‘Hearts warped by passion’: The Percy-Gaunt, Dispute of 1381

Summary

The title of this paper comes from a passage in the Westminster Chronicle describing a meeting of Richard II’s council at Berkhamsted on 9 October 1381. This meeting was convened ‘to recall hearts warped by passion to the proper courses of harmony and peace, lest intensified ill-feeling between the estranged nobles should cause the sparks of sedition, still smouldering, to be fanned into a blaze which would destroy the whole of England’. The passage concerns a dispute in the summer and autumn of 1381 between two of the most powerful magnates in England, Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, and John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. At one point the two men brought armed retinues to the streets of London and the dispute threatened the very stability of the realm. The situation was all the more shocking in that it appeared to represent the sudden and complete collapse of a long-standing, friendly and cooperative relationship.

From childhood, Percy had been very close to his Lancastrian cousins: according to the Alnwick chronicle, he was raised partly in the household of his uncle, Henry of Grosmont, first duke of Lancaster. His close ties to the house of Lancaster continued after the death of Duke Henry and the accession of John of Gaunt to the duchy. Throughout the 1370s, Percy and Gaunt continued to work closely together. Percy accompanied Gaunt on the latter’s ill-fated campaign across France in 1373. In 1377, Percy and Gaunt worked together in an attempt both to extend the jurisdiction of the marshal over the city of London and to support Wyclif against Bishop Courtenay in a raucous confrontation at St Paul’s. Walsingham delights in telling us that on the day following the uproar at St Paul’s, Percy and Gaunt were interrupted in the middle of an oyster luncheon and forced to flee together across the Thames to escape a mob. Later in the same year, as marshal and steward of England respectively, the two lords battled crowds and over-eager champions in an attempt to keep the coronation of Richard II running as smoothly as possible Four years later, however, their relationship was to take a dramatic turn for the worse as a result of a series of events, misunderstandings and over-reactions during and after the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.