Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester

by Susan Flantzer  © Unofficial Royalty 2017

Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester; Credit – Wikipedia

Thomas of Woodstock was the fifth of the surviving five sons and the fourteenth and last child of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault. He was born at Woodstock Palace near Oxford, England on January 7, 1355. Thomas was fifteen years younger than his eldest sibling and was raised in his mother’s household.

Thomas had thirteen older siblings:

Around August 24, 1376, Thomas married Eleanor de Bohun, the elder of the two surviving daughters of Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford and Lady Joan Fitzalan.  Eleanor’s younger sister Mary de Bohun was the first wife of the future King Henry IV of England and the mother of King Henry V of England.

Thomas and Eleanor had five children:

When Eleanor’s father died in January 1373, his estates should have passed to his cousin Gilbert de Bohun because he had no sons. However, due to the influence of King Edward III, the estates of the 7th Earl of Hereford were divided between his two daughters. After Thomas and Eleanor married in 1376, they lived in Pleshey Castle in Essex and Eleanor’s younger sister Mary lived there under Eleanor and Thomas’ care. She was instructed in religious doctrine in the hope that she would become a nun, which would cause her share of the de Bohun inheritance to go to Eleanor and Thomas. However, John of Gaunt, the third surviving son of King Edward III and Thomas’ older brother, had other ideas. He arranged for Mary’s aunt to take her from Pleshey Castle to Arundel Castle, the home of her mother’s family. There, on July 27, 1380, 11-12-year-old Mary married John of Gaunt’s eldest son, 13-year-old Henry Bolingbroke, the future King Henry IV.

In 1377, Thomas’s father King Edward III died and was succeeded by 10-year-old King Richard II, the only surviving child of Thomas’ eldest sibling Edward, Prince of Wales (the Black Prince) who had predeceased his father. Richard’s coronation took place on July 16, 1377, at Westminster Abbey, just eleven days after his grandfather’s funeral. The quickness with which all this happened was certainly affected by the controversial succession of a child king whose father had not been the king. Some believed that one of King Edward III’s younger sons (there were three still alive: John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; Edmund of Langley, Duke of York; and Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester) should be king. Thomas and his two surviving brothers were excluded from councils that ruled during Richard’s minority but as the uncles of the king, they still held great informal influence over the business of government. Between 1377 and 1380, Thomas participated in the last battles of the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War. In 1377, at the age of 22, Thomas was knighted and created Earl of Buckingham. In 1385 he received the title Duke of Aumale and at about the same time was created Duke of Gloucester.

Since 1337, England had been fighting France in the Hundred Years’ War, and the English had been consistently losing territory to the French since 1369. Richard wanted to negotiate peace with France, but much of the nobility wanted to continue the war. In 1386, Parliament blamed Richard’s advisers for the military failures and accused them of misusing funds intended for the war. Parliament authorized a commission of nobles known as the Lords Appellant to take over the management of the kingdom and act as Richard’s regents. There were originally three Lords Appellant and Thomas was one of them along with Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel and Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick. Later, Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby (son of John of Gaunt, Richard’s first cousin and the future King Henry IV) and Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk also became Lords Appellant. Richard did not recognize the authority of the Lords Appellant and started an unsuccessful military attempt to overthrow the Lords Appellant and negotiate peace with France. In 1387, the Lords Appellant launched an armed rebellion against King Richard and defeated an army under Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford at the Battle of Radcot Bridge, outside Oxford. The Lords Appellant, with Thomas as the leader, controlled the government and maintained Richard as a figurehead with little real power.

Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel; Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester; Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham; Henry, Earl of Derby (later Henry IV); and Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, demand Richard II to let them prove by arms the justice for their rebellion, from A Chronicle of England: B.C. 55 – A.D. 1485, 1864; Credit – Wikipedia

In 1396, Thomas attended the second wedding of his nephew King Richard II with Isabella of Valois, although he disapproved of the match.  Beecoming more and more unpopular at court, Thomas retired to Pleshey Castle pleading poor health. Richard was able to rebuild his power gradually until 1397 when he reasserted his authority and destroyed the principal three among the Lords Appellant. At Pleshey Castle, Thomas conspired with others to depose Richard, but he was betrayed by Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk. King Richard II, leading an army, went to Pleshey Castle where he persuaded Thomas to return with him to London. Thomas was arrested for treason on the journey and taken to the Pale of Calais, then an English possession, now in France, where he was imprisoned and confessed. He died on September 8, 1397, at the age of 42 Prince’s Inn in the Pale of Calais, probably murdered by a group of men led by Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, and Sir Nicholas Colfox, presumably on the orders of King Richard II. After Thomas’ death, his confession was read to Parliament and he was declared guilty of treason. He was attainted as a traitor and his title Duke of Gloucester, goods, and estates were forfeited to the crown. Thomas’ remains were returned to England and initially buried at the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity in Pleshy, England. They were later reburied at  Westminster Abbey in the Chapel of St. Edmund the King and St. Thomas of Canterbury.

Murder of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester from Froissart Chroniques, 15th century; Credit – Wikipedia

Thomas’ murder caused an outcry among the English nobility and added to Richard’s unpopularity. In 1399, Richard’s first cousin Henry of Bolingbroke, the eldest son of John of Gaunt, deposed Richard and succeeded to the throne as King Henry IV, the first King of the House of Lancaster. King Richard II was imprisoned at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire where he died on or around February 14, 1400. The exact cause of his death, thought to have been starvation, is unknown. At the first Parliament of King Henry IV’s reign, the forfeiture of Thomas’ estates and goods was reversed. In addition, King Henry IV had his uncle’s remains moved to a grave closer to the shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.

thomas-of-woodstock_grave

Grave of Thomas of Woodstock and his wife Eleanor de Bohn in Westminster Abbey; Credit – www.findagrave.com

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Works Cited
Susan. “King Richard II of England.” British Royals. Unofficial Royalty, 26 July 2016. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.
“Thomas de Woodstock.” Wikipedia. N.p.: Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Jan. 1355. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.
“Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester.” Wikipedia. N.p.: Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Dec. 2016. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.
Williamson, David. Brewer’s British Royalty. London: Cassell, 1996. Print.