newarke at Leicester and endowed a chantry there in part for the souls of the two dukes of Lancaster and Henry of Bolingbroke(Early Lincoln Wills, ed. Gibbons, A., Lincoln, 1888, 78)Google Scholar. Gaunt's councillor Sir Robert Swillington bequeathed a missal to the church in 1391(ibid., 77).

20 Somerville, 363. Neumarche was probably also an executor of Gaunt in 1369 (Calendar of Patent Rolls, hereafterCPR, 1367–70, 212–13).

21 Somerville, 372. A Ralph Ypres was a valet of Duke Henry and an esquire of Gaun(ibid., 373–74).

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24 Ibid., i. no. 72;Calendar of Close Rolls (hereafterCCR), 1396–99, 443–4. Sir David succeeded his father as steward of Pickering (Somerville, 378).

25 Goodman, A., ‘The military subcontracts of Sir Hugh Hastings, 1380’, EHR, xcv (1980), 114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarFor the 1366 contract, Norfolk Record Office, MR 287. 242X4.

26 AC, 152–3;JGR, 1379–83, i. no. 431.

27 Groups of fifteen knights were attendant on Gaunt over periods of a month probably in 1381; among those who recurred were John Marmion, John Ypres, William Croyser, Richard Burley, Walter Urswick, Walter Blount, Maubruny de Linieres and John Swinton (East Sussex Record Office, Glynde Place Archives, John of Gaunt's Household rolls, 3469, Rolls A.7, B.5, B.10).

28 CCR, 1381–85, 607–8.

29 For Bayley, Somerville, 378, 383; for Gascoigne, ibid., 468;CCR, 1396–99, 471; for Wombwell, JGR, 1372–76, i. nos. 353, 447; Somerville, 458; for Woderoue, ibid., 386.

30 East Sussex R.O., 3469, Polls A.i, A.7, B.10.

31 Historical Manuscripts Commission. Report on the Manuscripts of the late Reginald Rawdon Hastings, I (1928), 21–2Google Scholar. For Hastings' career,The Parliamentary Representation of the County of York 1258–1832, i (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1935), 131–3Google Scholar.

32 JGR, 1372–76, i. no. 730.

33 Somerville, 382.

34 Ibid., 364. In 1369 the Lancastrian retainer Sir Walter Blount granted a manor house to Sir Godfrey Foljambe and his wife. The witnesses were headed by Gaunt and included three of his knights (one of them Croyser) and one of his esquires (Nottinghamshire R.O., Foljambe of Osberton, 1/75/1).

35 For some of Croyser's landed interests, Victoria County History of Bedfordshire, ii. 256, 354, iii.78.

36 Victoria County History of Cambridgeshire, viii, 99.

37 Gaunt does not seem to have been eager to give his houshold a Castilian complexion. One of the few Castilians whom he admired was Juan Fernandez, retained by him as a knight (DL 28/3/1, m. 5;JGR, 1379–83, i. nos. 296, 463; East Sussex Record Office, 3469, Rolls A.7, B.5).

38 JGR, 1372–76, i. no. 786; DL 28/3/1, m. 5.

39 Ibid.; JGR, 1379–83, i. no. 68.

40 Braddy, H., Chaucer and the French Poet Graunson (Port Washington, 1968), 3–4, 17–18, 45–8Google Scholar.

41 JGR, 1372– 76, i. no. 789.

42 Ibid., ii. no. 868.

43 For a reference to jousts at Hertford, JGR, 1379–83, ii. no. 803.

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45 The Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor in the Court of Chivalry, ed. Nicolas, N. Harris (1832), i.45Google Scholar.

46 Russell, P. E., The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955), 406–7, 421Google Scholar.

47 ‘Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti’, 365–6. For Gaunt's use of Percy in the negotiations of 1387, see J.J. N. Palmer and B.J. Powell,‘El Tratado de Bayona (1388) y los Tratados de Trancoso (1387)’ (forthcoming). I owe thanks to the authors for allowing me to consult their typescript.

48 Northumberland County Record Office, Swinburne of Capheaton Collection, 1/105 (letter to earl of Derby n.d.).

49 CPR, 1367–70, 191–5; Somerville, 366.

50 CPR, 1374–77, 323; Somerville, 381. Sulny had been appointed on the Derbyshire commission in 1368(CPR, 1367–70, 418).

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54 CPR, 1370–74, 107;CPR, 1367–70, 243, 405;JGR, 1372–76, ii. no. 1220.

55 CPR, 1377–81, 512–15. Sir Robert Swillington was appointed on the Derbyshire commission and Sir Henry Grene on the Northamptonshire in 1380.

56 CPR, 1381–85, 84–6, 138–42, 244–9.

57 JGR, 1379–83, i. no. 29.

58 CPR, 1381–85, 251–4. Swillington appeared on the Leicestershire commission and Urswick on the Nottinghamshire commission.

59 In 1380 Gaunt headed the commissions in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Norfolk and Hertfordshire(CPR, 1377–81, 512 ff, 571). Henry Duke of Lancaster headed the commissions in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Northamptonshire in 1361(CPR, 1361–64, 63ff).

60 Rotuli Parliamenlorum, iii. 44, 83–4.

61 CPR, 1377–81, 512–15.

62 ‘Liveries and Commissions of Peace 1388–90’, The Reign of Richard II, ed. Boulay, F. R. H. Du and Barron, C. M. (1971), 131 ffGoogle Scholar.

63 Not all Lancastrian retainers were swept from the commission in 1389; among those appointed were William Chetewynd (Staffordshire), SirThornbury, John (Hertfordshire) and Thomas Fog (Kent), (CPR, 1388–92, 135 ff)Google Scholar.

64 WC, 80–4.

65 Rotuli Parliamentorum, iii. 109–10.

66 CCR, 1381–83, 381.

67 Ibid., 78; JGR, 1379–83, i. no. 499.

68 Norfolk R.O., NA 44 (Le Strange). For a reference to an accord made by the duke between Sir JohnBoseville, on the one hand, and the parson of Badsworth and his friends, on the other, JGR, 1372–76, ii. no. 1378.

69 Powell, J. Enoch and Wallis, K., The House of Lords in the Middle Ages (1968), 356Google Scholar.

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72 Testamenta Vetusta, ed. Nicolas, N. Harris (1826), i. 52–4, 79–80, 153–5Google Scholar. I n Richard II granted this set of tapestries to the duke of Surrey, an appropriate decorative possession for one of the newly elevated dukes whom, according to Walsingham, ‘vulgares derisorie vocabant, non “Duces” sed “Dukettos” a diminutivo’ (CPR, 1396–99,315; Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vi, 1392–1399, no. 307, p. 171Google Scholar;‘Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti’, 223). The earl of Warwick seems to have recovered the tapestries (Testamenia Vetusta, i. 154).

73 Political Poems and Songs, ed. Wright, T. (Rolls Series, 1859), i. 97 ffGoogle Scholar. The author, Walter of Peterborough, mentions the wounding of Sir Richard Burley and the capture of Sir Ralph Hastings.

74 Pedro Lopez de Ayala lists principal captains who died in Gaunt's service in Spain in 1386–87, mostly through illness, including some of his retainers(Biblioteca de Autores Espaftoles. Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla, ed. Rosell, Cayetano, ii (Madrid, 1914), 115Google Scholar. Among those who died were John Marmion, Richard Burley and Hugh Hastings.

75 Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Putnam, B.H. (1938), xxii ffGoogle Scholar.

76 Knighton, ii. 149.

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80 For multiple retaining, Saul, N., Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1981), 92–4Google Scholar.

81 Competition for duchy offices could be intense: it was at issue in the revolt of William Bekwith. For a struggle over the constableship of Pevensey Castle, see Somerville, 380.