It won't be radically different in the near term. The medium to long term is still undecided.
The Gold Rose: An Edward of Angoulême timeline
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War of the Portuguese Succession
War of the Portuguese Succession
The War of the Portuguese Succession was fought from 1383 to 1385 after King Fernando I of Portugal died without a clear heir. The two main claimants to the throne were Fernando's half-brother, João de Castro, and Afonso Teles, who was said to be Fernando's infant son.
Background
King Fernando I of Portugal was a controversial figure. His good looks and self-confidence brought him many admirers and supporters, but he was often undone by his own ambition and impulsiveness. He inherited a peaceful and prosperous country from his father, King Pedro of Portugal, but bankrupted himself fighting a series of fruitless wars with Castile. Fernando declared himself the rightful king of Castile in July 1369, just four months after the murder of his cousin, King Pedro of Castile. He went on to fight the usurper King Enrique II of Castile to a standstill in the First Fernandine War, which ended in 1371. Fernando repudiated the peace with Enrique almost immediately. In 1372, he launched the Second Fernandine War in defense of the rights of Pedro of Castile's daughters to inherit the throne. This ended quickly and disastrously for Portugal, which was an enormous blow to Fernando's prestige and to Portugal's position in the Iberian peninsula.
Fernando was betrothed to wed Enrique's daughter as part of their short-lived 1371 peace deal, but Fernando rejected this and wed the Portuguese noblewoman Leonor Teles in the run-up to war in 1372. Leonor's association with the outbreak of the Second Fernandine War, which was devastatingly destructive for Portugal, and Fernando's violent put-down of a revolt in Lisbon shortly after his and Leonor's marriage, poisoned public perception of the new queen. Though noted for her beauty, charm, and grace by contemporary chroniclers, Leonor's reputation would never recover from these events and she proved a highly unpopular consort.
Fernando and Leonor had one child, Beatriz, who was born in 1373. Portugal had no precedent for a queen regnant, though, and Fernando had two half-brothers who were widely considered legitimate despite their questionable birth. Leonor feared that the elder of the two, João de Castro, would succeed to the throne instead of her daughter.
João de Castro was incredibly popular. He cut a princely figure—tall, handsome, well-dressed, and good-natured. He worked well with the nobility, was famously welcoming to foreign emissaries, and had a reputation for charity. He freely gave horses and weapons to fighting men and donated clothes and money to the poor.
Leonor maintained good relations with João, or at least the appearance of such, until he fell in love with and married her sister, Maria, in 1376. João had taken the liberty to wed Maria without license from the queen, which Leonor felt was an affront to her dignity. Leonor also felt betrayed by her sister for having married Beatriz's potential rival. Leonor pushed Fernando to settle the issue of the succession, which he did at the meeting of the cortes later that same year. The assembly formally recognized Beatriz as Fernando's heiress.
The endorsement of the cortes established Beatriz's legal right to the throne, but Fernando and Leonor knew that the girl needed a powerful husband to safeguard that right. Beatriz was already betrothed to Fadrique de Castilla, a bastard son of the king of Castile, but this arrangement had been forced upon Fernando following his humiliation in the Second Fernandine War and he had no intention of honoring it. He broke Beatriz's betrothal to Fadrique after the king of Castile died in 1379 and hastily arranged for her to wed an English prince, Richard of Bordeaux, instead. This set off the Third Fernandine War in 1381.
João was an exile in Castile by the time the Third Fernandine War broke out. Two years prior, Leonor had weaponized the prince's passions against him. She fed him rumors that her sister, João's wife, was an adultress, sending João into such a fit of rage that he stabbed his wife and killed her. He left his brother's court in disgrace and eventually made his way to Castile. He soon became a favorite of the new King Juan of Castile and, having been radicalized against Leonor for her treachery, he joined the Castilian cause in the war against Fernando.
On 2 April 1383, Leonor gave birth to a son, Afonso, but the boy's origins were suspect. Fernando was in extremely poor health and many questioned whether he could have fathered a child. The king, however, declared Afonso heir to the throne and named Leonor as regent in the event of his (Fernando's) death, which the king himself recognized was not far off. Leonor was already in control of the government by this time. She had stacked the royal council with her own allies and supporters as her husband's health declined. The queen's party enriched themselves at the crown's expense, emptying the treasury just as the war with Castile began to turn against them.
Lisbon revolt
Fernando died on 22 October 1383. Afonso was declared the new king of Portugal at once, but João had heard the rumors of the boy's illegitimacy and rejected the succession. João begged King Juan for an army with which to remove Afonso from the Portuguese throne, but Juan was too busy fending off the pretensions of the duke of Lancaster to the Castilian throne to consider supporting João in an invasion of Portugal. Juan allowed João to take some of the Castilian fleet, which was being kept in home waters until the Lancastrian threat had passed, though João was left to organize an expedition for himself.
João raced to Seville and took command of a small squadron of ships docked there. They entered the mouth of the Tagus on 10 November. Lisbon's defenders sprung to action at the appearance of Castilian warships, though. Coming under heavy fire, João was forced to retreat. The city's garrison learned that the prince had been aboard and was looking to land peacefully only after the fact. Word of the attempted landing spread, sparking spontaneous protests against the unpopular Leonor. These quickly turned violent and riots broke out across the city. The situation spiraled into a general revolt as the population demanded that João be crowned king.
Lisbon was dominated by a small class of fantastically wealthy merchants and artisans, as most every major city in western Europe was at the time. The Lisbon oligarchs had little interest in João's cause. They were not taken in by his charms, as the upper nobility was, and had no need for his charity, as the poor did. Lisbon's oligarchs were primarily interested in maintaining stability and growing their wealth. A regency government led by Leonor was acceptable to them, but the intensity of the uprising was such that it could not be ignored and the oligarchs were compelled to endorse João.
On 16 November, less than a week after João's attempted landing, a delegation of the city's merchant leaders met with Leonor and informed her that she was not safe in the capital. Some of the more radical elements of the uprising called for her arrest, but the oligarchs allowed her to sail up the Tagus in order to hedge their bets in the rapidly escalating crisis. She fled under the cover of darkness that same evening. Once she was gone, the oligarchs wrote to João and invited him to return and claim the crown.
Revolution
Álvaro Pais, who was one of the leaders of the Lisbon revolt, personally delivered the city's invitation to João on 22 November. Pais had served Fernando and João's father as chancellor and had continued in the role during the early years of Fernando's reign. He was a savvy and well-connected figure whose presence helped legitimize João's cause. Counterintuitively, though, he discouraged the prince from moving to the capital. Instead, Pais coached João on what steps needed to be taken to ensure his seizure of the throne was viewed as lawful. Then, on 26 November, a message arrived with word that João's uncle, Álvaro Pires de Castro, count of Viana, was moving south with a large army to support João.
Castro was once a close ally of Queen Leonor's, but he was repulsed by the way she had manipulated João into murdering his own wife. The count had slowly drifted out of the queen's orbit over the years since and broke from her completely now. Castro was at León when he received word of the Lisbon revolt. He was there at the head of the Portuguese army, fighting alongside the English as a part of Lancaster's Crusade. They had been stuck besieging León for months and had suffered badly. The combined Anglo-Portuguese force was too large to feed. Starvation made the men vulnerable to disease, leading to thousands of deaths when dysentery struck. Castro knew that both the siege and the duke of Lancaster's quest for the crown of Castile were hopeless. On 19 November, he detached the Portuguese army from the siege and moved to support his nephew.
João sped north to meet his uncle. He was accompanied by only a handful of close friends. Their small number allowed them to move quickly, averaging more than 25 miles a day from Seville to Ciudad Rodrigo. From there, they crossed into Portugal and cautiously approached the border fortress of Almeida. They were met there by João's illegitimate half-brother, João de Portugal, grand master of the Order of Avis, on 7 December.
On 11 December, João caught up with his uncle Castro at Trancoso. Fernando Afonso de Albuquerque, master of the Order of Santiago in Portugal, was there as well, having brought fresh troops to support Castro's broken army. Albuquerque confronted João with questions as to his intentions. Portuguese chronicler Fernão Lopes wrote that the prince swore to Albuquerque that he did not intend to seize the throne by force and that he wished only to end Leonor's corrupt and incompetent government and find the truth of the rumors of her son's illegitimacy. João also swore that he would put the issue of the succession to the cortes if Afonso were illegitimate, saying "if anyone could be found who was more worthy of the crown than he was, he would willingly stand down."
Leonor was holed up at Santarém with the members of her regency council and the officers of her government. It is unclear if they knew the sorry state of the army that Castro had brought from the north, though they were aware that it numbered in the thousands and also that João was drawing more to his side, like Albuquerque, every day. The queen regent, in contrast, had a small retinue of men with her and her advisors were divided as they debated confronting João.
The queen's party suffered its first defections on 12 December when Lourenço Fogaça, chancellor of the kingdom, and Gonçalo Vasques de Azevedo, lord of Lourinhã, fled Santarém before daybreak to join João. Fogaça had served Fernando as chancellor since 1373. He had been kept in the role by Leonor, but he was well-known as Fernando's most loyal servant. Azevedo was a more slippery character. He had discovered Leonor's affair with the Galician nobleman Juan Fernández de Andeiro in spring 1382. He was promptly arrested by the queen on trumped-up charges and was bought off with lordships and treasure. Azevedo's defection was not welcomed by João's brother, Avis, who had been arrested with Azevedo in 1382 but had not allowed himself to be bought off. Still, Azevedo had been Fernando's longest-serving advisor and he had cemented Leonor's control of the government with his support. His defection to João was too important for the prince to pass up.
On 26 December, Avis went to Santarém with a small retinue of men and met with Leonor. What happened there is a matter of debate. By some accounts, Avis swore oaths guaranteeing the queen's safety and her freedom, but effectively made her a prisoner once she was outside the fortress. Other accounts say that Leonor recognized the weakness of her position and surrendered herself to Avis willingly, intending to slip away from him and raise her own army at the earliest opportunity. Whatever the case, she left Santarém at Avis's request and went with her council to meet João.
João welcomed Leonor with all the courtesies typically afforded to a dowager queen and greeted each of the members of her regency council in turn. Then, he arrested the men in the queen's employ and ordered that Leonor and her ladies be confined to their quarters. Ten men were then assigned to watch Leonor through all hours of the day and night to ensure that she did not escape. On 30 December, Leonor agreed to João's demand to summon the cortes. João declared himself "guardian of the realm" that same day.
On 11 January 1384, João was met by Lisbon's leaders two miles outside the city. They formed a procession and rode into the capital together. Countless men and women crowded the gate, exploding into cheers as João entered. He was followed at some distance by Leonor, flanked by 12 men-at-arms so that physical harm did not come to her. Lisboners hurled insults at her, screaming "whore" and "adulteress" as she passed. As the crowd cheered his name, João went not with Leonor to the royal palace, which was to become her gilded prison, but to Carmo Convent, to visit Fernando's tomb there.
Afonso and Beatriz were brought into the city on the royal barge, sparing them the humiliations that their mother had suffered. This did little to cool the queen's temper. She was kept confined to her chambers for three days until, on 14 January, she was called to a meeting with João. She erupted in anger at the sight of him. She condemned João, Avis, Azevedo, and Fogaça as traitors and demanded that she be allowed to defend herself before the cortes.
João formed a new council after his meeting with the queen. At its heart were his uncle Castro, his half-brother Avis, the former chancellor Pais, and Albuquerque, the master of Santiago. It included an unusual number of clerks and lawyers, as João insisted that he was not a would-be usurper, but was his brother's true and rightful heir. His preoccupation with legalities led to the rapid rise of Pais's stepson, João das Regras, who was the brightest star of the prince's legal team. They soon decided that Leonor should be formally removed from the regency before the cortes assembled. Her son was, on paper, King Afonso V, though he was too young to exercise power. As Afonso's regent, Leonor had the power to dissolve the cortes at any time, which they feared she would do to end her own trial if it appeared she was to be convicted.
On 8 February, Castro and Albuquerque led a delegation to the bishop of Coimbra's palace, where the queen was being held ahead of the cortes. It included representatives from every level of the nobility, both secular and ecclesiastical. They presented Leonor with a letter of resignation, but she refused to consider it before speaking with João himself. The delegates returned the following morning with the prince. Leonor tried to negotiate with her former brother-in-law, but he would not debate the terms of her resignation. Outnumbered and likely fearing for her life, Leonor resigned the regency.
Compromise of Coimbra
On 10 February, the cortes assembled at Coimbra Palace, a venue chosen to ensure that its proceedings were not disrupted by the Libson mob. All of the kingdom's bishops, along with large numbers of abbots, deans, monks and priests, were in attendance. Seventy-two members of the secular nobility and many knights and squires were there as well. All the principal cities and 31 towns were represented.
João arrived at midday. He was met outside the palace by the monks of Alcobaça, a symbolic move given that João's father, King Pedro of Portugal, was buried at Alcobaça Monastery and his brother, Fernando, had been acclaimed king there. They accompanied João to church to hear mass and then organized a procession that allowed João to make an almost kingly entrance into the royal palace. A crowd formed outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the prince on his entry.
The proceedings began with a prayer from Lourenço Vicente, archbishop of Braga. Fogaça, as chancellor of the kingdom, stepped forward next. Instead of delivering an address on the state of the kingdom, as was tradition, he introduced the lawyer João das Regras, who read out the resignation letter that the queen had been forced to sign. The chancellor asked whether the men of the cortes accepted the queen's resignation from the regency. Cries of "Sim! Sim! Sim!" rang out in response. Leonor, already in João's custody for more than a month, was now officially powerless.
Fogaça returned to the floor once the cheers and shouts died down. He delivered a bleak report on the challenges facing the kingdom. The war with Castile was a disaster. The Battle of Saltes three years prior had gutted the Portuguese fleet. Unable to defend itself at sea, the kingdom had been ravaged by Castilian raiders for nearly two years. The suburbs of Lisbon had been destroyed, the rich estates that lined the Tagus had been looted and burned, and the kingdom's great herds of cattle had been rustled. Lisbon had been left dangerously exposed to direct attack, as Castile could easily blockade the mouth of the Tagus and cut the city off from the sea. In summary, the kingdom had been impoverished and terrorized, and its people were angry and hungry.
The chancellor's report was, in effect, an indictment of Leonor's government. It is possible that the report was exaggerated to retroactively justify the queen regent's forced removal, but it could not have been much of an exaggeration. The Third Fernandine War had, by all accounts, been a disaster for Portugal. The cortes demanded that those responsible for the kingdom's misfortune be held accountable.
João das Regras was called upon to read out a list of the crimes of which Leonor's councilors and the officers of her government stood accused. Twenty-three different charges were made against the queen herself, but they were not limited to her short-lived regency or even the period in which she had dominated Fernando's government. Tellingly, the list of charges began with the 1379 plot that had led João to murder his first wife, Maria Teles. This was, for João, a personal act of retribution. Leonor was accused of both slander and conspiracy for having manipulated João into believing that his wife was an adultress and subsequently leading to his crime of passion.
Leonor was charged with false imprisonment, intimidation, harassment, blackmail, and bribery for her arrest of Azevedo and Avis in the spring of 1382. She faced multiple allegations of embezzlement, malfeasance, and nepotism regarding the lavish grants she made to her supporters and for failing to defend the realm from attack. She was accused of adultery and fornication, as her long-running affair with the Galician nobleman Juan Fernández de Andeiro was made a matter of public record. The explosive accusations stunned the cortes into silence. At this point, João Cabeça de Vaca, bishop of Coimbra, declared that the queen should not be condemned without an opportunity to defend herself.
The cortes spent six days in consultations with legal advisors on how to best proceed. Martinho de Zamora, bishop of Lisbon, emerged as the queen's chief defender at this time. He lobbied members to dismiss the charges made against Leonor, but the list of crimes was too long and too grave to disarm them all.
On 16 February, the cortes declared that sufficient doubts had been raised regarding the legitimacy of Afonso that an investigation was required before any other action was taken, as its members needed to know in whose name they were assembled. A number of low-ranking figures in the services of Fernando and Leonor were called before the cortes to answer questions pertaining to Fernando's decline as well as the nature and timing of Leonor's relationship with Andeiro, including the late king's doctors and six of his valets.
Witness testimony painted a picture of a king who was ill for many years, but whose condition worsened significantly in the final two years of his life. Fernando attended to the business of state only intermittently from the spring of 1382 onward. By that summer, he was nearly crippled with pain and it became an effort for him to leave his bed. He deteriorated yet further through the winter and, by spring 1383, when Afonso was born, Fernando was completely bedridden. Leonor spent an inordinate amount of time with Andeiro through this period. The Galician had joined the king's court in late 1380 and was known to have visited Leonor in her personal chambers on more than one occasion. Andeiro was added to the king's council, which the queen controlled, and showered with treasures. It was a damning portrait of events.
Leonor's chief defender, the bishop of Lisbon, did not challenge the substance of the witness testimony and instead attacked the character of the witnesses themselves. It was highly suspect, the bishop said, that so many men would withhold so much information until João needed to undermine Leonor for personal gain. His most effective line of questioning was his simplest, as he pressed witnesses to explain why Fernando had recognized Afonso as his son and proclaimed the boy heir to the throne if in fact he had not been well enough to have fathered the child. The question ate at many members of the cortes.
The bishop of Lisbon sowed enough doubt in the proceedings to draw some support back to Leonor, which included Afonso Correia, bishop of Guarda, and Pedro Álvares Pereira, prior of Crato. Despite this, though, the testimony of Fernando's physician confirmed many people's suspicions that Afonso was a bastard born of adultery. Support for Afonso and João began to harden, polarizing the cortes.
It was clear by the final day of testimony that the cortes would depose Afonso and acclaim João as king. It was unclear, though, whether the queen's party would accept that decision or condemn the kingdom to civil war. Chancellor Fogaça was among those who had been convinced that Afonso was a bastard. Fogaça had served Fernando with distinction for many years and remained loyal to the late king's memory. He began to champion for the cause of Fernando's daughter, Beatriz. This was a lonely position for him to take. It was already unprecedented for the cortes to depose Afonso. It would be equally unprecedented for them to acclaim a queen regnant. No one cared to do both at the same time, especially for a 10-year-old girl. Despite this, Fogaça believed that Beatriz was the key to averting civil war. He brought João's closest advisors and Leonor's brothers together in a secret meeting to discuss the fates of the princess and the kingdom.
On 23 February, the cortes met to deliver its judgment. The atmosphere was tense. Two weeks of legal wrangling and testimonials of staggering corruption had robbed the assembly of the excitement that had marked its opening days. The gravity of the action that was about to be taken created an undercurrent of dread. It fell to Fogaça, as chancellor, to ask the cortes for its verdict. Afonso was declared illegitimate. As the throne was now vacant, the question of who should succeed was mooted. Unsurprisingly, João was acclaimed king of Portugal and the Algarve. The new king rose to speak briefly before calling on the assembly to meet again in a week's time, allowing for tempers to cool after the intense debate.
On 1 March, the cortes reassembled, meeting for the first time in the name of King João of Portugal. The new king's first act was to have his young son, Fernando, recognized as heir to the throne. Once the boy's position was secured, João announced his intention to wed his son to Beatriz, uniting the rival claims to the throne. Fogaça, who proposed the union, had at least secured the girl's position as future queen consort after realizing that she would never be queen regnant. In the process, he had created a new dialogue between João and Leonor's supporters that appeared to be keeping the kingdom out of civil war.
The cortes sat for two more weeks, prosecuting members of Leonor's party for their crimes. The bishop of Lisbon urged João to spare the lives of the queen's supporters. He found the new king surprisingly open to his calls for mercy. João stripped Leonor's allies of all lands, titles or treasures they had received from the crown since 1381, but allowed them to keep their lives, freedom, and all that they had gained or inherited through lawful means.
Only Leonor's lover, Andeiro, faced harsh punishment. He became a scapegoat for many of the worst excesses and failures of the queen's government. He was convicted of treason and executed. The queen herself was not formally prosecuted for any crime. She was given a sizable income and allowed the use of a number of royal palaces in exchange for her quick and quiet removal from politics. João's policy of mercy and reconciliation, as well as the betrothal of young Fernando and Beatriz, has led historians to dub the outcome of the 1384 cortes the Compromise of Coimbra.
Civil war
The mercy that João showed the queen's party in the Compromise of Coimbra burnished his reputation as a chivalric figure, but it was not popular with some of his own supporters. Many members of the lower nobility called for blood, as did João's half-brother, Avis, who was one of the new king's closest advisors. In the days following the dissolution of the cortes, the only criticism of the new king was that he had been too merciful towards those who had tried to pass off a bastard boy as King Fernando's son and heir. These critics were soon proven right.
João's second wife, Constanza Enríquez de Castilla, who was a bastard sister of the Castilian king, died giving birth to their third daughter just weeks after the cortes. The speed of events that had led João to be acclaimed king had not allowed her time to travel to Portugal, as she was too far along in her pregnancy. The king planned to ride to Castile to mourn his wife and to bring his daughters back with him. This presented those who had been dispossessed by the new regime an opportunity to return themselves to power.
On 28 April, João Afonso Telo, count of Barcelos, and Gonçalo Teles, count of Neiva, who were Leonor's two brothers, met with Pedro Muñiz de Godoy, grandmaster of the Order of Santiago, and Pedro Álvares Pereira, prior of Crato, in the bishop of Lisbon's palace. A handful of other, minor figures were there as well. Together, they plotted to ambush João, murder him, and restore Afonso to the throne.
On 18 May, the king's entourage was set upon near Fronteira by a force of about 400 men. João had perhaps 60 fighting men with him. Among them was Nuno Álvares Pereira, a knight in the king's service whose hastily-organized defense allowed João to cut his way to safety. The would-be assassins fled after the king's escape. Despite being badly outnumbered, Pereira pursued them for some distance. At least two dozen rebels were struck down in their retreat, but the conspiracy's ringleaders remained at large.
João returned to Lisbon and launched a quick counterattack on the rebels. He ordered the arrest of Martinho de Zamora, bishop of Lisbon, for his part in organizing the attack. Álvaro Pais, the former chancellor who helped lead the Lisbon revolt just months earlier, rode through the city calling on all able-bodied men to come to the king's defense. João's bastard half-brother, Avis, was given control of the city and all land surrounding it on both sides of the Tagus. Avis was charged with protecting both the capital and Prince Fernando, whose succession Avis was to ensure in the event of the king's death. João soon had an army, which was largely made up of common men from the city and, on 29 May, marched north to confront the rebels.
The rebel leaders regrouped at Guarda. Leonor was likely unaware of the plot hatched by her brothers and their co-conspirators until they arrived at the city, where she was staying as a guest of the bishop of Guarda. She threw her lot in with the rebels and gave her brothers funds with which they could raise an army. The two counts moved west to their lands near the coast.
On 21 June, João caught up with the two counts north of Porto. The royal army numbered around 4,000 men, while the rebels had perhaps 1,500. A short battle was fought on the banks of the River Leça, but the counts withdrew and neither side suffered major casualties. Pereira, who had risen high in João's favor after his quick thinking saved the king's life at Fronteira, gave chase, but he would not allow himself to be baited into mounting a direct assault after the two counts took up a highly defensible position. The rebel leaders escaped and went into hiding. Their army melted away.
On 26 June, young Afonso died. He was two years old. His death was likely the result of some common childhood illness, given the high child mortality rate and the fact that he died while in his mother's custody. The timing of his death was undeniably convenient for João, though, and rumors began to swirl that Afonso had been smothered by an agent of the king, whose critics began to call him "João o infanticídio." The attack was highly effective, as sympathy for Leonor brought new support to the rebels, who now hoped to depose João and rule the country in the name of Beatriz, whose betrothal to João's son could be easily broken in favor of a new ally.
The uprising, the king's inability to deliver a decisive blow against the rebels, and the rumors that he had ordered the murder of Afonso proved to be a toxic combination. João's reputation as a gallant, universally beloved figure was shattered. His alliance with King Juan of Castile soon came under attack as well, which further weakened João's position. Castile's devastating raids during the Third Fernandine War had not been forgotten and the Portuguese people were no longer willing to look past their king's friendship with a man who they believed was a schismatic tyrant.
Fogaça, who João had kept on as chancellor, pushed the king to open negotiations with John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. Fogaça had supported King Fernando's alliance with England and feared that Leonor could draw Gaunt into Portugal's emerging civil war by offering to wed Beatriz to Richard of Bordeaux, the girl's former betrothed. Gaunt had already begun talks to drop his claim to the Castilian throne and bring an end to Lancaster's Crusade, allowing João to forge his own alliance with the duke without completely alienating his Trastámaran allies.
In late July, Gaunt moved from Ourense to Porto, where he stayed as João's guest for two months. The duke was a spent force by this time. His campaign for the crown of Castile had ended ingloriously and he had lost both his youngest son and many of his closest friends during its course. Gaunt had neither the interest nor the ability to involve himself in João's conflict with Leonor, but he was famous in Portugal for his war against the Trastámarans, which made him a valuable ally for propaganda purposes. He negotiated the marriage of his eldest daughter, Philippa of Lancaster, to the recently-widowed João, with a dowry of 20,000 marks. The two were wed at Porto Cathedral on 6 September and Gaunt sailed from Porto to Bayonne just weeks later, having helped to legitimize João's kingship through a prestigious marriage.
On 2 October, the Roman Pope Urban VI granted dispensation for João's son to marry Beatriz. Urban also provided papers confirming that João was the legitimately-born son of King Pedro of Portugal, finally putting to rest doubts about Pedro's secret marriage to João's mother. Papal recognition of João's reign and support for the Compromise of Coimbra settled any lingering questions about the legality of the succession, but the lords who had conspired to kill the new king remained opposed to his reign.
Leonor emerged as a surprisingly powerful figurehead for the rebels. Accusations of infanticide remained a potent line of attack against João and sympathy for Leonor brought her popular support for the first time in her life. This was especially true in the inland towns of central and northern Portugal, some which openly supported the rebel cause to install Beatriz on the throne in her own right.
In April 1385, the rebels launched a punitive campaign to demonstrate the king's weakness. Their targets were highly symbolic of João's short reign. They began with burning the town of Trancoso, where João had gathered his forces before seizing the crown. The rebels moved west, laying waste to the area around Viseu before turning south toward Coimbra. They intended to take the city, where the cortes had delegitimized Afonso and proclaimed João king, but never managed to reach it.
João caught up with the rebel army at the small village of Valverde, about 20 miles south of Viseu. The two armies were evenly matched, though sources disagree as to whether they numbered at 3,000 or 5,000 men each. Lopes writes that the rebel army was weighed down with loot after having plundered areas loyal to the king. The rebels were thus reluctant to withdraw, as they would have had to abandon their stolen treasure in order to escape. Pedro Muñiz de Godoy, grandmaster of the Order of Santiago, and Pedro Álvares Pereira, prior of Crato, arranged the rebel army into a battle formation.
The prior of Crato's brother, Nuno Álvares Pereira, acted as marshal for the royal army. He advised the king to hold off an attack and to instead bait the rebels into making the first move. João refused to wait, though. He remained angry that the rebels had escaped him a year earlier and believed that a decisive victory in battle would fully legitimize his rule in the eyes of the people.
The Battle of Valverde took place on 13 May 1385. Nuno Álvares Pereira led the royal vanguard in a forward march. They advanced rapidly and took heavy casualties, but continued the attack. Royal forces were losing the initial stage of the battle until Pereira feigned a retreat. Streams of rebel men broke ranks and pursued them, despite the shouts of their commanders. Pereira then turned, surrounded his pursuers, and slaughtered them. The king ordered a second assault at once, which broke through the disorganized rebel line.
The prior of Crato tried to restore order on the front, but was killed in the fighting. Rebel resistance gave way with his death. Royal forces poured through the hole in the line. The grandmaster of the Order of Santiago fought even as the men around him broke into retreat. Rebels were not afforded the niceties that noble prisoners often enjoyed. The grandmaster would be imprisoned and executed like any lowborn man, an indignity he refused to suffer. He fought to the death insead. The royal army won in a rout. Nuno Álvares Pereira rode down the retreating rebels through the whole rest of the day. By some accounts, as many as two-thirds of the men who fought against João were dead by nightfall, including its commanders and many of its captains.
João's former brothers-in-law, the counts of Barcelos and Neiva, had not fought at Valverde and attempted to flee the kingdom when word of the rout reached them. They were caught near the border with Galicia and beheaded without trial by local authorities hoping to curry favor with the king. Leonor was also captured in flight as she attempted to cross into Castile. She was stripped of all her lands and wealth, denied all the dignities and privileges of a dowager queen, and forced into a Cistercian convent.
Aftermath
João de Castro emerged from the Battle of Valverde as the undisputed king of Portugal, ending the instability that followed Fernando's death. As king, he faced a number of difficulties resulting from his brother's disastrous final years on the throne. The most serious of these was the lingering conflict with Castile. The succession to the Castilian throne, which was the issue at the heart of Fernando's wars with Trastámaran Castile, had been settled with the collapse of the Trastámaran dynasty. This put João in an awkward position, given that he had been supported by the Trastámaran kings before taking the crown of Portugal. The new King Bernardo of Castile distrusted his western neighbor as a result. A cold relationship between the two made it difficult to rein in their respective border lords, allowing a low-grade war to rage on and off in the marches for much of the next two decades. Tensions with Castile led João to strengthen ties to England, negotiating a more formal alliance with his father-in-law, Gaunt, and the king of England in 1386, which remains in effect to this day.
A key element of João's reign was his belief that the king was first among equals with regard to the great men of the realm. He was determined to rule with the support of the nobility and he called meetings of the cortes more frequently than any of his predecessors as a result. Despite this, he faced a number of revolts throughout his reign. These were mostly minor incidents, often staged in the name of Leonor's son, Afonso, as rumors spread that the boy had been spirited away before his death and was secretly being raised in Galicia.
Conventionally pious in his life before assuming the throne, João became a fierce partisan of the Roman papacy after becoming king. His intense obedience likely stemmed from a fear that losing the support of Rome would reopen questions surrounding the legitimacy of his father's secret marriage and the series of events that had brought João to the throne in 1384. In public demonstrations of his faith, João pledged to lead a crusade to northern Africa. This likely began as empty rhetoric meant to impress the public and win allies in the church, but the idea caught the popular imagination and crusades against the Marinid Sultanate became a regular feature of the 1390s and early 1400s.
João died of an unknown ailment in 1397, aged 45. He was succeeded by his son from his first marriage, who was acclaimed King Fernando II. The last element of the Compromise of Caspe became a reality only seven months after Fernando's ascension, when he finally wed Beatriz and united their claims to the throne.
João's nemesis, the dowager Queen Leonor Teles, outlived him. The convent to which she had been sent at the end of the succession war, Lorvão Abbey, was her de facto prison until his death. She was kept under a strict house arrest and even had her movements within the abbey restricted. She was also allowed no contact with Beatriz during João's reign. It was only after Fernando II succeeded and wed Beatriz that mother and daughter were allowed to see one another again. Leonor slowly regained her liberties during her son-in-law's reign. She was free to move about, was provided with a small pension, and even appeared at court on a handful of occasions. João's widow, the dowager Queen Philippa of Lancaster, was an unlikely champion of Leonor's reentry into public life, and was even commended by the pope for the compassion she showed toward her husband's former enemy. Leonor died in 1406, aged 56.
The marriage of Fernando II and Beatriz failed to live up to the promise of the Compromise of Caspe. The king had little interest in his wife, only reluctantly wedding her many months after his coronation. He was famously promiscuous and had 18 known bastards by eight different women before he died at age 30, though his marriage to Beatriz was childless. Fernando's sexual exploits scandalized his stepmother, Philippa, with whom he had an otherwise close relationship. Fernando was so close with his stepmother, and so distant from his wife, that he routinely named Philippa as regent while he was out of the country on crusade, despite the fact that Beatriz had her own claim to the throne and could have been a capable leader.
The crown passed over Beatriz again after her husband's death in 1408, at which time Fernando's half-brother, Afonso, who was João's eldest son by his marriage to Philippa, became king. Afonso was proclaimed King Afonso V, which was a direct repudiation of Leonor's son of the same name who claimed the same regnal number during the succession war. Beatriz hardly mourned her husband's death and soon remarried against the wishes of Afonso's councilors, who feared that any child she may bear would rival Afonso's own. She sold Afonso her rights to the Portuguese crown and retired to the north of the kingdom, but her descendants would try to claim the crown a century later in the Wars of the Quinas.
The War of the Portuguese Succession was fought from 1383 to 1385 after King Fernando I of Portugal died without a clear heir. The two main claimants to the throne were Fernando's half-brother, João de Castro, and Afonso Teles, who was said to be Fernando's infant son.
Background
King Fernando I of Portugal was a controversial figure. His good looks and self-confidence brought him many admirers and supporters, but he was often undone by his own ambition and impulsiveness. He inherited a peaceful and prosperous country from his father, King Pedro of Portugal, but bankrupted himself fighting a series of fruitless wars with Castile. Fernando declared himself the rightful king of Castile in July 1369, just four months after the murder of his cousin, King Pedro of Castile. He went on to fight the usurper King Enrique II of Castile to a standstill in the First Fernandine War, which ended in 1371. Fernando repudiated the peace with Enrique almost immediately. In 1372, he launched the Second Fernandine War in defense of the rights of Pedro of Castile's daughters to inherit the throne. This ended quickly and disastrously for Portugal, which was an enormous blow to Fernando's prestige and to Portugal's position in the Iberian peninsula.
Fernando was betrothed to wed Enrique's daughter as part of their short-lived 1371 peace deal, but Fernando rejected this and wed the Portuguese noblewoman Leonor Teles in the run-up to war in 1372. Leonor's association with the outbreak of the Second Fernandine War, which was devastatingly destructive for Portugal, and Fernando's violent put-down of a revolt in Lisbon shortly after his and Leonor's marriage, poisoned public perception of the new queen. Though noted for her beauty, charm, and grace by contemporary chroniclers, Leonor's reputation would never recover from these events and she proved a highly unpopular consort.
Fernando and Leonor had one child, Beatriz, who was born in 1373. Portugal had no precedent for a queen regnant, though, and Fernando had two half-brothers who were widely considered legitimate despite their questionable birth. Leonor feared that the elder of the two, João de Castro, would succeed to the throne instead of her daughter.
João de Castro was incredibly popular. He cut a princely figure—tall, handsome, well-dressed, and good-natured. He worked well with the nobility, was famously welcoming to foreign emissaries, and had a reputation for charity. He freely gave horses and weapons to fighting men and donated clothes and money to the poor.
Leonor maintained good relations with João, or at least the appearance of such, until he fell in love with and married her sister, Maria, in 1376. João had taken the liberty to wed Maria without license from the queen, which Leonor felt was an affront to her dignity. Leonor also felt betrayed by her sister for having married Beatriz's potential rival. Leonor pushed Fernando to settle the issue of the succession, which he did at the meeting of the cortes later that same year. The assembly formally recognized Beatriz as Fernando's heiress.
The endorsement of the cortes established Beatriz's legal right to the throne, but Fernando and Leonor knew that the girl needed a powerful husband to safeguard that right. Beatriz was already betrothed to Fadrique de Castilla, a bastard son of the king of Castile, but this arrangement had been forced upon Fernando following his humiliation in the Second Fernandine War and he had no intention of honoring it. He broke Beatriz's betrothal to Fadrique after the king of Castile died in 1379 and hastily arranged for her to wed an English prince, Richard of Bordeaux, instead. This set off the Third Fernandine War in 1381.
João was an exile in Castile by the time the Third Fernandine War broke out. Two years prior, Leonor had weaponized the prince's passions against him. She fed him rumors that her sister, João's wife, was an adultress, sending João into such a fit of rage that he stabbed his wife and killed her. He left his brother's court in disgrace and eventually made his way to Castile. He soon became a favorite of the new King Juan of Castile and, having been radicalized against Leonor for her treachery, he joined the Castilian cause in the war against Fernando.
On 2 April 1383, Leonor gave birth to a son, Afonso, but the boy's origins were suspect. Fernando was in extremely poor health and many questioned whether he could have fathered a child. The king, however, declared Afonso heir to the throne and named Leonor as regent in the event of his (Fernando's) death, which the king himself recognized was not far off. Leonor was already in control of the government by this time. She had stacked the royal council with her own allies and supporters as her husband's health declined. The queen's party enriched themselves at the crown's expense, emptying the treasury just as the war with Castile began to turn against them.
Lisbon revolt
Fernando died on 22 October 1383. Afonso was declared the new king of Portugal at once, but João had heard the rumors of the boy's illegitimacy and rejected the succession. João begged King Juan for an army with which to remove Afonso from the Portuguese throne, but Juan was too busy fending off the pretensions of the duke of Lancaster to the Castilian throne to consider supporting João in an invasion of Portugal. Juan allowed João to take some of the Castilian fleet, which was being kept in home waters until the Lancastrian threat had passed, though João was left to organize an expedition for himself.
João raced to Seville and took command of a small squadron of ships docked there. They entered the mouth of the Tagus on 10 November. Lisbon's defenders sprung to action at the appearance of Castilian warships, though. Coming under heavy fire, João was forced to retreat. The city's garrison learned that the prince had been aboard and was looking to land peacefully only after the fact. Word of the attempted landing spread, sparking spontaneous protests against the unpopular Leonor. These quickly turned violent and riots broke out across the city. The situation spiraled into a general revolt as the population demanded that João be crowned king.
Lisbon was dominated by a small class of fantastically wealthy merchants and artisans, as most every major city in western Europe was at the time. The Lisbon oligarchs had little interest in João's cause. They were not taken in by his charms, as the upper nobility was, and had no need for his charity, as the poor did. Lisbon's oligarchs were primarily interested in maintaining stability and growing their wealth. A regency government led by Leonor was acceptable to them, but the intensity of the uprising was such that it could not be ignored and the oligarchs were compelled to endorse João.
On 16 November, less than a week after João's attempted landing, a delegation of the city's merchant leaders met with Leonor and informed her that she was not safe in the capital. Some of the more radical elements of the uprising called for her arrest, but the oligarchs allowed her to sail up the Tagus in order to hedge their bets in the rapidly escalating crisis. She fled under the cover of darkness that same evening. Once she was gone, the oligarchs wrote to João and invited him to return and claim the crown.
Revolution
Álvaro Pais, who was one of the leaders of the Lisbon revolt, personally delivered the city's invitation to João on 22 November. Pais had served Fernando and João's father as chancellor and had continued in the role during the early years of Fernando's reign. He was a savvy and well-connected figure whose presence helped legitimize João's cause. Counterintuitively, though, he discouraged the prince from moving to the capital. Instead, Pais coached João on what steps needed to be taken to ensure his seizure of the throne was viewed as lawful. Then, on 26 November, a message arrived with word that João's uncle, Álvaro Pires de Castro, count of Viana, was moving south with a large army to support João.
Castro was once a close ally of Queen Leonor's, but he was repulsed by the way she had manipulated João into murdering his own wife. The count had slowly drifted out of the queen's orbit over the years since and broke from her completely now. Castro was at León when he received word of the Lisbon revolt. He was there at the head of the Portuguese army, fighting alongside the English as a part of Lancaster's Crusade. They had been stuck besieging León for months and had suffered badly. The combined Anglo-Portuguese force was too large to feed. Starvation made the men vulnerable to disease, leading to thousands of deaths when dysentery struck. Castro knew that both the siege and the duke of Lancaster's quest for the crown of Castile were hopeless. On 19 November, he detached the Portuguese army from the siege and moved to support his nephew.
João sped north to meet his uncle. He was accompanied by only a handful of close friends. Their small number allowed them to move quickly, averaging more than 25 miles a day from Seville to Ciudad Rodrigo. From there, they crossed into Portugal and cautiously approached the border fortress of Almeida. They were met there by João's illegitimate half-brother, João de Portugal, grand master of the Order of Avis, on 7 December.
On 11 December, João caught up with his uncle Castro at Trancoso. Fernando Afonso de Albuquerque, master of the Order of Santiago in Portugal, was there as well, having brought fresh troops to support Castro's broken army. Albuquerque confronted João with questions as to his intentions. Portuguese chronicler Fernão Lopes wrote that the prince swore to Albuquerque that he did not intend to seize the throne by force and that he wished only to end Leonor's corrupt and incompetent government and find the truth of the rumors of her son's illegitimacy. João also swore that he would put the issue of the succession to the cortes if Afonso were illegitimate, saying "if anyone could be found who was more worthy of the crown than he was, he would willingly stand down."
Leonor was holed up at Santarém with the members of her regency council and the officers of her government. It is unclear if they knew the sorry state of the army that Castro had brought from the north, though they were aware that it numbered in the thousands and also that João was drawing more to his side, like Albuquerque, every day. The queen regent, in contrast, had a small retinue of men with her and her advisors were divided as they debated confronting João.
The queen's party suffered its first defections on 12 December when Lourenço Fogaça, chancellor of the kingdom, and Gonçalo Vasques de Azevedo, lord of Lourinhã, fled Santarém before daybreak to join João. Fogaça had served Fernando as chancellor since 1373. He had been kept in the role by Leonor, but he was well-known as Fernando's most loyal servant. Azevedo was a more slippery character. He had discovered Leonor's affair with the Galician nobleman Juan Fernández de Andeiro in spring 1382. He was promptly arrested by the queen on trumped-up charges and was bought off with lordships and treasure. Azevedo's defection was not welcomed by João's brother, Avis, who had been arrested with Azevedo in 1382 but had not allowed himself to be bought off. Still, Azevedo had been Fernando's longest-serving advisor and he had cemented Leonor's control of the government with his support. His defection to João was too important for the prince to pass up.
On 26 December, Avis went to Santarém with a small retinue of men and met with Leonor. What happened there is a matter of debate. By some accounts, Avis swore oaths guaranteeing the queen's safety and her freedom, but effectively made her a prisoner once she was outside the fortress. Other accounts say that Leonor recognized the weakness of her position and surrendered herself to Avis willingly, intending to slip away from him and raise her own army at the earliest opportunity. Whatever the case, she left Santarém at Avis's request and went with her council to meet João.
João welcomed Leonor with all the courtesies typically afforded to a dowager queen and greeted each of the members of her regency council in turn. Then, he arrested the men in the queen's employ and ordered that Leonor and her ladies be confined to their quarters. Ten men were then assigned to watch Leonor through all hours of the day and night to ensure that she did not escape. On 30 December, Leonor agreed to João's demand to summon the cortes. João declared himself "guardian of the realm" that same day.
On 11 January 1384, João was met by Lisbon's leaders two miles outside the city. They formed a procession and rode into the capital together. Countless men and women crowded the gate, exploding into cheers as João entered. He was followed at some distance by Leonor, flanked by 12 men-at-arms so that physical harm did not come to her. Lisboners hurled insults at her, screaming "whore" and "adulteress" as she passed. As the crowd cheered his name, João went not with Leonor to the royal palace, which was to become her gilded prison, but to Carmo Convent, to visit Fernando's tomb there.
Afonso and Beatriz were brought into the city on the royal barge, sparing them the humiliations that their mother had suffered. This did little to cool the queen's temper. She was kept confined to her chambers for three days until, on 14 January, she was called to a meeting with João. She erupted in anger at the sight of him. She condemned João, Avis, Azevedo, and Fogaça as traitors and demanded that she be allowed to defend herself before the cortes.
João formed a new council after his meeting with the queen. At its heart were his uncle Castro, his half-brother Avis, the former chancellor Pais, and Albuquerque, the master of Santiago. It included an unusual number of clerks and lawyers, as João insisted that he was not a would-be usurper, but was his brother's true and rightful heir. His preoccupation with legalities led to the rapid rise of Pais's stepson, João das Regras, who was the brightest star of the prince's legal team. They soon decided that Leonor should be formally removed from the regency before the cortes assembled. Her son was, on paper, King Afonso V, though he was too young to exercise power. As Afonso's regent, Leonor had the power to dissolve the cortes at any time, which they feared she would do to end her own trial if it appeared she was to be convicted.
On 8 February, Castro and Albuquerque led a delegation to the bishop of Coimbra's palace, where the queen was being held ahead of the cortes. It included representatives from every level of the nobility, both secular and ecclesiastical. They presented Leonor with a letter of resignation, but she refused to consider it before speaking with João himself. The delegates returned the following morning with the prince. Leonor tried to negotiate with her former brother-in-law, but he would not debate the terms of her resignation. Outnumbered and likely fearing for her life, Leonor resigned the regency.
Compromise of Coimbra
On 10 February, the cortes assembled at Coimbra Palace, a venue chosen to ensure that its proceedings were not disrupted by the Libson mob. All of the kingdom's bishops, along with large numbers of abbots, deans, monks and priests, were in attendance. Seventy-two members of the secular nobility and many knights and squires were there as well. All the principal cities and 31 towns were represented.
João arrived at midday. He was met outside the palace by the monks of Alcobaça, a symbolic move given that João's father, King Pedro of Portugal, was buried at Alcobaça Monastery and his brother, Fernando, had been acclaimed king there. They accompanied João to church to hear mass and then organized a procession that allowed João to make an almost kingly entrance into the royal palace. A crowd formed outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the prince on his entry.
The proceedings began with a prayer from Lourenço Vicente, archbishop of Braga. Fogaça, as chancellor of the kingdom, stepped forward next. Instead of delivering an address on the state of the kingdom, as was tradition, he introduced the lawyer João das Regras, who read out the resignation letter that the queen had been forced to sign. The chancellor asked whether the men of the cortes accepted the queen's resignation from the regency. Cries of "Sim! Sim! Sim!" rang out in response. Leonor, already in João's custody for more than a month, was now officially powerless.
Fogaça returned to the floor once the cheers and shouts died down. He delivered a bleak report on the challenges facing the kingdom. The war with Castile was a disaster. The Battle of Saltes three years prior had gutted the Portuguese fleet. Unable to defend itself at sea, the kingdom had been ravaged by Castilian raiders for nearly two years. The suburbs of Lisbon had been destroyed, the rich estates that lined the Tagus had been looted and burned, and the kingdom's great herds of cattle had been rustled. Lisbon had been left dangerously exposed to direct attack, as Castile could easily blockade the mouth of the Tagus and cut the city off from the sea. In summary, the kingdom had been impoverished and terrorized, and its people were angry and hungry.
The chancellor's report was, in effect, an indictment of Leonor's government. It is possible that the report was exaggerated to retroactively justify the queen regent's forced removal, but it could not have been much of an exaggeration. The Third Fernandine War had, by all accounts, been a disaster for Portugal. The cortes demanded that those responsible for the kingdom's misfortune be held accountable.
João das Regras was called upon to read out a list of the crimes of which Leonor's councilors and the officers of her government stood accused. Twenty-three different charges were made against the queen herself, but they were not limited to her short-lived regency or even the period in which she had dominated Fernando's government. Tellingly, the list of charges began with the 1379 plot that had led João to murder his first wife, Maria Teles. This was, for João, a personal act of retribution. Leonor was accused of both slander and conspiracy for having manipulated João into believing that his wife was an adultress and subsequently leading to his crime of passion.
Leonor was charged with false imprisonment, intimidation, harassment, blackmail, and bribery for her arrest of Azevedo and Avis in the spring of 1382. She faced multiple allegations of embezzlement, malfeasance, and nepotism regarding the lavish grants she made to her supporters and for failing to defend the realm from attack. She was accused of adultery and fornication, as her long-running affair with the Galician nobleman Juan Fernández de Andeiro was made a matter of public record. The explosive accusations stunned the cortes into silence. At this point, João Cabeça de Vaca, bishop of Coimbra, declared that the queen should not be condemned without an opportunity to defend herself.
The cortes spent six days in consultations with legal advisors on how to best proceed. Martinho de Zamora, bishop of Lisbon, emerged as the queen's chief defender at this time. He lobbied members to dismiss the charges made against Leonor, but the list of crimes was too long and too grave to disarm them all.
On 16 February, the cortes declared that sufficient doubts had been raised regarding the legitimacy of Afonso that an investigation was required before any other action was taken, as its members needed to know in whose name they were assembled. A number of low-ranking figures in the services of Fernando and Leonor were called before the cortes to answer questions pertaining to Fernando's decline as well as the nature and timing of Leonor's relationship with Andeiro, including the late king's doctors and six of his valets.
Witness testimony painted a picture of a king who was ill for many years, but whose condition worsened significantly in the final two years of his life. Fernando attended to the business of state only intermittently from the spring of 1382 onward. By that summer, he was nearly crippled with pain and it became an effort for him to leave his bed. He deteriorated yet further through the winter and, by spring 1383, when Afonso was born, Fernando was completely bedridden. Leonor spent an inordinate amount of time with Andeiro through this period. The Galician had joined the king's court in late 1380 and was known to have visited Leonor in her personal chambers on more than one occasion. Andeiro was added to the king's council, which the queen controlled, and showered with treasures. It was a damning portrait of events.
Leonor's chief defender, the bishop of Lisbon, did not challenge the substance of the witness testimony and instead attacked the character of the witnesses themselves. It was highly suspect, the bishop said, that so many men would withhold so much information until João needed to undermine Leonor for personal gain. His most effective line of questioning was his simplest, as he pressed witnesses to explain why Fernando had recognized Afonso as his son and proclaimed the boy heir to the throne if in fact he had not been well enough to have fathered the child. The question ate at many members of the cortes.
The bishop of Lisbon sowed enough doubt in the proceedings to draw some support back to Leonor, which included Afonso Correia, bishop of Guarda, and Pedro Álvares Pereira, prior of Crato. Despite this, though, the testimony of Fernando's physician confirmed many people's suspicions that Afonso was a bastard born of adultery. Support for Afonso and João began to harden, polarizing the cortes.
It was clear by the final day of testimony that the cortes would depose Afonso and acclaim João as king. It was unclear, though, whether the queen's party would accept that decision or condemn the kingdom to civil war. Chancellor Fogaça was among those who had been convinced that Afonso was a bastard. Fogaça had served Fernando with distinction for many years and remained loyal to the late king's memory. He began to champion for the cause of Fernando's daughter, Beatriz. This was a lonely position for him to take. It was already unprecedented for the cortes to depose Afonso. It would be equally unprecedented for them to acclaim a queen regnant. No one cared to do both at the same time, especially for a 10-year-old girl. Despite this, Fogaça believed that Beatriz was the key to averting civil war. He brought João's closest advisors and Leonor's brothers together in a secret meeting to discuss the fates of the princess and the kingdom.
On 23 February, the cortes met to deliver its judgment. The atmosphere was tense. Two weeks of legal wrangling and testimonials of staggering corruption had robbed the assembly of the excitement that had marked its opening days. The gravity of the action that was about to be taken created an undercurrent of dread. It fell to Fogaça, as chancellor, to ask the cortes for its verdict. Afonso was declared illegitimate. As the throne was now vacant, the question of who should succeed was mooted. Unsurprisingly, João was acclaimed king of Portugal and the Algarve. The new king rose to speak briefly before calling on the assembly to meet again in a week's time, allowing for tempers to cool after the intense debate.
On 1 March, the cortes reassembled, meeting for the first time in the name of King João of Portugal. The new king's first act was to have his young son, Fernando, recognized as heir to the throne. Once the boy's position was secured, João announced his intention to wed his son to Beatriz, uniting the rival claims to the throne. Fogaça, who proposed the union, had at least secured the girl's position as future queen consort after realizing that she would never be queen regnant. In the process, he had created a new dialogue between João and Leonor's supporters that appeared to be keeping the kingdom out of civil war.
The cortes sat for two more weeks, prosecuting members of Leonor's party for their crimes. The bishop of Lisbon urged João to spare the lives of the queen's supporters. He found the new king surprisingly open to his calls for mercy. João stripped Leonor's allies of all lands, titles or treasures they had received from the crown since 1381, but allowed them to keep their lives, freedom, and all that they had gained or inherited through lawful means.
Only Leonor's lover, Andeiro, faced harsh punishment. He became a scapegoat for many of the worst excesses and failures of the queen's government. He was convicted of treason and executed. The queen herself was not formally prosecuted for any crime. She was given a sizable income and allowed the use of a number of royal palaces in exchange for her quick and quiet removal from politics. João's policy of mercy and reconciliation, as well as the betrothal of young Fernando and Beatriz, has led historians to dub the outcome of the 1384 cortes the Compromise of Coimbra.
Civil war
The mercy that João showed the queen's party in the Compromise of Coimbra burnished his reputation as a chivalric figure, but it was not popular with some of his own supporters. Many members of the lower nobility called for blood, as did João's half-brother, Avis, who was one of the new king's closest advisors. In the days following the dissolution of the cortes, the only criticism of the new king was that he had been too merciful towards those who had tried to pass off a bastard boy as King Fernando's son and heir. These critics were soon proven right.
João's second wife, Constanza Enríquez de Castilla, who was a bastard sister of the Castilian king, died giving birth to their third daughter just weeks after the cortes. The speed of events that had led João to be acclaimed king had not allowed her time to travel to Portugal, as she was too far along in her pregnancy. The king planned to ride to Castile to mourn his wife and to bring his daughters back with him. This presented those who had been dispossessed by the new regime an opportunity to return themselves to power.
On 28 April, João Afonso Telo, count of Barcelos, and Gonçalo Teles, count of Neiva, who were Leonor's two brothers, met with Pedro Muñiz de Godoy, grandmaster of the Order of Santiago, and Pedro Álvares Pereira, prior of Crato, in the bishop of Lisbon's palace. A handful of other, minor figures were there as well. Together, they plotted to ambush João, murder him, and restore Afonso to the throne.
On 18 May, the king's entourage was set upon near Fronteira by a force of about 400 men. João had perhaps 60 fighting men with him. Among them was Nuno Álvares Pereira, a knight in the king's service whose hastily-organized defense allowed João to cut his way to safety. The would-be assassins fled after the king's escape. Despite being badly outnumbered, Pereira pursued them for some distance. At least two dozen rebels were struck down in their retreat, but the conspiracy's ringleaders remained at large.
João returned to Lisbon and launched a quick counterattack on the rebels. He ordered the arrest of Martinho de Zamora, bishop of Lisbon, for his part in organizing the attack. Álvaro Pais, the former chancellor who helped lead the Lisbon revolt just months earlier, rode through the city calling on all able-bodied men to come to the king's defense. João's bastard half-brother, Avis, was given control of the city and all land surrounding it on both sides of the Tagus. Avis was charged with protecting both the capital and Prince Fernando, whose succession Avis was to ensure in the event of the king's death. João soon had an army, which was largely made up of common men from the city and, on 29 May, marched north to confront the rebels.
The rebel leaders regrouped at Guarda. Leonor was likely unaware of the plot hatched by her brothers and their co-conspirators until they arrived at the city, where she was staying as a guest of the bishop of Guarda. She threw her lot in with the rebels and gave her brothers funds with which they could raise an army. The two counts moved west to their lands near the coast.
On 21 June, João caught up with the two counts north of Porto. The royal army numbered around 4,000 men, while the rebels had perhaps 1,500. A short battle was fought on the banks of the River Leça, but the counts withdrew and neither side suffered major casualties. Pereira, who had risen high in João's favor after his quick thinking saved the king's life at Fronteira, gave chase, but he would not allow himself to be baited into mounting a direct assault after the two counts took up a highly defensible position. The rebel leaders escaped and went into hiding. Their army melted away.
On 26 June, young Afonso died. He was two years old. His death was likely the result of some common childhood illness, given the high child mortality rate and the fact that he died while in his mother's custody. The timing of his death was undeniably convenient for João, though, and rumors began to swirl that Afonso had been smothered by an agent of the king, whose critics began to call him "João o infanticídio." The attack was highly effective, as sympathy for Leonor brought new support to the rebels, who now hoped to depose João and rule the country in the name of Beatriz, whose betrothal to João's son could be easily broken in favor of a new ally.
The uprising, the king's inability to deliver a decisive blow against the rebels, and the rumors that he had ordered the murder of Afonso proved to be a toxic combination. João's reputation as a gallant, universally beloved figure was shattered. His alliance with King Juan of Castile soon came under attack as well, which further weakened João's position. Castile's devastating raids during the Third Fernandine War had not been forgotten and the Portuguese people were no longer willing to look past their king's friendship with a man who they believed was a schismatic tyrant.
Fogaça, who João had kept on as chancellor, pushed the king to open negotiations with John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. Fogaça had supported King Fernando's alliance with England and feared that Leonor could draw Gaunt into Portugal's emerging civil war by offering to wed Beatriz to Richard of Bordeaux, the girl's former betrothed. Gaunt had already begun talks to drop his claim to the Castilian throne and bring an end to Lancaster's Crusade, allowing João to forge his own alliance with the duke without completely alienating his Trastámaran allies.
In late July, Gaunt moved from Ourense to Porto, where he stayed as João's guest for two months. The duke was a spent force by this time. His campaign for the crown of Castile had ended ingloriously and he had lost both his youngest son and many of his closest friends during its course. Gaunt had neither the interest nor the ability to involve himself in João's conflict with Leonor, but he was famous in Portugal for his war against the Trastámarans, which made him a valuable ally for propaganda purposes. He negotiated the marriage of his eldest daughter, Philippa of Lancaster, to the recently-widowed João, with a dowry of 20,000 marks. The two were wed at Porto Cathedral on 6 September and Gaunt sailed from Porto to Bayonne just weeks later, having helped to legitimize João's kingship through a prestigious marriage.
On 2 October, the Roman Pope Urban VI granted dispensation for João's son to marry Beatriz. Urban also provided papers confirming that João was the legitimately-born son of King Pedro of Portugal, finally putting to rest doubts about Pedro's secret marriage to João's mother. Papal recognition of João's reign and support for the Compromise of Coimbra settled any lingering questions about the legality of the succession, but the lords who had conspired to kill the new king remained opposed to his reign.
Leonor emerged as a surprisingly powerful figurehead for the rebels. Accusations of infanticide remained a potent line of attack against João and sympathy for Leonor brought her popular support for the first time in her life. This was especially true in the inland towns of central and northern Portugal, some which openly supported the rebel cause to install Beatriz on the throne in her own right.
In April 1385, the rebels launched a punitive campaign to demonstrate the king's weakness. Their targets were highly symbolic of João's short reign. They began with burning the town of Trancoso, where João had gathered his forces before seizing the crown. The rebels moved west, laying waste to the area around Viseu before turning south toward Coimbra. They intended to take the city, where the cortes had delegitimized Afonso and proclaimed João king, but never managed to reach it.
João caught up with the rebel army at the small village of Valverde, about 20 miles south of Viseu. The two armies were evenly matched, though sources disagree as to whether they numbered at 3,000 or 5,000 men each. Lopes writes that the rebel army was weighed down with loot after having plundered areas loyal to the king. The rebels were thus reluctant to withdraw, as they would have had to abandon their stolen treasure in order to escape. Pedro Muñiz de Godoy, grandmaster of the Order of Santiago, and Pedro Álvares Pereira, prior of Crato, arranged the rebel army into a battle formation.
The prior of Crato's brother, Nuno Álvares Pereira, acted as marshal for the royal army. He advised the king to hold off an attack and to instead bait the rebels into making the first move. João refused to wait, though. He remained angry that the rebels had escaped him a year earlier and believed that a decisive victory in battle would fully legitimize his rule in the eyes of the people.
The Battle of Valverde took place on 13 May 1385. Nuno Álvares Pereira led the royal vanguard in a forward march. They advanced rapidly and took heavy casualties, but continued the attack. Royal forces were losing the initial stage of the battle until Pereira feigned a retreat. Streams of rebel men broke ranks and pursued them, despite the shouts of their commanders. Pereira then turned, surrounded his pursuers, and slaughtered them. The king ordered a second assault at once, which broke through the disorganized rebel line.
The prior of Crato tried to restore order on the front, but was killed in the fighting. Rebel resistance gave way with his death. Royal forces poured through the hole in the line. The grandmaster of the Order of Santiago fought even as the men around him broke into retreat. Rebels were not afforded the niceties that noble prisoners often enjoyed. The grandmaster would be imprisoned and executed like any lowborn man, an indignity he refused to suffer. He fought to the death insead. The royal army won in a rout. Nuno Álvares Pereira rode down the retreating rebels through the whole rest of the day. By some accounts, as many as two-thirds of the men who fought against João were dead by nightfall, including its commanders and many of its captains.
João's former brothers-in-law, the counts of Barcelos and Neiva, had not fought at Valverde and attempted to flee the kingdom when word of the rout reached them. They were caught near the border with Galicia and beheaded without trial by local authorities hoping to curry favor with the king. Leonor was also captured in flight as she attempted to cross into Castile. She was stripped of all her lands and wealth, denied all the dignities and privileges of a dowager queen, and forced into a Cistercian convent.
Aftermath
João de Castro emerged from the Battle of Valverde as the undisputed king of Portugal, ending the instability that followed Fernando's death. As king, he faced a number of difficulties resulting from his brother's disastrous final years on the throne. The most serious of these was the lingering conflict with Castile. The succession to the Castilian throne, which was the issue at the heart of Fernando's wars with Trastámaran Castile, had been settled with the collapse of the Trastámaran dynasty. This put João in an awkward position, given that he had been supported by the Trastámaran kings before taking the crown of Portugal. The new King Bernardo of Castile distrusted his western neighbor as a result. A cold relationship between the two made it difficult to rein in their respective border lords, allowing a low-grade war to rage on and off in the marches for much of the next two decades. Tensions with Castile led João to strengthen ties to England, negotiating a more formal alliance with his father-in-law, Gaunt, and the king of England in 1386, which remains in effect to this day.
A key element of João's reign was his belief that the king was first among equals with regard to the great men of the realm. He was determined to rule with the support of the nobility and he called meetings of the cortes more frequently than any of his predecessors as a result. Despite this, he faced a number of revolts throughout his reign. These were mostly minor incidents, often staged in the name of Leonor's son, Afonso, as rumors spread that the boy had been spirited away before his death and was secretly being raised in Galicia.
Conventionally pious in his life before assuming the throne, João became a fierce partisan of the Roman papacy after becoming king. His intense obedience likely stemmed from a fear that losing the support of Rome would reopen questions surrounding the legitimacy of his father's secret marriage and the series of events that had brought João to the throne in 1384. In public demonstrations of his faith, João pledged to lead a crusade to northern Africa. This likely began as empty rhetoric meant to impress the public and win allies in the church, but the idea caught the popular imagination and crusades against the Marinid Sultanate became a regular feature of the 1390s and early 1400s.
João died of an unknown ailment in 1397, aged 45. He was succeeded by his son from his first marriage, who was acclaimed King Fernando II. The last element of the Compromise of Caspe became a reality only seven months after Fernando's ascension, when he finally wed Beatriz and united their claims to the throne.
João's nemesis, the dowager Queen Leonor Teles, outlived him. The convent to which she had been sent at the end of the succession war, Lorvão Abbey, was her de facto prison until his death. She was kept under a strict house arrest and even had her movements within the abbey restricted. She was also allowed no contact with Beatriz during João's reign. It was only after Fernando II succeeded and wed Beatriz that mother and daughter were allowed to see one another again. Leonor slowly regained her liberties during her son-in-law's reign. She was free to move about, was provided with a small pension, and even appeared at court on a handful of occasions. João's widow, the dowager Queen Philippa of Lancaster, was an unlikely champion of Leonor's reentry into public life, and was even commended by the pope for the compassion she showed toward her husband's former enemy. Leonor died in 1406, aged 56.
The marriage of Fernando II and Beatriz failed to live up to the promise of the Compromise of Caspe. The king had little interest in his wife, only reluctantly wedding her many months after his coronation. He was famously promiscuous and had 18 known bastards by eight different women before he died at age 30, though his marriage to Beatriz was childless. Fernando's sexual exploits scandalized his stepmother, Philippa, with whom he had an otherwise close relationship. Fernando was so close with his stepmother, and so distant from his wife, that he routinely named Philippa as regent while he was out of the country on crusade, despite the fact that Beatriz had her own claim to the throne and could have been a capable leader.
The crown passed over Beatriz again after her husband's death in 1408, at which time Fernando's half-brother, Afonso, who was João's eldest son by his marriage to Philippa, became king. Afonso was proclaimed King Afonso V, which was a direct repudiation of Leonor's son of the same name who claimed the same regnal number during the succession war. Beatriz hardly mourned her husband's death and soon remarried against the wishes of Afonso's councilors, who feared that any child she may bear would rival Afonso's own. She sold Afonso her rights to the Portuguese crown and retired to the north of the kingdom, but her descendants would try to claim the crown a century later in the Wars of the Quinas.
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A couple days later than I hoped to have it up, but here it is.
"Prince of Chester" is fully written. I just need to finish editing and will have it up next week. The new poll will be included there.
"Prince of Chester" is fully written. I just need to finish editing and will have it up next week. The new poll will be included there.
Thank you! It's almost starting to feel like an alt-wiki space now that there's more content.
Your writing are like the pages of a history book by Ian Mortimer.
It has become a bit more narrative history than free encyclopedia, but I'm just kind of going with it 🤷♂️
Keep going, it's incredible. And the Ian Mortimer comment were a compliment. He's a excellent history writer.
A good part! Some of it we already knew ofc, but it’s nice to see the aftermath of it all 
Portugal should stabilize for a while now, and interesting that we get an alt treaty of Windsor
Portugal should stabilize for a while now, and interesting that we get an alt treaty of WindsorBut it seems we get a Portuguese War of the Roses in the 16th century. If the reformation still happens, that could mean an ever wilder addition to such a conflict
ATL Treaty of Windsor wasn't something that I was expecting myself
It was one of the very last things I added because it occurred me a couple of days ago ATL João I would be this former Trastámaran ally sitting next to the new King Bernardo ... and that would have to be a very uncomfortable place for him to be!I was thinking late-15th century, but the details are unimportant this far out. But tbh I'm more excited for Fernando II's Moroccan campaigns if we even come back to Iberia
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Ahh fair. I’m unsure whether Protestantism would even be able to take root in Portugal too. Portuguese crusades in North Africa sounds interesting! Hopefully he won’t end up like SebastianI was thinking late-15th century, but the details are unimportant this far out. But tbh I'm more excited for Fernando II's Moroccan campaigns if we even come back to Iberia
So basically Spain is getting its Wars of the Roses in the near future? Welp.
It's fun! I like the bit about Leonor being a powerful figurehead a lot
Yes, Castile will be getting its dynastic war quite a while before Portugal. I alluded to this at the end of Lancaster's Crusade, but the Trastámarans will try to make a comeback in the 1390s. OTL Enrique III will only be a young teen by that time, but in OTL he threw off his regents around this time due to the constant infighting between them. So, he strikes me as a character with strong views from a young age and I suspect that ATL Enrique will say he isn't going to accept Bernardo as king around the same age.
Portugal's dynastic troubles will come back to haunt them late in the next century. If either conflict will look like England's OTL Wars of the Roses, it will be this.
I wanted to give Leonor a brief moment where she wasn't loathed by the public
Prince of Chester
Prince of Chester
The Prince of Chester is a sobriquet for King Edward V of England. It is typically used in reference to the king's early life, especially the years of his reign in which the kingdom was led by a regency government.
William Shakespeare first referred to Edward as "the Prince of Chester" in Edward V, Part 1, in which the young king is portrayed as a perfect prince kept away from the halls of power and locked in Chester Castle by his corrupt and power-hungry councilors. This portrayal is highly dramatized, but the play's popularity has led many historians to adopt the term despite their criticism of the work that originated it.
Early life
Edward was born at Château d'Angoulême on 27 January 1365. He was the first legitimately-born child of Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales, more commonly known as the Black Prince, and was second in line to the throne of England from the moment of his birth. Edward of Angoulême's mother was Joan of Kent, suo jure countess of Kent, who was considered the most beautiful woman in England.
Aquitaine
The city of Angoulême had, like all of Angoumois, passed to the English in the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny, which ended the Edwardian Phase of the Hundred Years War. Angoumois was joined with other English lands in southwestern France to form the principality of Aquitaine, which was invested in the Black Prince. Eager to impress his new subjects, the Black Prince hosted a huge tournament to celebrate the birth of his son and heir. At least 154 lords and 706 knights attended. Even for the Black Prince, who was famous for his wild extravagance, the cost was enormous, as he paid to stable 18,000 horses and spent more than £400 on candles alone.
The Black Prince's profligacy required a fouage, or hearth tax, which was first levied in 1365. Unable to manage his finances in peacetime, though, the Black Prince's government went bankrupt in war. Gascon lords rebelled when the Black Prince tried to impose huge new taxes to cover his debts. King Charles V of France saw this as an opportunity to reconquer Aquitaine and, in 1369, opened a new phase in the Hundred Years War.
The French reconquest of Aquitaine formed the backdrop of Edward's formative years. All the known members of the prince's nursery, including his wet nurse and rocker, were Gascon women, and his first language was lenga d'òc. Edward generally lived with his mother in his earliest years. Joan would join her husband at Bordeaux when he held court there, but she preferred to reside in the castle at Angoulême when Edward's father was on campaign or attending business in other parts of the principality. Edward thus spent much of his early life at the castle in which he was born.
In September 1370, Edward contracted the plague. The first week was typically the most dangerous time for the infected, with a supermajority of deaths in the fourteenth century occurring between two and eight days after symptoms appeared. Edward became ill on 20 September and his condition grew so serious that the boy's doctors did not expect him to survive. On 29 September, though, he showed signs of recovery. It was the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel, to whom Edward would be deeply devoted through the rest of his life.
Edward sailed to England for the first time in January 1371, just months after his brush with death. His whole family was abandoning Aquitaine. The principality was collapsing, the Black Prince's health was failing, and King Edward III of England, Edward's grandfather, had lost faith in his eldest son and heir, Edward's father. Edward's uncle, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, was left to try and salvage the situation in Aquitaine.
England
Edward and his family landed at Plymouth in early January 1371. His father's fragile health had been so taxed by the journey overseas that he could not continue on to London. The family remained in Plymouth, far from the comforts provided by palatial estates, until the spring, while the Black Prince convalesced.
In late January, Edward reached the age of six. This was the final year of his infantia, the first phase of childhood in medieval scholarship. The young prince was assigned a tutor, Sir Richard Adderbury, to help him transition into his next phase of life. This was a very informal sort of education and focused on the most basic and practical parts of growing up, like how to behave in church and how to dress oneself.
A major development in Edward's life around this time was the introduction of his young royal cousins and other noble children after his family moved on from Plymouth. Edward's father had begun to suffer ill health in the late 1360s and, in an effort to hide the seriousness of his condition, he cut back on his household staff until only a few key positions remained. Edward's mother was at her husband's side constantly, and she kept Edward and his younger brother, Richard of Bordeaux, in her household. This created a tight family unit, but it isolated the two boys from other children. By contrast, Edward and Richard's cousins already knew and had developed relationships with one another. The two boys were outsiders who lacked the social skills needed to make friends among their new peers.
Edward's awkwardness around other children was compounded by the language barrier between them. The use of French in England had been in sharp decline for more than a century. By the early 1370s, it was all but abandoned by the nobility and used only at the court of Edward III. Even then, many of the old king's grandchildren, including the children of both John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley, were raised to speak English as their first language. Young Edward, however, spoke almost nothing of the English language and his Gascon accent would have made even his French sound strange.
Edward turned seven in January 1372. This marked the beginning of his pueritia, the second stage of his childhood. His lessons became more formal at this time. He was taught the Latin alphabet and, in time, he learned to read and write in English, French and Latin. Music lessons included singing and playing the harp, lute, and zither. He also received basic math instructions and physical education. His education progressed naturally, as language lessons slowly introduced the principles of grammar while basic arithmetic became the basis for accounting, which was necessary for estate management later in life. Exercise like dancing taught a courtly skill, but also improved balance, coordination and range of motion, which laid a strong foundation for combat training in adolescence. Running and wrestling were also included in physical education for this same reason.
Edward received a new tutor to help him with all this, Sir Simon Burley, who was a relative of the Black Prince's childhood tutor. He was not prestigiously educated, but was a very learned man nonetheless. His personal library, which included around two dozen books, ranked among the largest private collections in the country outside of the upper nobility. It demonstrated his wide range of interests as well, including a guide to government, a book on philosophy, four religious studies, and four romances, but its most notable inclusion was a copy of Prophetiæ Merlini. This popular work by Geoffrey of Monmouth was, at the time, said to be based on the lost prophetic writings of the legendary Merlin. Edward, who would be haunted by Merlin's prophecies later in life, almost certainly discovered Monmouth's work through Burley.
Edward was a serious student from a young age. He seemed to enjoy learning and was known to have picked up English very quickly, suggesting that he had a talent for languages. He enjoyed music and kept musicians at court constantly later in his life, but was not particularly musical himself outside of lessons. He excelled at math, but his favorite subject by far was history. His interest in the subject was such that Henry Knighton, an Augustinian canon who had written a massive four-volume history of the kingdom from the coronation of Eadgar the Peaceable in 959 through the reign of Edward III until 1366, became one of Edward's tutors in 1377.
Beyond this, Edward's childhood is largely unknown. The Black Prince continued his efforts to conceal his illness. He, Joan, Edward and Richard primarily stayed at Kennington Palace in London, the Black Prince's favorite residence. They rarely traveled, kept their household staff small and, other than doctors, allowed few visitors. These efforts were fairly effective at keeping the Black's Prince's poor health a secret, but they had the effect of obscuring young Edward from historical records until his grandfather's death.
Year of the Three Edwards
Edward's grandfather, Edward III, began to fade as he entered old age. He was senile by the mid 1370s, but briefly appeared to be in good health in early spring 1377. On 23 April, he made a memorable appearance at the annual Order of the Garter festivities at Windsor Castle, knighting almost an entire generation of young English nobles. Edward and his brother Richard were among them. In a mark of high honor, Edward was nominated for the Order of the Garter, as was his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke.
The Garter ceremony was Edward III's last major public appearance. He moved to Sheen Palace after the event and suffered a major stroke there later in the spring. He died, aged 64, on 21 June. The Black Prince succeeded him as King Edward IV of England. A two-year truce with France was scheduled to expire in just three days' time.
Edward IV had enjoyed some periods of good health in the years since his return to England, but he had overtaxed himself in presiding over the Bad Parliament in 1376 and his health had suffered as a result. His succession to the throne, the stress of the renewed war, and the events that came with his coronation finally ruined him. Just months after his father's death and his ascension to the throne, he was forced to make plans for his own death and his son's succession.
Young Edward enters the historical record in a major way during his father's 100-day reign. He played a major role in his father's coronation and was formally invested as prince of Wales at that same ceremony, then given the subsidiary titles duke of Cornwall and earl of Chester. His father may have intended to give him the title prince or duke of Aquitaine, given that Edward III had renewed English claims to the French crown when war broke out again in 1369, but this was never done.
Edward was given his own household as prince of Wales, though the chaos produced by his father taking the throne just as a truce with France expired nearly derailed its establishment. Some men were held over from his father's administration of Wales, Cornwall and Chester, while some others came from his mother's service. Edward's tutor Sir Simon Burley was made the prince's chamberlain, with the aged Poitevin exile Guichard d’Angle, whose lordship of Marans had been lost to the French, becoming the boy's new tutor. Many positions remained vacant, though, as Edward IV entered terminal decline very shortly after his coronation. He died on 29 September at just 47.
Edward was proclaimed King Edward V of England upon his father's death. He was 12 years old.
Early reign
Lancaster's regency
In his final days, Edward IV made plans for a regency so that the realm did not descend into chaos with the ascension of a boy king amidst a renewal of hostilities with France. He divided the government and the person of Edward V between the boy's two eldest surviving uncles. John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, was made lord regent and given control of royal government while Edmund of Langley, 1st duke of Aumale, was made lord protector and given custody of young Edward. This was an unusual and fairly controversial arrangement. The authority of medieval government flowed from the monarch and splitting the two in this way could have been disastrous if not for Gaunt and Langley's interests, relationships and strengths.
Edward IV, Gaunt and Langley were close friends as well as brothers. Gaunt was lord of the greatest estate in England, save the crown itself, giving him status and authority unmatched by any other man in the realm. He also had a grand opinion of the royal prerogative and Edward IV knew that Gaunt could be trusted to defend the crown against parliament, which was important to Edward after his experience in the Bad Parliament. Gaunt was very unpopular, though, and he first needed to win over his critics in the political establishment. It was not long before Gaunt's government was in full swing, though, launching major diplomatic and military campaigns in 1378.
Aumale's protectorship
Langley, unlike Gaunt, had no real interest in government. He rarely attended council meetings during his father's reign and his unremarkable record in administrative positions, which included service as constable of Dover Castle and warden of the Cinque Ports, had not resulted in any promotion to higher office. He had fared no better abroad, proving a poor leader on minor campaigns in the early 1370s, and never gained a major command. A lack of advancement did not bother him, though. He was known as a cheerful, honest man who was well-liked by all. For Edward IV, this made Langley the ideal candidate to watch over young Edward V, as Langley could be trusted not to push his own agenda on the boy while also shielding him from unpopular decisions that had to be made by the regent.
Edward V primarily resided in the royal apartments at the Tower of London in the weeks that followed his father's death and moved to Westminster Palace ahead of his coronation. He made many public appearances during this time, beginning with his father's funeral. He received a delegation of Londoners looking to make peace with the new regent, Gaunt, after years of animosity between them. He also presided over the first parliament of his reign in early 1378.
The new king could be best described as seen, but not heard, at each of these early events. His presence was a powerful symbol, but he strictly adhered to scripts given to him by his council and always deferred to his avuncular regent or to his mother, the dowager Queen Joan, on matters both big and small. Then, in late March 1378, he departed the political scene altogether and moved to Langley's estates in northern England.
Langley had not wed a wealthy heiress, as his four brothers had, and had to rely on royal grants to sustain himself. Edward III had made Langley, who was his fourth surviving son, earl of Cambridge and awarded him lands totaling just £650 per annum. Edward IV heaped lands and titles upon his brother, though. At Edward IV's coronation, Langley was made duke of Aumale. He was given the lordship of Holderness as well as lands confiscated from their brother-in-law, the lord of Coucy, to support his new rank. Langley was now in control of lands worth around £1,500 per annum. His new lands were concentrated in the north of the country, which allowed Edward V to grow up far from the poisonous politics of London and Westminster.
Edward V had his own household as king. The privy seal, the receiver general, and the chamberlain were its main offices. Langley, as lord protector, acted as a sort of superintendent, but the easy-going duke deferred to his sister-in-law, the dowager queen, on these major appointments. John Fordham, dean of Wells, who was Edward IV's secretary for many years, was made keeper of the privy seal. Sir Richard Adderbury, who had been part of Edward IV's retinue since the mid 1350s and Edward V's first tutor, was appointed receiver general. Sir Aubrey de Vere, another longtime retainer of Edward IV's, was named lord chamberlain.
Edward's household attracted a number of young nobles. Ostensibly, these boys were educated alongside their young king to learn how they could best serve him in the future, but it could more accurately be said that they were put there by their powerful fathers to forge important political connections. These young nobles included Edward's cousin Henry of Bolingbroke, who was Gaunt's son and heir, their more distant cousins John de Mowbray, 5th baron Mowbray, and Thomas de Mowbray, and a cousin by marriage, Robert de Vere, 9th earl of Oxford. It also drew many boys from outside the royal family, including Ralph Stafford, heir to the earldom of Stafford, the teenaged John Beaumont, 4th baron Beaumont, and Henry Percy, Thomas Percy, and Ralph Percy, who were all sons of Henry Percy, 4th baron Percy.
Edward's younger brother, Richard of Bordeaux, was absent, though. Joan kept Richard as part of her own household, as the boy was only 10. Edward and Richard's separation was likely painful for them both, given the close relationship they had. Edward's former tutor, Sir Simon Burley, left his service to join Joan's household as Richard of Bordeaux's tutor.
Also absent from the king's household were Sir Thomas Holland and John Holland, his older half-brothers from his mother's first marriage. Sir Thomas Holland was a competent and reliable young man. He would serve Gaunt in various positions throughout the regency, particularly in southern England and in Brittany, which precluded him from joining the king's personal service. Thomas's younger brother John Holland, on the other hand, was an unpredictable and violent youth whose future was uncertain, but who Gaunt kept in his personal service so as to keep an eye on the boy. This was done as a favor to Joan, who was close with Gaunt.
Edward had spent his whole life until his succession as part of a strong nuclear family, but in a matter of months he lost his father and was separated from his mother and brother. Not even his half-brothers were nearby. Edward was lonely, despite being surrounded by boys his own age, and was overwhelmed by the expectations that were being put upon him. He isolated himself from the boys of his household to try and escape the pressure of living up to the legends that his hero father and warrior king grandfather had left behind. He spent a considerable amount of time in the abbeys and libraries of wherever he was staying at any given time.
Adolescence
In January 1379, Edward entered adolescentia, the third and final stage of childhood in the medieval world. It brought more serious study and exercise. Formal lessons continued while adult responsibilities were slowly introduced, which allowed Edward to apply what he was learning to real life situations. Royal clerks supplemented math tutors, as lessons began to include reviews of the king's household accounts. Corresponding with magnates became the topic of English lessons. Physical education was exclusively focused on military training, which included fighting and riding.
The biggest change was in the area of government. Edward's tutors had taught him the history of the kingdom and the role of the king, but these were abstract lessons. He had attended every meeting of the great council and parliament, but only in a ceremonial role. Now, at age 14, the young king began to attend more regular council meetings and was invited to share his opinion on matters facing the realm. He rarely engaged in such discussion, though. Edward was a cautious, meek and self-conscious boy. He feared disappointing people and remained highly deferential to his avuncular regent as a result.
Edward's first independent decisions were noncontroversial. He began to show his devotion to Saint Michael the Archangel, whose feast day was one of four quarter-days in England, when rents were paid and terms for contracts were generally dated to begin or end. Michaelmas had frequently been an opening day for parliaments since the late thirteenth century, and was slowly becoming the default date for fall assemblies. The young king invited members of both the Lords and Commons to a grand feast when they assembled on 29 September 1379. The Michaelmas feast for members of parliament became a tradition during his reign and continues on to this day.
In early 1380, Edward raised his youngest uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, to the dukedom of Gloucester. The young king was especially close with Woodstock, who was only 10 years older than Edward and closer to him in age than either of the king's half-brothers. Woodstock's surprise success on a 1378-9 campaign impressed Edward, who had previously only known the failure of English arms in his lifetime. Woodstock was given all the lands that had once belonged to his sister, Isabella, to support his new rank. These lands had revenues in excess of £1,000 per annum, which was a substantial grant considering that the crown was fighting a war on two fronts and hard-pressed to find new sources of revenue. Such favoritism was forgiven only because of the new duke's royal lineage, though Edward would be embarrassed by the favor he had shown Woodstock following the disastrous end of Gloucester's chevauchée.
The Revolt of the Towns drew Edward into the political arena in a serious way for the first time, though he was absent from its major events. The 1381 anti-tax revolt was largely confined to the southwest, while the king was residing in the north at the time, but the destruction and violence visited upon Essex and Kent was extraordinary. Parliament met in fall 1381 to deal with issues lingering from the revolt, but it was consumed by debate over Gaunt's plans to invade Castile. The Commons, for the first time, began to advocate for a drawdown in forces abroad so as to avoid raising taxes and risking another revolt. Gaunt, believing that France's ally, Castile, could be knocked out of the war, strongly pushed to expand the war effort in the Iberian peninsula. The debate grew so intense that, at one point, the Commons threatened to impeach Gaunt and remove him from the regency. Upon hearing this, Edward rose to give an impromptu address supporting Gaunt's leadership. Historians have noted the irony that Edward's first real exercise of political will was to declare that he wished for someone else to continue exercising power on his behalf.
Edward's support for Gaunt at the parliament of 1381 may have led Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, to declare a crusade on Castile, as the bishop appears to have interpreted the king's endorsement of Gaunt's regency as an endorsement of Gaunt's proposed campaign to Castile. This led to Lancaster's Crusade in 1382.
Gaunt's expedition to Castile begged the question of how to manage the government in his absence. The king, age 17 in 1382, was expected to take a greater role, as his father and kingly grandfather had both distinguished themselves around that age. Edward was a quiet, thoughtful young man, though. He preferred the seclusion of Langley's country estates over the hustle and bustle that followed Gaunt as lord regent and as pretender king of Castile. Gaunt recognized that his nephew may not be ready to reign and, in a compromise designed to secure funding for the Castilian campaign, he agreed that a regency council should be formed and that the Commons be allowed to appoint half its membership.
Gaunt set sail for Castile on 9 July. He remained lord regent on paper, but the government of the realm passed to the new regency council. Its membership included two earls (Thomas Beauchamp, 12th earl of Warwick, and Hugh Stafford, 2nd earl of Stafford), two barons (Henry Percy, 4th baron Percy, and Guy de Bryan, 1st baron Bryan), four bishops (William Courtenay, bishop of London, John Harewell, bishop of Bath and Wells, Ralph Ergham, bishop of Salisbury, and Thomas Appleby, bishop of Carlisle), two bannerets (Sir John Devereaux and Sir Hugh Segrave), and two other knights (Sir Ralph Ferrers and Sir William Neville).
The new regency council was drawn heavily from the ranks of men who had served Edward IV during his long career as the prince of Wales. All four of its knights had been retainers of the Black Prince, as had Stafford before the inheritance of his earldom, and the bishop of Bath and Wells had served in many administrative positions in Aquitaine. Gaunt, who had been at the center of English politics for five years, was rather underrepresented, as Lancastrian supporters made up the bulk of the fighting force that had set sail for Castile. Only lord Bryan and the bishop of Salisbury could be described as Lancastrian partisans, and their influence was countered by lord Percy, who had become one of Gaunt's chief antagonists.
Richard Scrope, 1st baron Scrope of Bolton, vacated the chancellorship as the new regency council was installed. He was a close ally of Gaunt's and joined the duke on his campaign to Castile. This was a major loss, as Scrope was one of the ablest men in government. He was replaced by Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury. Sudbury was an affable man and an experienced diplomat and lawyer, but he would soon prove to be a poor chancellor. More and more responsibility was put onto the new regency council, as Edward failed to step into the larger role that was expected of him. This led to conflict between the king's councilors and members of his household. As the highest-ranking officer in government, Sudbury strove to mediate disputes, but was too weak to manage the personalities involved, which led to dysfunction.
Edward moved north as the government broke down in the absence of a strong leader. He resided primarily at Chester Castle over the next two years, which inspired Shakespeare to dub him the "prince of Chester" more than two centuries later. In Shakespeare's version of events, Edward is an unwitting prisoner at Chester. He lives in ignorance of the way his council is ruining the kingdom before freeing himself and banishing his councilors when he learns the truth. In reality, his stay at Chester Castle was his first step towards genuine independence.
Langley, whose oversight of the king's household had always been laid back, took an even lighter touch after the king's move to Chester. Many of the young noble boys who had joined the king's household in hopes of advancement fell to the wayside. Royal accounts books show only a small number of young men outside Edward's personal staff were lodged at the castle. These included Sir Ralph Stafford, heir to the earldom of Stafford, John de Mowbray, 5th baron Mowbray, and Sir James Berners, who was a former ward of Edward's father. These three were Edward's closest companions and among the very few friends that he had made since he had been separated from his younger brother, Richard.
The quiet interests that Edward had developed as a shy young boy stayed with him at Chester. He began to amass a large collection of books, which were a considerable expense at the time. He attended mass quite frequently, though he was not a zealot. He enjoyed debating the complexities and contradictions of church legal doctrines as well as the more philosophical aspects of theology. He took his physical training just as seriously as he did his studies. He enjoyed hunting, was an especially skilled rider, and it was said that he was happier among dogs and horses than among men. He did not attend parties and rose early in the day, dragging his companions from their beds to hunt and ride at daybreak or earlier.
Edward grew into a handsome young man. He was of average height and strong-limbed, despite his slim build. He inherited the typical Plantagenet complexion, but was not quite so fair as his father. His eyes were said to be blue, gold and green. His hair was described as auburn and blond in color and wavy in texture. He kept his hair long and his face clean-shaven throughout his life. He spoke only sparingly, which gave him a quiet mystique.
Edward continued to play a ceremonial role at major events, like parliaments and great councils, but he deferred decisions to his chancellor and regency council whenever possible. He attended meetings of the king's council only sporadically, typically when he was journeying south to visit his mother or attend to other business of the realm. The young king's disengagement and the dysfunction of the regency council incensed the Commons, which flatly refused to grant further taxation. Sudbury, lacking the grandeur and power that Gaunt brought to bear in his disputes with the Commons, could hardly bully them into submission. The government, teetering on bankruptcy, was forced to open talks with the French in early 1383.
King Charles VI of France was three years younger than Edward and the regency government that was led by Charles's uncles was not in much better shape than the English government, as it was also starved for revenues and undergoing a major change in leadership. Louis I, duke of Anjou, had served as regent of France since 1380, but had left the kingdom in 1382 to pursue the crown of Naples. His departure left his younger brother, Philippe II, duke of Burgundy, in control of government. Burgundy's first order of business was to restore royal finances, which predisposed him to pausing hostilities with England. The two sides tried to negotiate a five-year truce, but they were hung up by their allies. A six-month truce was negotiated in summer 1383. It was extended six more months in early 1384, and then extended for another year.
Wonderful Parliament
In September 1384, parliament met at Westminster. It was contentious from the start, as the king's councilors came under withering criticism from all sides. The Commons took aim at the sorry state of financial affairs. The truce with France was in its second year, but the government was still deep in debt, which beggared belief. The Lords raged against the truce itself, as the upper nobility continued to support war against France.
The Commons received a detailed financial report. The crushing cost of maintaining a string of fortresses in northern France—Brest, Saint-Malo, Cherbourg, and Calais—had been alleviated somewhat by the truce, but the cost of defending the Scottish march had exploded. As a result, crown revenues barely covered expenditures, despite the suspension of hostilities in France.
The frustration of the Lords was given voice by Richard Fitzalan, 4th earl of Arundel. One of the kingdom's most prominent war hawks, Arundel lambasted the truce as a cowardly agreement negotiated by a group of incompetents. It was true, he said, that England's position in northern France had collapsed with the betrayal of the duke of Brittany and the failure of Gloucester's chevauchée, but he called the rebels of Ghent potential allies who had been left to their own devices by the rush to secure a ceasefire. Such shortsightedness had weakened the rebels, strengthened France, and put the whole of England in jeopardy, he declared.
Arundel's speech was outrageous, but effective. The Lords sat in stunned silence as the earl returned to his seat. The king grew red in the face. Arundel may have addressed his criticisms at the council, but this was merely a formality. His criticism was meant for the 19-year-old king who had been practically absent from government. It was, in effect, a public scolding of the king by one of the greatest men in the realm, and the king knew it. Sudbury tried to return to the matters at hand, reiterating that the council had decided to pause the war because of the financial pressures still bearing down on the crown. He asked the Lords whether they supported renewing hostilities even knowing that there was no money for an offensive campaign. Edward, deeply embarrassed, told the chancellor that he had heard enough from the Lords on the matter, though. A new, uncomfortable silence fell over the assembly.
The king declared that he did not wish to make war on fellow Christians, but that "honor, propriety and dignity" demanded that he fight for his "just rights and inheritances." He recalled the lengths to which his grandfather, father, and uncle had gone in France, Aquitaine, and Castile, respectively, and swore that the three of them "never went so far as I will do, and if it please God and Saint Michael, I will die in the attempt." Edward finally and fully accepted the role he had been born to play as a medieval king. The Lords exploded with cheers and applause.
Edward reasserted his rights not just to the kingdom of France and principality of Aquitaine, but to the duchy of Normandy, the counties of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, the county of Ponthieu, and the overlordship of Brittany and Scotland. He was declaring himself to be the greatest secular lord in western Europe and calling for the disinheritance of all the Valois princes of the blood, but he shifted the onus of war onto his "cousin of France," Charles VI, as he did. He called on Charles to recognize him as his rightful king and to vacate the throne immediately or to adhere to the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny by withdrawing forces from Aquitaine at once. Then, he said, they could work together to heal the church and lead a crusade to liberate the Holy Land.
Edward was articulating a grand vision for his reign, which required a massive investment in war for years to come. In this, he revealed himself to be a fairly conventional king, as wars for glory, God, land and prestige were a traditional part of medieval kingship. He also revealed himself to be a realist, as the first action he proposed to make this vision a reality was not to lead an invasion of France, but to lead an invasion of Scotland.
England and Scotland had negotiated a long truce in the early 1370s, which had held up remarkably well by the standards of the day. The Scots had grown increasingly belligerent since 1377, though, and the cost of defending the march had grown from just £1,000 per annum in the final year of Edward III's reign to more than £20,000 per annum by 1384. The English could not afford to mount a continental campaign until it restored peace to its northern border and lowered the cost of its defenses. Edward proposed to lead the invasion himself when the truce expired in summer 1385, which elicited yet more cheers and applause in parliament.
Entering adulthood
The parliament of 1384 is sometimes known as the Wonderful Parliament for the way in which Edward finally stepped into a leadership role in his own government, effectively ending the regency era. As such, historical discussion around the "prince of Chester" as it relates to the king's early life tends to end with its proceedings, though it should be noted that Edward would not formally reach his majority or dissolve the regency council until 1386. His reasons for keeping the council in existence, even as he took effective control of government himself, is unknown.
Edward's regent, Gaunt, returned to England in spring 1385. Lancaster's Crusade had failed to install Gaunt as king of Castile or return Castile to Roman obedience, but it had succeeded in breaking Castile's alliance with France. Gaunt remained lord regent as a result of Edward not formally claiming his majority, but never exercised power as such again. Instead, he signed documents only as duke of Lancaster and lord high steward of England, an office which he had held since the 1360s. Gaunt's regency would formally end when Edward turned 21 in January 1386.
The Prince of Chester is a sobriquet for King Edward V of England. It is typically used in reference to the king's early life, especially the years of his reign in which the kingdom was led by a regency government.
William Shakespeare first referred to Edward as "the Prince of Chester" in Edward V, Part 1, in which the young king is portrayed as a perfect prince kept away from the halls of power and locked in Chester Castle by his corrupt and power-hungry councilors. This portrayal is highly dramatized, but the play's popularity has led many historians to adopt the term despite their criticism of the work that originated it.
Early life
Edward was born at Château d'Angoulême on 27 January 1365. He was the first legitimately-born child of Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales, more commonly known as the Black Prince, and was second in line to the throne of England from the moment of his birth. Edward of Angoulême's mother was Joan of Kent, suo jure countess of Kent, who was considered the most beautiful woman in England.
Aquitaine
The city of Angoulême had, like all of Angoumois, passed to the English in the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny, which ended the Edwardian Phase of the Hundred Years War. Angoumois was joined with other English lands in southwestern France to form the principality of Aquitaine, which was invested in the Black Prince. Eager to impress his new subjects, the Black Prince hosted a huge tournament to celebrate the birth of his son and heir. At least 154 lords and 706 knights attended. Even for the Black Prince, who was famous for his wild extravagance, the cost was enormous, as he paid to stable 18,000 horses and spent more than £400 on candles alone.
The Black Prince's profligacy required a fouage, or hearth tax, which was first levied in 1365. Unable to manage his finances in peacetime, though, the Black Prince's government went bankrupt in war. Gascon lords rebelled when the Black Prince tried to impose huge new taxes to cover his debts. King Charles V of France saw this as an opportunity to reconquer Aquitaine and, in 1369, opened a new phase in the Hundred Years War.
The French reconquest of Aquitaine formed the backdrop of Edward's formative years. All the known members of the prince's nursery, including his wet nurse and rocker, were Gascon women, and his first language was lenga d'òc. Edward generally lived with his mother in his earliest years. Joan would join her husband at Bordeaux when he held court there, but she preferred to reside in the castle at Angoulême when Edward's father was on campaign or attending business in other parts of the principality. Edward thus spent much of his early life at the castle in which he was born.
In September 1370, Edward contracted the plague. The first week was typically the most dangerous time for the infected, with a supermajority of deaths in the fourteenth century occurring between two and eight days after symptoms appeared. Edward became ill on 20 September and his condition grew so serious that the boy's doctors did not expect him to survive. On 29 September, though, he showed signs of recovery. It was the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel, to whom Edward would be deeply devoted through the rest of his life.
Edward sailed to England for the first time in January 1371, just months after his brush with death. His whole family was abandoning Aquitaine. The principality was collapsing, the Black Prince's health was failing, and King Edward III of England, Edward's grandfather, had lost faith in his eldest son and heir, Edward's father. Edward's uncle, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, was left to try and salvage the situation in Aquitaine.
England
Edward and his family landed at Plymouth in early January 1371. His father's fragile health had been so taxed by the journey overseas that he could not continue on to London. The family remained in Plymouth, far from the comforts provided by palatial estates, until the spring, while the Black Prince convalesced.
In late January, Edward reached the age of six. This was the final year of his infantia, the first phase of childhood in medieval scholarship. The young prince was assigned a tutor, Sir Richard Adderbury, to help him transition into his next phase of life. This was a very informal sort of education and focused on the most basic and practical parts of growing up, like how to behave in church and how to dress oneself.
A major development in Edward's life around this time was the introduction of his young royal cousins and other noble children after his family moved on from Plymouth. Edward's father had begun to suffer ill health in the late 1360s and, in an effort to hide the seriousness of his condition, he cut back on his household staff until only a few key positions remained. Edward's mother was at her husband's side constantly, and she kept Edward and his younger brother, Richard of Bordeaux, in her household. This created a tight family unit, but it isolated the two boys from other children. By contrast, Edward and Richard's cousins already knew and had developed relationships with one another. The two boys were outsiders who lacked the social skills needed to make friends among their new peers.
Edward's awkwardness around other children was compounded by the language barrier between them. The use of French in England had been in sharp decline for more than a century. By the early 1370s, it was all but abandoned by the nobility and used only at the court of Edward III. Even then, many of the old king's grandchildren, including the children of both John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley, were raised to speak English as their first language. Young Edward, however, spoke almost nothing of the English language and his Gascon accent would have made even his French sound strange.
Edward turned seven in January 1372. This marked the beginning of his pueritia, the second stage of his childhood. His lessons became more formal at this time. He was taught the Latin alphabet and, in time, he learned to read and write in English, French and Latin. Music lessons included singing and playing the harp, lute, and zither. He also received basic math instructions and physical education. His education progressed naturally, as language lessons slowly introduced the principles of grammar while basic arithmetic became the basis for accounting, which was necessary for estate management later in life. Exercise like dancing taught a courtly skill, but also improved balance, coordination and range of motion, which laid a strong foundation for combat training in adolescence. Running and wrestling were also included in physical education for this same reason.
Edward received a new tutor to help him with all this, Sir Simon Burley, who was a relative of the Black Prince's childhood tutor. He was not prestigiously educated, but was a very learned man nonetheless. His personal library, which included around two dozen books, ranked among the largest private collections in the country outside of the upper nobility. It demonstrated his wide range of interests as well, including a guide to government, a book on philosophy, four religious studies, and four romances, but its most notable inclusion was a copy of Prophetiæ Merlini. This popular work by Geoffrey of Monmouth was, at the time, said to be based on the lost prophetic writings of the legendary Merlin. Edward, who would be haunted by Merlin's prophecies later in life, almost certainly discovered Monmouth's work through Burley.
Edward was a serious student from a young age. He seemed to enjoy learning and was known to have picked up English very quickly, suggesting that he had a talent for languages. He enjoyed music and kept musicians at court constantly later in his life, but was not particularly musical himself outside of lessons. He excelled at math, but his favorite subject by far was history. His interest in the subject was such that Henry Knighton, an Augustinian canon who had written a massive four-volume history of the kingdom from the coronation of Eadgar the Peaceable in 959 through the reign of Edward III until 1366, became one of Edward's tutors in 1377.
Beyond this, Edward's childhood is largely unknown. The Black Prince continued his efforts to conceal his illness. He, Joan, Edward and Richard primarily stayed at Kennington Palace in London, the Black Prince's favorite residence. They rarely traveled, kept their household staff small and, other than doctors, allowed few visitors. These efforts were fairly effective at keeping the Black's Prince's poor health a secret, but they had the effect of obscuring young Edward from historical records until his grandfather's death.
Year of the Three Edwards
Edward's grandfather, Edward III, began to fade as he entered old age. He was senile by the mid 1370s, but briefly appeared to be in good health in early spring 1377. On 23 April, he made a memorable appearance at the annual Order of the Garter festivities at Windsor Castle, knighting almost an entire generation of young English nobles. Edward and his brother Richard were among them. In a mark of high honor, Edward was nominated for the Order of the Garter, as was his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke.
The Garter ceremony was Edward III's last major public appearance. He moved to Sheen Palace after the event and suffered a major stroke there later in the spring. He died, aged 64, on 21 June. The Black Prince succeeded him as King Edward IV of England. A two-year truce with France was scheduled to expire in just three days' time.
Edward IV had enjoyed some periods of good health in the years since his return to England, but he had overtaxed himself in presiding over the Bad Parliament in 1376 and his health had suffered as a result. His succession to the throne, the stress of the renewed war, and the events that came with his coronation finally ruined him. Just months after his father's death and his ascension to the throne, he was forced to make plans for his own death and his son's succession.
Young Edward enters the historical record in a major way during his father's 100-day reign. He played a major role in his father's coronation and was formally invested as prince of Wales at that same ceremony, then given the subsidiary titles duke of Cornwall and earl of Chester. His father may have intended to give him the title prince or duke of Aquitaine, given that Edward III had renewed English claims to the French crown when war broke out again in 1369, but this was never done.
Edward was given his own household as prince of Wales, though the chaos produced by his father taking the throne just as a truce with France expired nearly derailed its establishment. Some men were held over from his father's administration of Wales, Cornwall and Chester, while some others came from his mother's service. Edward's tutor Sir Simon Burley was made the prince's chamberlain, with the aged Poitevin exile Guichard d’Angle, whose lordship of Marans had been lost to the French, becoming the boy's new tutor. Many positions remained vacant, though, as Edward IV entered terminal decline very shortly after his coronation. He died on 29 September at just 47.
Edward was proclaimed King Edward V of England upon his father's death. He was 12 years old.
Early reign
Lancaster's regency
In his final days, Edward IV made plans for a regency so that the realm did not descend into chaos with the ascension of a boy king amidst a renewal of hostilities with France. He divided the government and the person of Edward V between the boy's two eldest surviving uncles. John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, was made lord regent and given control of royal government while Edmund of Langley, 1st duke of Aumale, was made lord protector and given custody of young Edward. This was an unusual and fairly controversial arrangement. The authority of medieval government flowed from the monarch and splitting the two in this way could have been disastrous if not for Gaunt and Langley's interests, relationships and strengths.
Edward IV, Gaunt and Langley were close friends as well as brothers. Gaunt was lord of the greatest estate in England, save the crown itself, giving him status and authority unmatched by any other man in the realm. He also had a grand opinion of the royal prerogative and Edward IV knew that Gaunt could be trusted to defend the crown against parliament, which was important to Edward after his experience in the Bad Parliament. Gaunt was very unpopular, though, and he first needed to win over his critics in the political establishment. It was not long before Gaunt's government was in full swing, though, launching major diplomatic and military campaigns in 1378.
Aumale's protectorship
Langley, unlike Gaunt, had no real interest in government. He rarely attended council meetings during his father's reign and his unremarkable record in administrative positions, which included service as constable of Dover Castle and warden of the Cinque Ports, had not resulted in any promotion to higher office. He had fared no better abroad, proving a poor leader on minor campaigns in the early 1370s, and never gained a major command. A lack of advancement did not bother him, though. He was known as a cheerful, honest man who was well-liked by all. For Edward IV, this made Langley the ideal candidate to watch over young Edward V, as Langley could be trusted not to push his own agenda on the boy while also shielding him from unpopular decisions that had to be made by the regent.
Edward V primarily resided in the royal apartments at the Tower of London in the weeks that followed his father's death and moved to Westminster Palace ahead of his coronation. He made many public appearances during this time, beginning with his father's funeral. He received a delegation of Londoners looking to make peace with the new regent, Gaunt, after years of animosity between them. He also presided over the first parliament of his reign in early 1378.
The new king could be best described as seen, but not heard, at each of these early events. His presence was a powerful symbol, but he strictly adhered to scripts given to him by his council and always deferred to his avuncular regent or to his mother, the dowager Queen Joan, on matters both big and small. Then, in late March 1378, he departed the political scene altogether and moved to Langley's estates in northern England.
Langley had not wed a wealthy heiress, as his four brothers had, and had to rely on royal grants to sustain himself. Edward III had made Langley, who was his fourth surviving son, earl of Cambridge and awarded him lands totaling just £650 per annum. Edward IV heaped lands and titles upon his brother, though. At Edward IV's coronation, Langley was made duke of Aumale. He was given the lordship of Holderness as well as lands confiscated from their brother-in-law, the lord of Coucy, to support his new rank. Langley was now in control of lands worth around £1,500 per annum. His new lands were concentrated in the north of the country, which allowed Edward V to grow up far from the poisonous politics of London and Westminster.
Edward V had his own household as king. The privy seal, the receiver general, and the chamberlain were its main offices. Langley, as lord protector, acted as a sort of superintendent, but the easy-going duke deferred to his sister-in-law, the dowager queen, on these major appointments. John Fordham, dean of Wells, who was Edward IV's secretary for many years, was made keeper of the privy seal. Sir Richard Adderbury, who had been part of Edward IV's retinue since the mid 1350s and Edward V's first tutor, was appointed receiver general. Sir Aubrey de Vere, another longtime retainer of Edward IV's, was named lord chamberlain.
Edward's household attracted a number of young nobles. Ostensibly, these boys were educated alongside their young king to learn how they could best serve him in the future, but it could more accurately be said that they were put there by their powerful fathers to forge important political connections. These young nobles included Edward's cousin Henry of Bolingbroke, who was Gaunt's son and heir, their more distant cousins John de Mowbray, 5th baron Mowbray, and Thomas de Mowbray, and a cousin by marriage, Robert de Vere, 9th earl of Oxford. It also drew many boys from outside the royal family, including Ralph Stafford, heir to the earldom of Stafford, the teenaged John Beaumont, 4th baron Beaumont, and Henry Percy, Thomas Percy, and Ralph Percy, who were all sons of Henry Percy, 4th baron Percy.
Edward's younger brother, Richard of Bordeaux, was absent, though. Joan kept Richard as part of her own household, as the boy was only 10. Edward and Richard's separation was likely painful for them both, given the close relationship they had. Edward's former tutor, Sir Simon Burley, left his service to join Joan's household as Richard of Bordeaux's tutor.
Also absent from the king's household were Sir Thomas Holland and John Holland, his older half-brothers from his mother's first marriage. Sir Thomas Holland was a competent and reliable young man. He would serve Gaunt in various positions throughout the regency, particularly in southern England and in Brittany, which precluded him from joining the king's personal service. Thomas's younger brother John Holland, on the other hand, was an unpredictable and violent youth whose future was uncertain, but who Gaunt kept in his personal service so as to keep an eye on the boy. This was done as a favor to Joan, who was close with Gaunt.
Edward had spent his whole life until his succession as part of a strong nuclear family, but in a matter of months he lost his father and was separated from his mother and brother. Not even his half-brothers were nearby. Edward was lonely, despite being surrounded by boys his own age, and was overwhelmed by the expectations that were being put upon him. He isolated himself from the boys of his household to try and escape the pressure of living up to the legends that his hero father and warrior king grandfather had left behind. He spent a considerable amount of time in the abbeys and libraries of wherever he was staying at any given time.
Adolescence
In January 1379, Edward entered adolescentia, the third and final stage of childhood in the medieval world. It brought more serious study and exercise. Formal lessons continued while adult responsibilities were slowly introduced, which allowed Edward to apply what he was learning to real life situations. Royal clerks supplemented math tutors, as lessons began to include reviews of the king's household accounts. Corresponding with magnates became the topic of English lessons. Physical education was exclusively focused on military training, which included fighting and riding.
The biggest change was in the area of government. Edward's tutors had taught him the history of the kingdom and the role of the king, but these were abstract lessons. He had attended every meeting of the great council and parliament, but only in a ceremonial role. Now, at age 14, the young king began to attend more regular council meetings and was invited to share his opinion on matters facing the realm. He rarely engaged in such discussion, though. Edward was a cautious, meek and self-conscious boy. He feared disappointing people and remained highly deferential to his avuncular regent as a result.
Edward's first independent decisions were noncontroversial. He began to show his devotion to Saint Michael the Archangel, whose feast day was one of four quarter-days in England, when rents were paid and terms for contracts were generally dated to begin or end. Michaelmas had frequently been an opening day for parliaments since the late thirteenth century, and was slowly becoming the default date for fall assemblies. The young king invited members of both the Lords and Commons to a grand feast when they assembled on 29 September 1379. The Michaelmas feast for members of parliament became a tradition during his reign and continues on to this day.
In early 1380, Edward raised his youngest uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, to the dukedom of Gloucester. The young king was especially close with Woodstock, who was only 10 years older than Edward and closer to him in age than either of the king's half-brothers. Woodstock's surprise success on a 1378-9 campaign impressed Edward, who had previously only known the failure of English arms in his lifetime. Woodstock was given all the lands that had once belonged to his sister, Isabella, to support his new rank. These lands had revenues in excess of £1,000 per annum, which was a substantial grant considering that the crown was fighting a war on two fronts and hard-pressed to find new sources of revenue. Such favoritism was forgiven only because of the new duke's royal lineage, though Edward would be embarrassed by the favor he had shown Woodstock following the disastrous end of Gloucester's chevauchée.
The Revolt of the Towns drew Edward into the political arena in a serious way for the first time, though he was absent from its major events. The 1381 anti-tax revolt was largely confined to the southwest, while the king was residing in the north at the time, but the destruction and violence visited upon Essex and Kent was extraordinary. Parliament met in fall 1381 to deal with issues lingering from the revolt, but it was consumed by debate over Gaunt's plans to invade Castile. The Commons, for the first time, began to advocate for a drawdown in forces abroad so as to avoid raising taxes and risking another revolt. Gaunt, believing that France's ally, Castile, could be knocked out of the war, strongly pushed to expand the war effort in the Iberian peninsula. The debate grew so intense that, at one point, the Commons threatened to impeach Gaunt and remove him from the regency. Upon hearing this, Edward rose to give an impromptu address supporting Gaunt's leadership. Historians have noted the irony that Edward's first real exercise of political will was to declare that he wished for someone else to continue exercising power on his behalf.
Edward's support for Gaunt at the parliament of 1381 may have led Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, to declare a crusade on Castile, as the bishop appears to have interpreted the king's endorsement of Gaunt's regency as an endorsement of Gaunt's proposed campaign to Castile. This led to Lancaster's Crusade in 1382.
Gaunt's expedition to Castile begged the question of how to manage the government in his absence. The king, age 17 in 1382, was expected to take a greater role, as his father and kingly grandfather had both distinguished themselves around that age. Edward was a quiet, thoughtful young man, though. He preferred the seclusion of Langley's country estates over the hustle and bustle that followed Gaunt as lord regent and as pretender king of Castile. Gaunt recognized that his nephew may not be ready to reign and, in a compromise designed to secure funding for the Castilian campaign, he agreed that a regency council should be formed and that the Commons be allowed to appoint half its membership.
Gaunt set sail for Castile on 9 July. He remained lord regent on paper, but the government of the realm passed to the new regency council. Its membership included two earls (Thomas Beauchamp, 12th earl of Warwick, and Hugh Stafford, 2nd earl of Stafford), two barons (Henry Percy, 4th baron Percy, and Guy de Bryan, 1st baron Bryan), four bishops (William Courtenay, bishop of London, John Harewell, bishop of Bath and Wells, Ralph Ergham, bishop of Salisbury, and Thomas Appleby, bishop of Carlisle), two bannerets (Sir John Devereaux and Sir Hugh Segrave), and two other knights (Sir Ralph Ferrers and Sir William Neville).
The new regency council was drawn heavily from the ranks of men who had served Edward IV during his long career as the prince of Wales. All four of its knights had been retainers of the Black Prince, as had Stafford before the inheritance of his earldom, and the bishop of Bath and Wells had served in many administrative positions in Aquitaine. Gaunt, who had been at the center of English politics for five years, was rather underrepresented, as Lancastrian supporters made up the bulk of the fighting force that had set sail for Castile. Only lord Bryan and the bishop of Salisbury could be described as Lancastrian partisans, and their influence was countered by lord Percy, who had become one of Gaunt's chief antagonists.
Richard Scrope, 1st baron Scrope of Bolton, vacated the chancellorship as the new regency council was installed. He was a close ally of Gaunt's and joined the duke on his campaign to Castile. This was a major loss, as Scrope was one of the ablest men in government. He was replaced by Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury. Sudbury was an affable man and an experienced diplomat and lawyer, but he would soon prove to be a poor chancellor. More and more responsibility was put onto the new regency council, as Edward failed to step into the larger role that was expected of him. This led to conflict between the king's councilors and members of his household. As the highest-ranking officer in government, Sudbury strove to mediate disputes, but was too weak to manage the personalities involved, which led to dysfunction.
Edward moved north as the government broke down in the absence of a strong leader. He resided primarily at Chester Castle over the next two years, which inspired Shakespeare to dub him the "prince of Chester" more than two centuries later. In Shakespeare's version of events, Edward is an unwitting prisoner at Chester. He lives in ignorance of the way his council is ruining the kingdom before freeing himself and banishing his councilors when he learns the truth. In reality, his stay at Chester Castle was his first step towards genuine independence.
Langley, whose oversight of the king's household had always been laid back, took an even lighter touch after the king's move to Chester. Many of the young noble boys who had joined the king's household in hopes of advancement fell to the wayside. Royal accounts books show only a small number of young men outside Edward's personal staff were lodged at the castle. These included Sir Ralph Stafford, heir to the earldom of Stafford, John de Mowbray, 5th baron Mowbray, and Sir James Berners, who was a former ward of Edward's father. These three were Edward's closest companions and among the very few friends that he had made since he had been separated from his younger brother, Richard.
The quiet interests that Edward had developed as a shy young boy stayed with him at Chester. He began to amass a large collection of books, which were a considerable expense at the time. He attended mass quite frequently, though he was not a zealot. He enjoyed debating the complexities and contradictions of church legal doctrines as well as the more philosophical aspects of theology. He took his physical training just as seriously as he did his studies. He enjoyed hunting, was an especially skilled rider, and it was said that he was happier among dogs and horses than among men. He did not attend parties and rose early in the day, dragging his companions from their beds to hunt and ride at daybreak or earlier.
Edward grew into a handsome young man. He was of average height and strong-limbed, despite his slim build. He inherited the typical Plantagenet complexion, but was not quite so fair as his father. His eyes were said to be blue, gold and green. His hair was described as auburn and blond in color and wavy in texture. He kept his hair long and his face clean-shaven throughout his life. He spoke only sparingly, which gave him a quiet mystique.
Edward continued to play a ceremonial role at major events, like parliaments and great councils, but he deferred decisions to his chancellor and regency council whenever possible. He attended meetings of the king's council only sporadically, typically when he was journeying south to visit his mother or attend to other business of the realm. The young king's disengagement and the dysfunction of the regency council incensed the Commons, which flatly refused to grant further taxation. Sudbury, lacking the grandeur and power that Gaunt brought to bear in his disputes with the Commons, could hardly bully them into submission. The government, teetering on bankruptcy, was forced to open talks with the French in early 1383.
King Charles VI of France was three years younger than Edward and the regency government that was led by Charles's uncles was not in much better shape than the English government, as it was also starved for revenues and undergoing a major change in leadership. Louis I, duke of Anjou, had served as regent of France since 1380, but had left the kingdom in 1382 to pursue the crown of Naples. His departure left his younger brother, Philippe II, duke of Burgundy, in control of government. Burgundy's first order of business was to restore royal finances, which predisposed him to pausing hostilities with England. The two sides tried to negotiate a five-year truce, but they were hung up by their allies. A six-month truce was negotiated in summer 1383. It was extended six more months in early 1384, and then extended for another year.
Wonderful Parliament
In September 1384, parliament met at Westminster. It was contentious from the start, as the king's councilors came under withering criticism from all sides. The Commons took aim at the sorry state of financial affairs. The truce with France was in its second year, but the government was still deep in debt, which beggared belief. The Lords raged against the truce itself, as the upper nobility continued to support war against France.
The Commons received a detailed financial report. The crushing cost of maintaining a string of fortresses in northern France—Brest, Saint-Malo, Cherbourg, and Calais—had been alleviated somewhat by the truce, but the cost of defending the Scottish march had exploded. As a result, crown revenues barely covered expenditures, despite the suspension of hostilities in France.
The frustration of the Lords was given voice by Richard Fitzalan, 4th earl of Arundel. One of the kingdom's most prominent war hawks, Arundel lambasted the truce as a cowardly agreement negotiated by a group of incompetents. It was true, he said, that England's position in northern France had collapsed with the betrayal of the duke of Brittany and the failure of Gloucester's chevauchée, but he called the rebels of Ghent potential allies who had been left to their own devices by the rush to secure a ceasefire. Such shortsightedness had weakened the rebels, strengthened France, and put the whole of England in jeopardy, he declared.
Arundel's speech was outrageous, but effective. The Lords sat in stunned silence as the earl returned to his seat. The king grew red in the face. Arundel may have addressed his criticisms at the council, but this was merely a formality. His criticism was meant for the 19-year-old king who had been practically absent from government. It was, in effect, a public scolding of the king by one of the greatest men in the realm, and the king knew it. Sudbury tried to return to the matters at hand, reiterating that the council had decided to pause the war because of the financial pressures still bearing down on the crown. He asked the Lords whether they supported renewing hostilities even knowing that there was no money for an offensive campaign. Edward, deeply embarrassed, told the chancellor that he had heard enough from the Lords on the matter, though. A new, uncomfortable silence fell over the assembly.
The king declared that he did not wish to make war on fellow Christians, but that "honor, propriety and dignity" demanded that he fight for his "just rights and inheritances." He recalled the lengths to which his grandfather, father, and uncle had gone in France, Aquitaine, and Castile, respectively, and swore that the three of them "never went so far as I will do, and if it please God and Saint Michael, I will die in the attempt." Edward finally and fully accepted the role he had been born to play as a medieval king. The Lords exploded with cheers and applause.
Edward reasserted his rights not just to the kingdom of France and principality of Aquitaine, but to the duchy of Normandy, the counties of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, the county of Ponthieu, and the overlordship of Brittany and Scotland. He was declaring himself to be the greatest secular lord in western Europe and calling for the disinheritance of all the Valois princes of the blood, but he shifted the onus of war onto his "cousin of France," Charles VI, as he did. He called on Charles to recognize him as his rightful king and to vacate the throne immediately or to adhere to the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny by withdrawing forces from Aquitaine at once. Then, he said, they could work together to heal the church and lead a crusade to liberate the Holy Land.
Edward was articulating a grand vision for his reign, which required a massive investment in war for years to come. In this, he revealed himself to be a fairly conventional king, as wars for glory, God, land and prestige were a traditional part of medieval kingship. He also revealed himself to be a realist, as the first action he proposed to make this vision a reality was not to lead an invasion of France, but to lead an invasion of Scotland.
England and Scotland had negotiated a long truce in the early 1370s, which had held up remarkably well by the standards of the day. The Scots had grown increasingly belligerent since 1377, though, and the cost of defending the march had grown from just £1,000 per annum in the final year of Edward III's reign to more than £20,000 per annum by 1384. The English could not afford to mount a continental campaign until it restored peace to its northern border and lowered the cost of its defenses. Edward proposed to lead the invasion himself when the truce expired in summer 1385, which elicited yet more cheers and applause in parliament.
Entering adulthood
The parliament of 1384 is sometimes known as the Wonderful Parliament for the way in which Edward finally stepped into a leadership role in his own government, effectively ending the regency era. As such, historical discussion around the "prince of Chester" as it relates to the king's early life tends to end with its proceedings, though it should be noted that Edward would not formally reach his majority or dissolve the regency council until 1386. His reasons for keeping the council in existence, even as he took effective control of government himself, is unknown.
Edward's regent, Gaunt, returned to England in spring 1385. Lancaster's Crusade had failed to install Gaunt as king of Castile or return Castile to Roman obedience, but it had succeeded in breaking Castile's alliance with France. Gaunt remained lord regent as a result of Edward not formally claiming his majority, but never exercised power as such again. Instead, he signed documents only as duke of Lancaster and lord high steward of England, an office which he had held since the 1360s. Gaunt's regency would formally end when Edward turned 21 in January 1386.
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Now we enter "Phase Two" of the story with our titular character coming to the foreground.
Where we go from here, as always, is up to you. ICYMI, there are four options for the next update:
Revolt of the towns: The peasants are mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore
Government of the uncles: Charles V's plan for the regency quickly goes to shit and France tries to pull itself back together
Revolt of Ghent: It's gotten a couple of brief mentions in the timeline, but what's it all about?
1385 English invasion of Scotland: The true start to Phase Two. Is he an all-conquering warrior king like his grandfather, Edward III, or wimp like his OTL brother?
Also, next week, a special update
Where we go from here, as always, is up to you. ICYMI, there are four options for the next update:
Revolt of the towns: The peasants are mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore
Government of the uncles: Charles V's plan for the regency quickly goes to shit and France tries to pull itself back together
Revolt of Ghent: It's gotten a couple of brief mentions in the timeline, but what's it all about?
1385 English invasion of Scotland: The true start to Phase Two. Is he an all-conquering warrior king like his grandfather, Edward III, or wimp like his OTL brother?
Also, next week, a special update