Blanche of Lancaster ★

1340s–1350s

Born 25 March 1342 at Bolingbroke Castle, Lincolnshire, younger daughter of Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster, and Isabel de Beaumont. Married John of Gaunt at Reading Abbey on 19 May 1359.

1360s

Her father died in 1361, and her inheritance made Gaunt Duke of Lancaster. Of their seven children three survived, among them the future Henry IV. Died at Tutbury Castle, Staffordshire, on 12 September 1368, possibly of plague; Chaucer's Book of the Duchess mourns her.

Family Background and Inheritance

Blanche of Lancaster was born March 25, 1342, at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, younger daughter of Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster, one of England's wealthiest nobles, and Isabel de Beaumont. Her elder sister Maud died without surviving children, leaving Blanche heir to her father's vast estates and making her an extraordinarily valuable match.

Marriage to John of Gaunt

Blanche married John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III, on May 19, 1359, at Reading Abbey, with the whole royal family in attendance and the king bestowing jewelry on the bride. When her father died in 1361 without a male heir, Gaunt acquired the earldoms of Lancaster, Derby, Lincoln, and Leicester through her, and eventually the Duchy of Lancaster itself — her inheritance became the foundation of Gaunt's enormous wealth and power.

Life as Duchess

Contemporaries praised her beauty; the chronicler Jean Froissart called her "young and pretty," and she is widely believed to be the inspiration for "White" in Geoffrey Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, which calls her nature's "cheef patron of beautee." The couple had seven children, though only three survived infancy: Philippa, who became Queen of Portugal; Elizabeth, later Duchess of Exeter; and Henry, who became King Henry IV of England. Their marriage is widely believed to have been a happy one, partly because, despite two later marriages, Gaunt chose to be buried beside her.

Death

Blanche died September 12, 1368, at Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire while Gaunt was overseas, at about twenty-six (Froissart put her age at about twenty-two); she may have died of the Black Death, which was then rife in Europe. Her funeral procession at Old St Paul's Cathedral in London drew most of the English nobility and clergy.

Legacy and Commemoration

Gaunt held annual commemorations of her death for the rest of his life. Geoffrey Chaucer, connected to the family through his wife's sister Katherine Swynford (Gaunt's later mistress and eventual third wife), was commissioned to write The Book of the Duchess, likely for an anniversary of Blanche's death, depicting a grieving knight mourning a profound loss.

In 1374 Gaunt commissioned master mason Henry Yevele to build an elaborate double tomb for himself and Blanche at Old St Paul's, completed in 1380 at a cost of £592 and featuring the couple's carved hands joined together. When Gaunt died in 1399 he was buried beside her as he had requested; the tomb and its adjoining chantry chapel were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.