House of Lancaster

The name House of Lancaster is commonly used to designate the line of English kings immediately descended from John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III.

But the history of the family and of the title goes back to the reign of Henry III, who created his second son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster in 1267. This Edmund received in his own day the surname of Crouchback, not, as was afterwards supposed, from a personal deformity, but from having worn a cross upon his back in token of a crusading vow. He is not a person of much importance in history except in relation to a strange theory raised in a later age about his birth, which we shall notice presently. His son Thomas, who inherited the title, took the lead among the nobles of Edward II's time in opposition to Piers Gaveston and the Despensers, and was beheaded for treason at Pontefract.

At the commencement of the following reign his attainder was reversed and his brother Henry restored to the earldom; and Henry being appointed guardian to the young king Edward III, assisted him to throw off the yoke of Mortimer. On this Henry's death in 1345 he was succeeded by a son of the same name, sometimes known as Henry Tort-Col or Wryneck, a very valiant commander in the French wars, whom the king advanced to the dignity of a duke. Only one duke had been created in England before, and that was fourteen years previously, when the king's son Edward, the Black Prince, was made Duke of Cornwall. This Henry Wryneck died in 1361 without heir male.

His second daughter, Blanche, became the wife of John of Gaunt, who thus succeeded to the duke's inheritance in her right; and on the 13th of November 1362, when King Edward attained the age of fifty, John was created Duke of Lancaster, his elder brother, Lionel, being at the same time created Duke of Clarence. It was from these two dukes that the rival houses of Lancaster and York derived their respective claims to the crown. As Clarence was King Edward's third son, while John of Gaunt was his fourth, in ordinary course on the failure of the elder line the issue of Clarence should have taken precedence of that of Lancaster in the succession. But the rights of Clarence were conveyed in the first instance to an only daughter, and the ambition and policy of the house of Lancaster, profiting by advantageous circumstances, enabled them not only to gain possession of the throne but to maintain themselves in it for three generations before they were dispossessed by the representatives of the elder brother.

As for John of Gaunt himself, it can hardly be said that this sort of politic wisdom is very conspicuous in him. His ambition was generally more manifest than his discretion; but fortune favoured his ambition, even as to himself, somewhat beyond expectation, and still more in his posterity. Before the death of his father he had become the greatest subject in England, his three elder brothers having all died before him. He had even added to his other dignities the title of King of Castile, having married, after his first wife's death, the daughter of Peter the Cruel. The title, however, was an empty one, the throne of Castile being actually in the possession of Henry of Trastamara, whom the English had vainly endeavoured to set aside. His military and naval enterprises were for the most part disastrous failures, and in England he was exceedingly unpopular. Nevertheless, during the later years of his father's reign the weakness of the king and the declining health of the Black Prince threw the government very much into his hands. He even aimed, or was suspected of aiming, at the succession to the crown; but in this hope he was disappointed by the action of the Good Parliament a year before Edward's death, in which it was settled that Richard the son of the Black Prince should be king after his grandfather.

Nevertheless the suspicion with which he was regarded was not altogether quieted when Richard II came to the throne, a boy in the eleventh year of his age. The duke himself complained in parliament of the way he was spoken of out of doors, and at the outbreak of Wat Tyler's insurrection the peasants stopped pilgrims on the road to Canterbury and made them swear never to accept a king of the name of John. On gaining possession of London they burnt his magnificent palace of the Savoy. Richard found a convenient way to get rid of John of Gaunt by sending him to Castile to make good his barren title, and on this expedition he was away three years. He succeeded so far as to make a treaty with his rival, King John, son of Henry of Trastamara, for the succession, by virtue of which his daughter Catherine became the wife of Henry III of Castile some years later. After his return the king seems to have regarded him with greater favour, created him Duke of Aquitaine, and employed him in repeated embassies to France, which at length resulted in a treaty of peace, and Richard's marriage to the French king's daughter.

Another marked incident of his public life was the support which he gave on one occasion to the Reformer Wycliffe. How far this was due to religious and how far to political considerations may be a question; but not only John of Gaunt but his immediate descendants, the three kings of the house of Lancaster, all took deep interest in the religious movements of the times. A reaction against Lollardy, however, had already begun in the days of Henry III, and both he and his son felt obliged to discountenance opinions which were believed to be politically and theologically dangerous.

Accusations had been made against John of Gaunt more than once during the earlier part of Richard II's reign of entertaining designs to supplant his nephew on the throne. But these Richard never seems to have wholly credited, and during Gaunt's three years' absence his younger brother, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, showed himself a far more dangerous intriguer. Five confederate lords with Gloucester at their head took up arms against the king's favourite ministers, and the Wonderful Parliament put to death without remorse almost every agent of his former administration who had not fled the country. Gloucester even contemplated the dethronement of the king, but found that in this matter he could not rely on the support of his associates, one of whom was Henry, Earl of Derby, the Duke of Lancaster's son [later Henry IV]. Richard soon afterwards, by declaring himself of age, shook off his uncle's control, and within ten years the acts of the Wonderful Parliament were reversed by a parliament no less arbitrary.