The Will and Burial of John of Gaunt, 1399

I, John, son of the King of England, Duke of Lancaster, February 3d, 1397. My body to be buried in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, of London, near the principal altar, beside my most dear late wife Blanch, who is there interred. If I die out of London I desire that the night my body arrives there, that it be carried direct to the Friars Carmelites in Fleet Street, and the next day taken strait to St. Paul's, and that it be not buried for forty days, during which I charge my executors that there be no cering or embalming my corpse...

Seal of John of Gaunt, seated, crowned and with royal scepter
and orb.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Aquitaine and Guyenne; fourth son of England's Edward III and his lowlands queen, Philippa of Hainaut.  Husband to cousin Blanche of Lancaster, the sometime Infanta of Castile, Constanza, and finally to his longtime mistress, Katherine Roet Swynford.  His progeny would rule considerable areas of northern Europe during the succeeding generations, to wit:

•Henry of Lancaster (of Derby or Monmouth), son of Gaunt by his first wife, who took the throne by right of conquest from his first cousin Richard II;

•Philippa of Lancaster, his daughter by Blanche of Lancaster, who became Queen of Portugal upon her marriage to Joao I of Portugal, cementing the world's longest standing naval treaty, still in force today;

•Catherine of Lancaster, his daughter by the Infanta Constanza, who became Queen of Spain upon her marriage to Enrique III (Trastamara);

•John Beaufort, son by his mistress Katherine, who was raised to the rank of Marquis and was a staunch supporter of the House of Lancaster; his direct line ended in a female -- Margaret Beaufort -- who was, of course, the mother of Henry VII.

•Thomas Beaufort, a capable admiral and loyal supporter of his half-brother, Henry IV, who was noted for his high moral standards.

•Joan Beaufort, his daughter with Katherine Swynford, who made an extremely advantageous second marriage upon legitimation to the Earl of Westmoreland, Ralph Neville.  Their children's lines would be largely decimated in the subsequent Wars of the Roses as their lines split between Lancastrian (as seen on Joan's empty tomb effigy at Staindrop Church and in MS illuminations) and those of Yorkist affiliations (especially descending from Joan's daughter Cecily Neville, the white rose of Raby).

•Henry Beaufort, Bishop, Cardinal and Chancellor of England, son of John and Katherine who has been described as the ablest of the Beauforts. Beaufort's financial astuteness resulted in a well feathered nest for him and those he cared for, including his half-brother the King and his nephew, Henry V.  Beaufort financed to a large degree English military exploits during his adulthood, and was largely responsible, along with his sister Joan, for establishing the Lincoln Cathedral tombs and chantry for Joan and their mother, Katherine.  He was also a seasoned diplomat, meeting with the Hess, and even making a joke about Sweden's St. Birgitta during diplomatic negotiations.

John's personal seal showing the arms of England & France, ancient.

Gaunt's Will. 

Wills are wonderful tools to examine to see what was considered valuable or meaningful or important.  Some are short and perfunctory, some are very legalistic, and others shine light upon the deceased and the people in his or her life.  The will of John of Gaunt is detailed and complex but also gives ample evidence of those who were important in his life as well as some practical matters, as we shall see below.

Probably the most curious aspect of Gaunt's will -- and it was up front in the second sentence of the will -- was the business of the deceased being kept above ground for a considerable period, without benefit of embalming or preservation of the body; in Gaunt's case, the term was for 40 days.  The request seems strange and morbid until one realizes that, in the absence of knowledge gained from modern medicine, someone suffering from some hopefully temporary condition that makes one appear as dead (comatose? catatonic? a stroke?) just might have a vested interest in not being summarily buried alive.  The fear of being buried alive is said to be one of the more common human phobias.  The philosopher John Duns Scotus was reportedly buried alive (although the 14th century tale is likely apocryphal).  Other stories were known, as well:  it seems to have been used for executions in medieval Italy and Japan.  Why would Gaunt have had this fear?

Not all wills carried this provision and one wonders what was on Gaunt's mind.  Biographer Anthony Goodman discusses at some length the various political entanglements afoot towards the end of Gaunt's days:  longstanding conflicts within the royal family were coming to a head, pitting  brother against brother; the proposed marriage and peace treaty with France was one such source of contention.   Gaunt's brother Woodstock was reported to have betrayed their plan to kidnap the king, Gaunt, and brother Langley to remove them from power.  John Beaufort and Henry of Derby were both involved and things got ugly, culminating in Richard's having Woodstock assassinated.  Gaunt evidently had begun to fear Richard with respect to the royal family and his own close kin; as he left Richard's presence a few years earlier to manage crown affairs, he wrote to the king,

I believe and truly hope, my lord, that you have always had such proof [of my loyalty] by experience of all my dealings with you.

Richard was playing a tricky game of appeasement with his uncle.  On the one hand, he was invariably courteous and outwardly supportive: he acceded to Gaunt's wish to have his cherished Beaufort children legitimated.  Richard, who was contemplating his second marriage to Isabella of Valois, was likely not feeling particularly competitive where his Beaufort relations were concerned.  On the other, Gaunt may have lived every day wondering when the assassin -- possibly armed with disabling poison or other substance -- would come for him.  He'd been fighting for the crown of Castile for his wife, and the Castilian court was byzantine at best.  He'd lost his loved palace of the Savoy.  So many vicissitudes may have weighed on his mind as he drew up his will preparatory to breathing his last.  What would happen now to his wife and their four children?

Links:

Buried Alive!
Medieval Persian teenager declared 'dead'

3 February 1399: Death of John of Gaunt

John of Gaunt; a 16th C. Portrait by Corneliz.  Gaunt's heraldic tunic, seen in
the full original,  shows his adoption of the arms of Spain in right of his wife.

Shortly after the New Year, John, called 'of Gaunt' for his birthplace in Ghent, Belgium, son of England's King Edward III and Queen Philippa 'of Hainaut,' acknowledged the ending of his mortal existence and died at Leicester Castle.  He was 58 years old.

He had been ill for months, since at least the prior September when, after his son's unexpected banishment, he had perhaps become weary of his life.  Henry of Derby had thought to go on pilgrimage but held back after reports that his father wasn't likely to live long.

The man described as the last knight never wore a crown of his own but his son and daughters were kings or queens of England, Spain and Portugal.

One happy life achievement happened when he married his longtime mistress, Katherine Swynford, and obtained papal and parliamentary legitimation of their four adult children, the Beauforts, in 1396.  The Duchess Constanza, living largely apart from Gaunt, died in 1394 while Gaunt was abroad and was buried with fitting pomp in the medieval Collegiate Church of Leicester, also the burial place for Gaunt's daughter-in-law, Mary de Bohun, who died within the same year.  The church, no longer extant, had just been established as a Lancastrian favorite by Blanche of Lancaster's father.

Digitally reconstructed interior of the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was the royal chantry chapel of the Dukes of Lancaster in the the Chantry College of the Annunciation of St Mary in the Newarke, Leicester, founded in 1353. (text and information here.

Richard II also lost his wife, Anne of Bohemia, in that year and his grief was well known and may have been a turning point in the development of his personality as well as his relationships with others.

Lilleshall Abbey Lodge

At the close of the year, John of Gaunt, his wife Katherine and squire William Chetwynd, lodged for two evenings at Lilleshall Abbey (January 1398) when Gaunt fell ill with fever following the close of the Shrewsbury Parliament.

Little exists now of the abbey but Gaunt's lodging there, following that of his nephew Richard II, his queen Isabella of Valois, five dukes and three earls there at the beginning of the 24th Parliament doubtless helped revive the abbey from poor financial management.  Gaunt's retinue alone was likely to have been considerable (his visit was recorded as cum familia copius nimis), and his gift to the abbey of  twenty pounds of gold as well as the abbey's admission of John and Duchess Katherine to the abbey's confraternity led to newfound influence of the abbey and in Lancastrian knights' financial support.

Lilleshall Abbey West Front Carving.  Splendid ruins remain of the sandstone building.

The buildings on the east and south sides of the cloister, which lay south of the church, were completed in stone in the late 12th century.... The range contained an outer parlour next to the church, the abbot's or guest hall on the first floor, and the abbot's lodging in a projecting wing near the south end. The first-floor hall may have been a rebuilding of an earlier one, mentioned c. 1272... in the same position. In the early 19th century it was recorded that the hall measured 66 feet by 28 feet; it had a number of small rooms below and a staircase leading to an upper story. Many floor-tiles, some with armorial bearings, were being carried away at that time. Foundations of buildings have been uncovered in the outer court to the south of the cloister but, pending scientific excavation, their function remains unknown. The position of the infirmary has not yet been established and the guest accommodation of the abbey was clearly on a scale that could house, albeit with some difficulty, the huge retinue of John of Gaunt. Traces of the precinct wall have been discovered, but the exact location of the great gate is not known (Source).

G. Vertue; 18th C. Engraving.

From the Shrewsbury Parliament to Lilleshall Abbey, John, Katherine and his retinue continued south to Leceister Castle, where he settled in, signed his will, and passed away after receiving a visit from the King.  Richard's demeanor towards his uncle appears to have changed considerably by the end of Gaunt's life: always outwardly courteous but with a glint of sharp, hardened metal behind his gaze.  It has been widely speculated that Richard's reception of him when he returned from abroad in 1395 while correct, was not cordial, and one naturally ponders Richard's advancing the Beauforts while settling his gaze on their half-brother as *the* threat to his reign.

After extending the banishment of Gaunt's son Henry of Derby from 6 years to life and the confiscation of his inheritance, Richard apparently had one last score to settle with his uncle:  he is said to have met with Gaunt, leaving him with a set of documents.  We will likely never know the contents of those documents, but it is said that Gaunt expired shortly after they were read to him.  All that was left was the execution of his will and his burial next to his first wife in old St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

Wenceslas Hollar engraving of the alabaster double tomb of John of Lancaster
and his wife, Blanche, in St. Paul's.  It was completed in the 1380s.

Links:

Armitage-Smith Biography of Gaunt Online

Lilleshall Abbey History

Images of Lilleshall

Historic England: Lilleshall

Collegiate Church of Newark, Leicester