The man who would be king
On 25 July 1386, three young men disembarked from a Portuguese galley at the port of Corunna. Landing on the northwest Spanish coast were Ralph Bulmere, just old enough to receive his inheritance at home; Baldwin Saint George from Cambridgeshire; and Thomas Chaucer, son of writer and diplomat Geoffrey Chaucer. They had come to win their spurs in one of the most ambitious military campaigns of the late 14th century: the invasion of Castile by John of Gaunt.
At that time, Castile was the largest of four Christian kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula. Sandwiched between Portugal to the west and Aragon and Navarre to the east, and with the Muslim emirate of Granada to the south, Castile also encompassed León and coastal Galicia, site of Corunna. And in the 14th century it was embroiled in an interminable tussle for succession between England and France: the Hundred Years’ War.
Castile’s involvement had peaked two decades earlier with the pitched battle of Najéra in Navarre on 3 April 1367, in which the army of the Black Prince, heir to English king Edward III, charged across a dusty plain at Castilian and French forces – and emerged victorious. Leading the vanguard was John of Gaunt, the Black Prince’s younger brother. Najéra was his formative experience of battle, and sparked a 20-year-long obsession with Spanish conquest.
Cruel twist of fate
John was not only a prince but also the most powerful magnate in England, with wealth and influence to rival the crown. His possessions included England’s richest duchy, Lancaster, and he also
