The spider in the web: the weaving of a new, Lancastrian England in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries
Abstract
In late-fourteenth century England, the third surviving son of King Edward III,
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, became obsessed with gaining control of the nation
and establishing a Lancastrian legacy that would one day evolve into a dynasty. This
thesis investigates and compares the political maneuvering of John of Gaunt and his
grandson, King Henry V, in order to illuminate the long-lasting effects of their actions
which forever changed the face of both the monarchy and church in England. In the 1370s, the aged King Edward III left the governance of the realm in the
hands of his third surviving son, John of Gaunt. Edward the Black Prince of Wales was
himself very sickly and incapable of administering the government, and the king's second
son, Lionel of Antwerp the Duke of Clarence, had passed away earlier, on 17 October
1368. From the early 1370s until his father's death in 1377, while Lancaster acted as de
facto king of England, he developed a predilection for power that he was not readily willing to relinquish when his ten-year old nephew, Richard of Bordeaux, ascended to the
throne as King Richard II. During his tenure as the guardian of the realm, John of Gaunt
brought together a group of powerful men whose unwavering loyalty was critical in
Lancaster's scheme to seize the realm. The insatiable appetite of John of Gaunt extended
as far as coveting the authority of the church and centralizing that power under the crown.
Lancaster's web of supporters propagated his agenda in the governance of the kingdom,
and threw the church in England into an age of turmoil and uncertainty, leaving it
vulnerable to possible appropriation by the temporal realm. John of Gaunt's eldest son
Henry of Bolingbroke, who seized the throne from his cousin as King Henry IV in 1399,
either learned little from his father's strategems or rejected them, leaving him vulnerable
to coercion by his advisors and parliament. Unimpressed by his father's mediocre reign,
Henry V adopted his grandfather's flawed tactics for constructing a power base, and
improved them. Examining the political maneuvering of John of Gaunt, Duke of
Lancaster and his grandson, King Henry V, this thesis will show how the House of
Lancaster wove the authority of both the temporal and spiritual realms into an
inescapable web that enabled John of Gaunt's direct descendents to secure their
continuous position as heirs to the throne of England.
Table of Contents
Introduction -- Weaving the Lancastrian web -- Twisting the Lancastrian web -- Conclusion -- Appendix A. Chronology -- Appendix B. Monarchs of Britain descended from John of Gaunt
Degree
M.A.