John of Gaunt

John of Gaunt never wore a crown, yet few figures of fourteenth-century England matched his wealth and influence, and his descendants occupied the thrones of England, Castile, and Portugal. Born at Ghent in 1340, from which his name derives, he was the third surviving son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault. His marriage in 1359 to Blanche of Lancaster, heiress of the duchy, brought him the vast Lancastrian inheritance, and he was created Duke of Lancaster in 1362.

After Blanche's death, Gaunt married Constance of Castile in 1371, daughter of the deposed King Pedro, and thereafter styled himself king of Castile in her right. A military expedition to the Iberian peninsula in 1386-87 failed to win the throne, but the resulting settlement married his daughter Catherine of Lancaster to the future Henry III of Castile, placing his line in the Castilian succession. Another daughter, Philippa, married John I of Portugal in 1387, sealing the Anglo-Portuguese alliance and becoming mother of the celebrated princes of the house of Avis.

During the decline of Edward III and the minority of Richard II, Gaunt was the dominant figure in English government and a target of widespread suspicion, though he never moved against the crown. His protection of the reformer John Wyclif added to his unpopularity, and during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 his London residence, the Savoy Palace, was burned by the rebels. In later years he served Richard II as an elder statesman and as Duke of Aquitaine, mediating between the king and his critics.

Gaunt's long liaison with Katherine Swynford produced four children surnamed Beaufort, legitimated after the couple married in 1396; from Margaret Beaufort, his great-granddaughter, the Tudor dynasty derived its claim to the throne. He died in February 1399. When Richard II confiscated the Lancastrian inheritance rather than allow it to pass to Gaunt's exiled son Henry Bolingbroke, Bolingbroke returned in arms, deposed Richard, and took the crown as Henry IV, making Gaunt posthumously the father of the Lancastrian royal line.