Royal Profile: John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster

John of Gaunt was one of the great power brokers his time.

     On March 6, 1340, John of Gaunt was born. He was the third surviving son of Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault, and has been referred to as "Gaunt" because that is the Anglicized form of Ghent, the Belgian town in which he was born.

     Upon the death of his elder brother, Edward (the Black Prince) in 1376, as well as his father in 1377, John's nephew - the Black Prince's son - acceded to the throne as Richard II of England. Richard was a minor, and John exercised an enormous amount of influence on the Crown until the King was of age. Among other things, he was one of the architects of taxation that lead to the Peasants' Revolt in 1381.

     Six years later in 1386, John attempted to claim the throne of Castile (in Spain) through his marriage through his second wife, Constance. However, more trouble erupted at home as Richard II provoked a revolt of nobles - known as the Lord's Appellant - who believed that he was ruling as an absolute tyrant. They took control of the government, leaving Richard as a king in name only, as well as exercising power in his name and removing many of his favorites from the royal court. John returned home to help broker a compromise between his nephew and the Lord's, which resulted in nearly a decade of peace.

     John's power and influence came as a result of his vast land holdings. His first wife was Blanche, the younger daughter of the Earl of Lancaster, and upon his death in 1361, John inherited half of his lands as well as his title. In the following year, Blanche's elder sister died, allowing John to receive the remaining Lancastrian lands, and his father made him Duke of Lancaster. The Duchy of Lancaster had holdings in virtually every county in England, making John a very wealthy man during his time and allowing him to be so influential. During King Richards reign, John was also made Duke of Aquitaine in France.

     Upon his death, his lands and titles were seized by Richard, who kept them from John's son Henry Bolingbroke, who was serving a ten-year sentence of exile in France as a resolution to a dispute between him and another nobleman. Richard extended his cousin's sentence to life, but Henry eventually returned to depose Richard and had himself crowned King of England as Henry IV, inaugurating the House of Lancaster, a branch of the main Plantagenet dynasty. 

     John of Gaunt's other legacy are his descendants. Through his legitimate and illegitimate offspring (who were retroactively legitimized), as well as several rounds of royal intermarriage amongst cousins, he was the ancestor of kings and queens of England from the houses of Lancaster, York, and Tudor, as well as (after 1437) kings and queens of Scotland. Since the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603, all sovereigns of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland, and the United Kingdom have been descended from Gaunt. 

     Gaunt is also the sixteenth richest person of all time, with estimated (inflation-adjusted) fortune of $110 billion.