Duke of Lancaster

“ The impressive approach to Lancaster Castle is by way of John o’ Gaunt’s gateway, one of the many works added by that historic personage, Shakespeare’s “time-honoured Lancaster,” when his father, Edward the Third, created him Duke of Lancaster and raised Lancashire in consequence to the condition of County Palatine. The “time-honoured” one himself stands in effigy in a niche over the door-way. One would like to think the statue contemporary with him, but the guide-books, from which no derogatory secrets are hid, tell the disappointing tale that it dates only from 1822. ”

“ It seems to have been understood very early after the statute of Henry VII., that the Duchy of Lancaster was by no means thereby made a separate inheritance from the royal patrimony, since it descended, with the crown, to the half-blood in the instances of Queens Mary and Elizabeth; which it could not have done as the estate of a mere Duke of Lancaster in the common course of legal descent. ”

“ The reign of Richard II., with its strange and rapid revolutions, had been the beginning of that great faction fight which was concluded a century afterwards by the accession of Henry VII. After pursuing during that reign a policy of inconsistent, and even treacherous, self-seeking, the Duke of Lancaster now came forward as the champion of order. The coup d’état by which he put himself on the throne is another of those instances which history has so abundantly furnished, of the willing acceptance by a nation, after a period of long discomfort, of any one who would bring it rest. ”

“ The Duke of Lancaster set sail from England with a fresh army, accompanied by the Earls of Suffolk, "Warwick, Stafford, and Lord Edward Spencer, to repel the French forces. But these forces, divided into three hosts, under the Dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon, and Du Guesclin, still avoided any engagement, but watched the English army, harassed its rear, and cut off its foraging parties everywhere. In vain the Duke of Lancaster marched from Bordeaux to Calais and back; everywhere the enemy fled before him, and yet everywhere he suffered loss ”

“ The other ladies of the court, however, particularly the wives of the other dukes—the Duke of Lancaster's brothers—were greatly incensed when they heard of this proposed marriage, and they did all they possibly could do to prevent it. All was, however, of no avail, for the Duke of Lancaster was not a man to be easily thwarted in any determination that he might take into his head. So he was married, and the poor despised Catharine was made the first duchess in the realm, and became entitled to take precedence of all the other duchesses. ”

“ At once obsequious and malignant, he satirises in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is so proud as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to the duke of Lancaster. ”

“ It was feared by some that Duke John might carry his ambitions so far as to aim at the throne—he could do what he pleased with his doting father, and flaws might have been picked in the marriage of the Black Prince and his wife Joan of Kent, who were cousins, and therefore within the “prohibited degrees.” As a matter of fact Lancaster was a more honest man than his enemies suspected; he hastened to acknowledge his little nephew’s rights, acknowledged him as prince of Wales, and introduced him as his grandfather’s heir before the parliament of January 1377. ”

“ About the year 1390, when the return of Henry Duke of Lancaster from his banishment, without leave of the king, had caused a sore dismay throughout the land, Richard, harassed with the apprehension of danger, appointed Sir John Stanley Lord Justice of Ireland for six years. He was now able, in some measure, to confer a sufficient dignity on his beloved, though not yet equal, in point of wealth, to the wishes of Sir Thomas. ”

“ Does she think she will capture an earl or a duke?" she sneered, and De Vere answered, coldly:
"I do not believe that she has any matrimonial designs on any one, Lady Lancaster. She returns to America in a very few days."
Lady Lancaster was so surprised that she gave vent to her relief in a hasty exclamation:
"Thank Heaven! And I devoutly wish that she had remained there."
"There are more persons than one who will agree with your ladyship there," he said, betrayed into a laugh at her naïveté. ”

“ The young king, however, was the beloved of a thousand hearts. As son of a hero [Pg 18] who had won imperishable glory for England, the heir of Lancaster was regarded by Englishmen with sincere affection; the legitimacy of his title even was unquestioned; and the genius of his uncles, John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, under whose auspices the royal boy was crowned in London and Paris, created a feeling of security seldom felt by kingdoms at the beginning of long minorities. ”

“ The great nobles and courtiers were looking out for the rising sun, and paying it their assiduous adoration. By some this was held to be the Duke of Lancaster, against whoso designs on the throne the people had culled on the king, before the death of the Black Prince, to guard ”

“ Lancaster failed to prevent the deputation of the citizens, headed by Philipot, from obtaining an interview with the old king, who heard their explanations and gave them a gracious answer. But the duke was implacable, and the city officers sought to appease him by a somewhat humiliating reparation. The citizens as a body, however, would have nothing to do with it, and though the king, at Lancaster's instigation, turned out the mayor (Staple) , they at once (21 March) chose Brembre in his stead (Collections of a London Citizen, p. 254; Chron. Angl. pp. 127, 133; Fœdera, iii. 1076) . ”

“ The lords and prelates crowded round him, entreating him to be pacified, "for no mortal being could give credit to such imputations." The Commons pointed to the fact that they had named Lancaster as their principal adviser, and finally the duke allowed himself to be appeased. But it was clear that the Commons were very strong against him. The majority consisted of the very men who had been opposed to him in 1376 ”

“ He deserves credit for his protection of Wycliffe, though he had no sympathy with his religious or political opinions. He was also the patron of Chaucer, whose Boke of the Duchesse was a lament for Blanche of Lancaster. ”

“ The Duke of Bedford was one of the first men of position in the country to come to the aid of Joseph Lancaster—a young Quaker philanthropist, who, in spite of poverty and obscurity, did more for the cause of popular education in England in the early years of the century than all the privileged people in the country. ”

“ Among the Lancastrian chiefs who survived the two fields on which the Red Rose was trodden under the hoofs of King Edward's charger, none was destined to a more wretched fate than the conqueror's own brother-in-law, Henry, Duke of Exeter. ”

“ Most of the lords were under essential obligations to the house of Lancaster, and therefore in no haste to take York's claim into consideration. When a week elapsed, therefore, the duke deemed it politic to send a formal demand of the crown, and to request an immediate answer. The peers, somewhat startled, replied that they refused justice to no man, but in this case could decide nothing without the advice and consent of the king. Henry was consulted ”

“ But there was bitterness and mistrust between the old Lancastrian faction and the Nevilles, and Queen Margaret Restoration of Henry VI. refused to cross to England or to trust her son in the king-maker’s hands. Her partisans doubted his sincerity, while many of the Yorkists who had hitherto followed Warwick in blind admiration found it impossible to reconcile themselves to the new régime. The duke of Clarence in particular, discontented at the triumph of Lancaster, betrayed his father-in-law, and opened secret negotiations with his exiled brother. ”

“ When Lancaster was accused of treason in the April parliament at Salisbury, Buckingham burst into the king's chamber and swore with great oaths to kill any one, no matter whom, who should bring such charges against his brother (Walsingham, ii. 114) . Richard for a time deferred more to his uncles, and during his Scottish expedition in the following year created Buckingham Duke of Gloucester (6 Aug. 1385) , and granted him a thousand pounds a year from the exchequer by letters patent, dated at Hoselowelogh in Teviotdale (Rot. Parl. iii. 206) . ”

“ The Duke hath been more fervently set there upon, and more 87cruel, since that Wretyll, my Lord of Clarence's man, was there, than he was before, and he hath sent for all his tenants from every place, and others, to be there at Caister at Thursday next coming, that there is then like to be the greatest multitude of people that came there yet. And they purpose them to make a great assault—for they have sent for guns to Lynn and other place by the seaside—that, with their great multitude of guns, with other shoot and ordnance, there shall no man dare appear in the place. ”

“ In the spring of 1387 he joined forces with the king of Portugal, who now married Philippa, Lancaster's daughter by his first marriage, and the combined army invaded Castile. But it met with little success, and under the heat of the climate sickness broke out among the troops. The conquests of the previous year were lost, and Lancaster himself fell ill, and was eventually forced to quit Spain and retire to Bayonne. However, he succeeded better by diplomacy than by war. The Duke of Berry had made overtures for the hand of Catharine, his daughter by his present wife, Constance. ”

“ The Duke of Bedford, the regent, took the field in very fair array, and rode on until he had passed the woods near Verneuil; and when he found himself in the plain he beheld the town and all the force of the French arranged and set in order of battle, which was a very fair thing to see; for without doubt I, the author of this work, had never seen a fairer company, nor one where there were so many of the nobility as there were there, nor set in better order, nor showing greater appearance of a desire to fight ”

“ A man bearing a nobler name, and gifted with a higher intellect than Tudors, Hollands, or Beauforts, now joined the Lancastrian exiles. It was John De Vere, Earl of Oxford.
At the beginning of the contentions of York and Lancaster, the De Veres naturally took part against the misleaders of the monk-monarch, and as late, at least, as 1455, John, twelfth Earl of Oxford, was a friend of the duke. Oxford, however, was not prepared for a transfer of the crown ”