The New Murrey and Blue blog

What I’m suggesting in this post must surely have been put forward before, but I don’t recall ever seeing it, so here goes with my hypothesis.

Nothing is really known about the mother of Richard III’s illegitimate son, John of Gloucester, a.k.a. John of Pontefract, see here https://richardiii.net/richard-iii-his-world/his-family/illegitimate-children/john-of-gloucester/. Nor can his year of birth be fixed exactly, except to say it was probably circa 1468-70 (1468 was when Richard himself would have become 16 on 2 October). John of Gloucester was therefore somewhere between 14 and 16 years of age when his father was killed at Bosworth. John is believed to have been done away with in 1499, at around the same time as Perkin Warbeck (https://richardiii.net/faqs/richard-and-his-world/aftermath/perkin-warbeck/) and Edward, Earl of Warwick (https://www.thetimelinegeek.com/edward-plantagenet-earl-of-warwick-1475-1499/).

Now, medieval boys were considered to be ready to consummate marriage at 14, and were certainly no more virginal prior to their vows than boys are today, so did John of Gloucester have a “girlfriend”? He must have done, unless he batted for the other side. Or was devout enough to seek a chaste career in Holy Orders. As he was briefly Captain of Calais, it certainly doesn’t suggest that his father intended him for the Church. So might he have become a young father?

OK, so I’m a writer of historical fiction, and I allow my imagination to wander where it will, but in this instance is my conjecture impossible? No, it isn’t. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls, and when the twain meet, there’s that awful thing, S.E.X.

So what happened to John when disaster struck at Bosworth? Yes, he fell into Tudor’s clutches, but in what way? Was he locked up in a cell instantly? Was he under house arrest? Was he simply followed everywhere by Tudor spies? Do we know? If he wasn’t in a prison cell, then he could still have met the same girlfriend as before, or formed new relationships. The point is, he was of an age and could have had the opportunity to do what was necessary to become a father. And there weren’t efficient contraceptives back then. It was a case of abortion or have the child. Abortion under medieval conditions seems to me to have been close to suicide, so there were a lot of illegitimate children around. Mind you, childbirth itself was more than a little hazardous too. Men certainly had a better deal from life than women. Well, except for all those battles, of course.

Back to John of Gloucester’s fate. Contrary to expectations, although Henry Tudor removed John from his position as Captain of Calais, he doesn’t seem to have punished him otherwise. Not immediately, anyway. It even seems that on 1 March 1486 John was granted an annual income of £20. So was he able to live his life as he chose? To me it seems highly improbable that a son of Richard III would be left completely to his own devices, as free as the proverbial bird, but that still doesn’t mean he lived the life of a monk.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Gloucester: “….In the seventeenth century, an early defender of Richard III, George Buck, claimed that around the time of the executions of Warbeck and Edward, Earl of Warwick, in 1499, ‘there was a base son of King Richard III made away, and secretly, having been kept long before in prison.’ Buck, who does not identify John by name, claims that he was executed to prevent him from falling into the hands of certain Irishmen who wished to make him their chief or prince.^[12] There are no other sources for John’s execution….”

Somehow I do believe Buck, although not that John’s imprisonment was so long as to have been almost immediate upon his capture in 1485. Were the “Irishmen” factual? Or conjured by Henry Tudor’s paranoia after the Lambert Simnel/Dublin King affair of 1487? (https://richardiii.net/faqs/richard-and-his-world/aftermath/lambert-simnel-and-the-king-from-dublin/) Tudor’s reign was beset by claimants, and he never felt secure upon his stolen throne. Well, let’s face it, he knew he’d gained the crown through invasion and treachery, killing the rightful king, Richard III, in the process, and that he’d never been personally popular. He’d brought with him an entirely new, darker atmosphere that pervaded the entire land, and it wasn’t pleasant. By the time of executing Perkin Warbeck and Edward of Warwick, I don’t think Henry dared leave John of Gloucester alive. Plus, of course, he was desperate for a highborn foreign bride, Katherine of Aragon (https://tudorhistory.org/aragon/), for his own son and heir, Prince Arthur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur,_Prince_of_Wales), and her parents wouldn’t allow it while there was any doubt about Henry’s security on the throne. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plantagenet%2C_17th_Earl_of_Warwick) That was why Perkin Warbeck and Edward of Warwick were put to death, and why I think John of Gloucester had to die too. So Katherine of Aragon arrived in England, and we know what happened after that!

But that was all still to come in 1485. Let’s assume John got a girl with child in Calais, what would the lovers do when the tragic news of Bosworth arrived? John would fear for himself, but for her too. She was carrying Richard III’s grandchild. He must have wondered how long it would be before he was taken into custody, at which point there wouldn’t be anything he could do to protect her. So I believe he’d want her to disappear, give birth to her child and be able to bring him/her up safely, beyond Tudor’s knowledge. I don’t doubt there would be Yorkists able and prepared to protect and provide for her. All very much on the q.t. of course.

And let’s not forget that Henry Tudor himself came from the House of Beaufort, which originated in the illegitimate line of John of Gaunt and Katherine de Roët. (https://www.royalhistorygeeks.com/the-house-of-beaufort-a-family-in-lancastrian-favour/) The Beauforts had since been legitimised, and that was a vital point.

There were precedents! Apart from Henry VII, William I was known as William the Bastard because he came from the wrong side of the blanket (see https://www.historyhit.com/william-the-bastard-the-norman-kings-traumatic-early-years/).

So the illegitimacy angle wasn’t necessarily an absolute obstacle. It wasn’t impossible for a baseborn child of John of Gloucester to one day wear the crown, just as the Conqueror and Henry VII had. John’s lover must have prayed for the end of the House of Tudor, but it wouldn’t happen in her lifetime, or indeed for over a century more. And by then….would there still be any descendants of John’s child?

What might have happened in that interval? Did his line simply fail? Or was the “q.t.” aspect so efficient that all trace is now lost to time? The thing is, there just might be someone around now who is a direct descendant of Richard III. It’s not impossible.

Let’s hope descendants of Richard III and John of Gloucester do still exist. Richard III doesn’t deserve to simply disappear from the genealogical tables. Fate treated him cruelly, and his children too. His legitimate son, Edward of Middleham, died tragically young (https://richardiii.net/richard-iii-his-world/his-family/edward-of-middleham-son/), his illegitimate daughter, Katherine, died childless (https://richardiii.net/richard-iii-his-world/his-family/illegitimate-children/katherine-plantagenet/)….and John of Gloucester was “done away with”. But John might—just might—have left descendants. I would like to think so.

For the mystery of the mothers of Richard III’s illegitimate children, see here https://murreyandblue.org/2024/10/06/does-the-harrington-stanley-feud-harbour-a-secret-about-richard-of-gloucester/ and here https://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/plantagenet_86.html.