Talk:John of Gaunt

message: You state that York was descended from Joan Beaufort. That is an outrageous claim, since going to the heart of the royal legitimacy issue, and should be corrected immediately - see Wikipedia entry for "House of York." York's primary claim to royalty is through Gaunt's elder brother, Lionel of Antwerp. If there were a secondary claim, it would be through Edmund of Langley, Gaunt's younger brother. Only thirdly would there be a claim through Joan Beaufort, fourth of the illegitimate children of Gaunt, and only daughter, whose own daughter, Cecily, would become Duchess of York. Ignoring the prior claims, which are well-established, in favor of a junior (ie. three elder siblings), illegitimate and double-female claim seems willfully biased. Sargam01 (talk) 20:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of House of York ??

message: Can anyone give a reference for the birth date in this article?  Britannia gives March 1340 - Britannia Biographies. So does my DVD edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.
Rbraunwa 16:46, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Birth date

message: Where can I find a graphic of John's coat of arms, surmounted by this pretension?  I'm not talking about a painting of him in armour.  IP Address 07:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Right. According to , that's a "Renaissance" painting, so John may never have used those arms; by "back-formation," I meant it might be the result of someone applying contemporary rules of heraldry to the period. Choess 08:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Not absolutely, I don't think. Fox-Davies unfortunately doesn't say where his information comes from, but it's probably a seal. I imagine a fair number of his seals survive and have perhaps been described somewhere, but I wouldn't know where. Apparently one of his seals is reproduced on "Sandford, Genealogical History of the Kings of England, p. 238," whatever that may be. His Garter plate is unfortunately of no evidentiary value, as it predates his second marriage. Somewhat later, his arms appear as England & France, a label ermine on his nephew Thomas Chaucer's tomb. As to the question of heraldic practice, Warwick the Kingmaker comes to mind as quartering the arms of his wife rather than using an escutcheon of pretence, so I feel safe saying the rule wasn't hard-and-fast at the time. Given all this, I think the evidence weighs against his having incorporated the arms of Castile into his own heraldry, but I can't say that it's proven. Choess 09:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Again, it's not very clear-cut, because in this period the rules for marshalling arms were still fairly fluid. Bear in mind that Catherine was a heiress of Pedro the Cruel (passing over his bigamy) and of her mother, but not of her father. Under modern rules of marshalling, Catherine would bear Castile & Leon with a canton of England & France, indicating a family through which an inheritance passed but which was not itself inherited. During that era, however, there would be little opportunity, if any, for Catherine to bear arms even in the heraldic sense. Furthermore, such "bypassed" coats were sometimes dropped entirely. Fox-Davies offers a coat of arms of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, after his second marriage. This marriage was to Margaret Beauchamp, daughter and coheir of Elizabeth Berkeley, only daughter and heiress of Margaret de Lisle and Thomas de Berkeley. Talbot impaled his own coat (quarterly Talbot and Strange) with that of his first wife (quarterly Furnivall and Verdon), and placed on an escutcheon of pretence Tyes and de Lisle, both the inheritance of Margaret de Lisle, for his second wife. Berkeley, to which Elizabeth Berkeley was heir-general, is not represented, probably because the lands were seized and held by the heir-male; nor Beauchamp, where Margaret's brother, the heir-male, was succeeded in the lands by his full sister, wife of the Kingmaker. Anyway, the point of this long digression is that in that era, the marshalling of arms was fluid and somewhat of a territorial character, and I'd consider it unlikely that Catherine, her husband, or their descendants would incorporate John of Gaunt's arms into theirs. Choess 16:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Castile and Leon 

message: I just got this in my inbox from a friend of mine:
"First a correction.  John was the younger brother of Edward III, not his son.  Richard II was Edward's grandson as his father, Edward the Black Prince, predeceased Edward III.  So John of Gaunt was his great-uncle.
His claim to the Spanish throne rested upon his marriage to the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile (and later also of León).  At best it was a shaky claim and no-one took it very seriously.  His attempt to gain the Spanish throne was effectively doomed from the start.
When he accepted that Richard II was not a competent ruler, he encouraged his own son, Henry Earl of Bolingbroke, to claim the throne as Henry IV.  This was partly dynastic, partly because England needed a stronger ruler than Richard was proving to be.  This incidentally provided the background, though not the occasion for the later Wars of the Roses, between the houses of York and Lancaster.  In those the opposing sides were led (at least initially) by Henry VI, grandson of Bolingbroke, and Richard, Duke of York, grandson of Richard II.
He died almost simultaneously with his son's accession to the throne.  It is very doubtful if he would have agreed with Henry's actions in first imprisoning Richard and later having him murdered.
It is a bit harsh to speak of the "misrule" of Richard II.  He came to the throne aged 10.  At age 14 he faced down in person the Peasants' Revolt of 1481, even winning over the insurgents when their leader was murdered in front of him and them.  On reaching his majority, he was more unfortunate or incompetent than malicious.  Rather like Louis XVI of France or Nicholas II of Russia, he would possibly have made a good constitutional monarch, but absolute rule was something he just could not manage, least of all in a time of upset and war (100 Years War against France)."
I am sure this could be verified with sources, but, my knowledge is limited on this subject. What do yall think about this? User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 06:39, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your friend's claims are so wild, he must have studied a fictional history of England, or he's just joking and you took it seriously.Emerson 07 (talk) 07:21, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

text: House of York --> Cecily Neville --> Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland --> John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster. Emerson 07 (talk) 07:21, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corrections 

message: This seems strange, but is mentioned in the 1911 Britannica. "in the central parts about (Leeds stretched a forest region where the last wolf seen in Yorkshire is said to have been slain by John of Gaunt" - Yorkshirian (talk) 17:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: "Slayed the last wolf in Yorkshire?"

message: On March 2,2009 Tmp09 deleted the sentence explaining why John of Gaunt's children by Katherine Swynford were surnamed "Beaufort."  Why? I am considering reinserting this.  Jim Simmons (talk) 05:13, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Deleting the source of the Beaumont name

message: According to Alison Weir in her book Katheryn Swynford, the armor was not John of Gaunt's. It's German-made and crafted centuries later.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.253.86.31 (talk) 23:46, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Is 6'7" Armor in Tower really John of Gaunt's? 

message: It is noted in the article that John of Gaunt died of 'natural causes'. Should there be further reference to contemporary sources that suggest that venereal disease was the cause of death? In particular, one reference refers to 'putrification of the genitals', a sure sign that John of Gaunt had contracted gonorrhoea, a prevalent sexually transmitted disease of the period? Ds1994 (talk) 19:06, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nature of John of Gaunt's Death 

message: In the passage on Bolinbroke's exile in the introductory paragraphs of this article, is has been stated that "When John died in 1399, his estates were declared forfeit as King Richard II had exiled John's son and heir, Henry Bolingbroke, in 1398, for 10 years for killing another nobleman." I have deleted the last four words. Which nobleman is this supposed to be? In fact, Bolinbroke was declared guilty of no offence, but the King banished him for ten years 'for the peace and tranquillity of himself, his kingdom and his subjects' (see Sumption Vol. 3, pp. 852-3). Cenedi (talk) 23:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Reason for Bolinbroke's exile

message: Shouldn't this article be titled simply, "John of Gaunt"?  That seems to be how he's usually referred to in history books.  There don't seem to be any other historical figures known as "John of Gaunt", so there's no need for disambiguation; it's clearly the primary topic, since there aren't any others, unless you count the John of Gaunt Stakes, which is hardly likely to be confused with John of Gaunt.  And, while I don't think it needs to have his title in the article name, shouldn't it be "first Duke of Lancaster", rather than "1st Duke of Lancaster"?  I don't see anything in the Manual of Style about numerals in article titles, but it would certainly be wrong to use "1st" instead of "first" in the body of the article, and the name of the article shouldn't use a different style than the text.  P Aculeius (talk) 00:22, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Move to "John of Gaunt". Srnec (talk) 01:36, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought this had been forgotten!  Any objections?  And will it be difficult to fix all the double redirects?  P Aculeius (talk) 03:32, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Title 

message: It's different here than in her own article. StuRat (talk) 15:33, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: She died in 1368, though 1369 still appears in some older and unreliable sources: see n8 of her article. Have corrected that and some other inaccuracies, and deleted "bubonic plague" as her cause of death, as this is just speculation. GrindtXX (talk) 18:31, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Blanche of Lancaster]]'s death date ? 

message: Although John of Gaunt was held to be John, Earl of Somerset's father, the Complete Peerage and ODNB give Somerset's birth as the same year as Sir Hugh Swynford's death, implying that Somerset could have been a legitimate posthumous Swynford. 
Neither of his brothers, one of whom was a Cardinal, had any surviving children, so all male line Beauforts were descended from the Earl of Somerset.
Richard III's Y-chromosome (4 generations from Edward III) was shown, in http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6631, to be different from today's Dukes of Beaufort (15+ generations).
A priori, any one of those links is equally likely to be a false paternity event, of which there is at least one, but Gaunt-Somerset is quite probable.
Smlark (talk) 17:53, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the previous contribution, although I think that it should have been placed under a new subheading, rather than under the 'coat of arms' subheading. It seems to me that the research summarised in http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6631 casts doubt on the presumption that Gaunt was the biological father of the Earl of Somerset, and I would suggest that this merits a mention in the body of the article. AlanD1956 (talk) 13:12, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Although the nature.com paper does mention the possibility of a false paternity event regarding Gaunt and Somerset, it does also point out that there are 19 generations separating the tested individuals. The false paternity event could have arisen in any one of these 19 generations. Celia Homeford (talk) 13:38, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with Celia just above. In particular, I find the current wording problematic, as "DNA research has questioned whether Gaunt was in fact the biological father of the 1st Earl of Somerset.[37])" in my opinion misleadingly points to the DNA evidence being the only or even the key part of the evidence, when all the DNA confirms is that there was a false paternity event or events at some point, which might as well be in any of the many subsequent generations over several centuries. Regarding where any mention about the doubt regarding John Beaufort's parentage should be placed, I would prefer a fuller discussion on it on John Beaufort's own page, which could include both the peerage information and the DNA evidence, and a short "it has been questioned..." would be better here than mentioning the DNA evidence directly. 88.115.236.145 (talk) 18:40, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Gaunt the biological father of the Earl of Somerset? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: There should be a section in the article about John of Gaunt's role in patronizing and protecting John Wycliffe.  Apart from a brief sentence in the opening section, this is unmentioned, and yet, for me, this is arguably his most important legacy.  Whatever his motives in supporting Wycliffe, the latter represented the earliest florescence of the English Reformation, and this relationship was, therefore, more important to the future than his campaigns in France or his relationship with Chaucer.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Makercomms (talk • contribs) 10:11, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  John Wycliffe's Protector