Medieval Royal Bastards

What really made a royal bastard, and could illegitimacy be a path to power as much as a barrier? Dr Eleanor Janega is joined by Lauren Johnson, author of Margaret Beaufort; Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker to dive into the scandalous world of medieval illegitimacy. They trace how the label of “bastard” developed, why it could upend inheritance, how an explosive accusations could turn the tables of power and how royal children born outside marriage still rose to command armies, influence kings, and reshape dynasties. This is a story of sex, power and succession, all the good stuff! MORE The Anarchy: Disruptive Women Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-anarchy-disruptive-women/id1564113746?i=1000654826738 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/7bSihsIJTKawM7LMQz6ux8?si=f65944b9d3c24891 What Happened to the Princes in the Tower? Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-happened-to-the-princes-in-the-tower/id1564113746?i=1000680711739 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/21g66HdGh6KmO9stXZzfGB?si=3f9ba3faaea64471 Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Jangea. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, plus early-access ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Janiger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr Eleanor Janiger, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gob-smacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.

• 1:18Eleanor Janega?

  Dynasties. Succession. The pure blood of firstborn children. All of these are concepts inextricably linked to the kingdom world of medieval Europe and its cutthroat theatre of dynastic politics. But what happened to the children of kings and princes, of queens and countessas, who were born out of wedlock? The so-called royal bastards of the Middle Ages? Were they spurned, rejected, and lost to the mists of history? Or were they capable of wielding as much power as true-born siblings? Did political strength and upright character outweigh questions of birth?

• 2:05Eleanor Janega?

  I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga, and this is Gone Medieval. Today, we're delving into the world of medieval illegitimacy to answer those very questions. We'll trace the development of illegitimacy before explaining the lives and legacies of some of the most famous and consequential royal bastards in England's history. From the grinding military achievements of Robert of Gloucester during the anarchy, to the lavish titles bestowed on Henry Fitzroy by his father, Henry VIII. The story of medieval bastardry is as much about proximity to power as it is about exclusion from it.

• 2:45Eleanor Janega?

  In many cases, these men and women stood at the very center of political life: commanding armies, governing kingdoms, marrying into rival dynasties, and sometimes even threatening the succession itself. Their lives reveal a medieval world far more flexible and politically pragmatic than we often imagine, where lineage mattered enormously but could still be bent when circumstances demanded. Joining me today is Lauren Johnson, a historian and writer specializing in the late medieval and early Tudor world. Together, we'll uncover how royal bastards could become warriors, bishops, kingmakers,

• 3:30Eleanor Janega?

  and dynastic threats, and explore why ultimately questions of legitimacy mattered so deeply in the medieval imagination.

• 3:48Eleanor Janega?

  Well, Lauren, welcome to Gone Medieval.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Thank you. I'm excited. I'm going medieval all the time in my life, so nice to have gone for once.

• 3:58Eleanor Janega?

  Listen, today is no exception. We're gonna do it big. Because this is, you know, one of these reader requests. People ask us all the time about illegitimate children of nobles in the Middle Ages. This is just one of those things that I think really captures people's imagination. Why do you think this is? You know, this is kind of like a fan favorite. Do you think it's because it feels like a scandal? Or is it just because, you know, it kind of proves that not all medieval people are like these boring religious people? Like, what is it, you think?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Ironically, lots of the illegitimate people are boring religious people, so they've got that wrong. I've got two theories, right? I think first of all, yes, we're all perverts and we all just quite enjoy salacious detail. And inherently, anything that is about illegitimacy is about, you know, forbidden sex or misbehaving people. So I think it appeals to that impulse within us all. And I think the second theory I have is that, like, we all, most of us, I presume, know that we weren't kings and queens in the past. My aunt always says that our family is descended from Baldrick's turnip. That's our level of society.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  It's a blackout of joke in case anyone doesn't know who Baldrick is. So like, we all basically know in the past, we were probably peasants. But what if you did your family tree and you came across some sort of secret relative who had been the child of a king or queen? And there's so many illegitimate children that, you know, it's not impossible. So I think it's those two things that are really firing up people's imaginations about this.

• 5:38Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I mean, I suppose that that's true, but I just want to say to all of my fellow peasant stock, I, that's actually what's cool. It's actually way cooler to be a peasant. So you shouldn't dream of being descended from nobles and kings because they're all terrible. I was about to say they're all bastards, but

• 5:56Speaker 02

  one way or another.

• 5:57Eleanor Janega?

  Only some. Oh, okay, all right. Well, I suppose that we have to sort of confront where the concept of illegitimacy comes from anyway. You know, like, what's the origin of saying this child is is a bastard?

• 6:11Speaker 02

  It's the bloody patriarchy, isn't it? I don't know. That's what I think. Fundamentally, it's about particularly male power, male privilege, and later on also church privilege. But like, the origins of it, I think, when you dial it down to the simplest level, it's that you can be pretty sure most of the time who someone's biological mother is, because usually the child emerges from them. But you can't always be certain who the biological father is, especially with a newborn baby. They just look like tiny aliens. So I think it comes from that. It's like, people want to, the powerful want to preserve their power.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  The male and the wealthy want to preserve their line. There's some sort of weird, I don't know, like, primeval impulse going on there. And so laws start to be set up from, I mean, really from like, 1200s onwards. It's actually a bit later than maybe people might imagine, I think, which are kind of codifying how people should be married, and therefore how their children can be legitimate children. So it's, I mean, I say that for like, the higher up in society. For most people, all you need to do is just consent to marriage, and that's it. You're just saying, I marry you. I marry you too. And that's

• 7:34Speaker 02

  it. But at the top levels of society, it's too easy then for someone to be like, oh, you said you'd marry me, but that was saying in the future, so that's not a real marriage. So this child's illegitimate. And that would, you know, cause all sorts of problems. So it's it's a way of just controlling the wealth and the land. And then later on, the church realizes they'd quite like to get in on it as well. So they start inventing synods and legatee councils and things. And eventually, in the Council of Trent, which obviously, I realize is post-medieval, that's full Tudor times, but they actively say, no, you have to have a priest there to, for it to be a real marriage.

• 8:14Eleanor Janega?

  I find that this is a really interesting one because I think that we are so used to the concept of marriage as it stands today as this big public production that we have a difficult time getting in the heads of people's relationship to the idea in the past. And also, I think, to the idea of illegitimacy, like, a big thing that people make a lot of about William the Conqueror, for example, is that he was an illegitimate child. And they're like, oh, this must have waited on him. And it's like, no, because it was normal for the Norman Dukes to inherit to their illegitimate children because your legitimate wife was some French girl that you married for political reasons.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the Saxons as well. Absolutely normal.

• 8:56Eleanor Janega?

  And nobody, nobody really cares that much. And I do think that it is one of these things where as you kind of go forward in time, this becomes codified a lot more, right? And I suppose also, as we're just kind of hinting at here, like, okay, so we've got a concept of illegitimacy. Is it an actual barrier to inheritance, you know, in places in Europe? Because it seems to me that this is sort of like regional variance that we're looking at here.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I definitely think it varies by different areas. I mean, as you say, William the Conqueror is probably the most famous example of this. And he is called William the Bastard, Bastardus, in different texts. And what I found really interesting, I had a little nerd out in the Oxford English Dictionary around the word bastard, because, because I kept reading things about it. I wasn't quite sure they were true. And what I found fascinating is by the time you get to the 1300s, that word Bastardus or Bastada, which is the feminine version, which I think is a very exciting name for possibly a folk rock band, maybe?

• 10:02Eleanor Janega?

  Bastada! I was gonna say a cat, but you know.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Different takes. By the time you get to the 1300s, 1400s, that term is being used across most of Europe. It's not just in England or France. It's the Occitan territories of southern France. It's Portugal, Spain, Italy. But the fact it takes that long suggests that it's taken a while for people to have a kind of accepted idea that you have legitimate and illegitimate unions. And it just didn't matter for a very long time, as you say.

• 10:37Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, well, listen. So what makes a bastard a bastard, right? Is it just the fact that your parents are unmarried? Or is this like, do you need the church to step in and say, hold up, that child is illegitimate? I mean, is it as simple as just not having the correct paperwork?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Well, do they even have paperwork? If people can't read, not much point having paperwork.

• 11:03Eleanor Janega?

  Spoiler, no.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  I think the big problem is witnesses. And again, I think it's more of a problem for women even than children. I think children, interestingly, don't seem to carry the stigma as much as we might imagine in the Middle Ages. It seems like kind of a Tudor thing that people start using bastard to mean negative connotation on a person. Although, I should say, the term bastard is used to kind of mean inferior earlier than that. You get bastard swords, bastard horses, bastard sauce even, it turns out, which are kind of adulterated versions of something.

• 11:41Eleanor Janega?

  All right, but I think it's going to be fair to say, given the paperwork situation, that probably most of the royal bastards in the Middle Ages, we just don't know that much about them, right? Like, this is one of those lost to the mists of time situations, no?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  I think it probably is. The ones we know about are probably the ones who were, firstly, who had very clear relationships with their parents, their father normally, which gave them an access to power. And also, the ones who were quite talented, one way or another, or were really bad, I suppose, is the opposite end of the spectrum. But you don't kind of know about the ones who just went and worked in a church, for instance. They're not so interesting. And there were, in some cases, just enormous numbers of illegitimate children. It kind of peaks and troughs throughout the Middle Ages. There are so many royal bastards in the 1000s, 1100s. It is extraordinary. And then everyone starts behaving a bit

• 12:45Speaker 02

  for a while. And then as soon as you get Edwards on the throne, bastardy arises again.

• 12:52Eleanor Janega?

  It's pinning it, we're pinning it to the name Edward. That's what, that's what.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  I think that's the chief trouble, yes.

• 12:57Eleanor Janega?

  Okay. Listen, we're gonna, we're gonna zone in on England, right? Because there are a lot of very famous royal bastards of English kings. I think if we're gonna have this conversation, we gotta sort of start out with Henry the First and his illegitimate son, Robert of Gloucester. Because this is possibly one of the most consequential father illegitimate son duos that we have in English history, right?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. And Henry the First is someone who most people probably don't know much about, I would say. If they know about him at all, they kind of know he's the father of the Empress Matilda. And that's why his son becomes so important is because Robert of Gloucester steps into the breach on behalf of his half-sister, Matilda, when the anarchy breaks out between Matilda and Stephen. But he is, yeah, he's very consequential. He's very competent as well. He's a very good military leader. He's a good tactician. During his father's lifetime, his father's asking him for his advice and has a clearly quite a good personal relationship with him. And he seems to have been brought up within the royal household as well. So it's

• 14:10Speaker 02

  which you find quite often, I feel like, in these cases, is you quite often have illegitimate children growing up alongside their half siblings in a way that actually you see in loads of noble families as well, and that people grow up with half siblings, step siblings, cousins, like, families are in every way, I feel like, as blended in the past as they are today.

• 14:32Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I think that that is a really important point. There is this tendency to only look at the legitimate children. And we understand why, you know, that's a lot of the time how inheritance plays out. But The actuality of things is often more complex. And you do see these blended families. I think, you know, it's one of those things where we always pretend that we're the first generation that invented having sex. It's the same thing with we're the first generation that invented having children out of wedlock, right? This is a normal thing to have around.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:06Eleanor Janega?

  Having said that, I don't think that Robert of Gloucester is kind of like your ordinary illegitimate child because he really ends up rising up the ranks as a result of what happens with the White Ship disaster, right?

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say so. When the White Ship disaster happens, Robert is probably about 20 because he seems to have been the eldest of Henry I's illegitimate children. So I think there's a kind of good fortune for Robert in that he is on the scene, he has a relationship with his father, and he is the right age to be trusted with extra responsibility when the White Ship disaster happens and suddenly there is no obvious male heir to the throne. Although, interestingly, when Henry I names Matilda as his heir and he makes all of the lords and bishops come and give fealty to her in the 1120s, Robert has a falling out

• 16:00Speaker 02

  with Matilda's cousin, his cousin as well, I suppose, Stephen, over who should get precedent, whether it should be Robert as the illegitimate half-brother, or if it should be Stephen as the legitimate cousin. So that immediately signals something about those men and the type of men they are, but also about how important Robert is. Even then, there isn't a question, it seems, of him inheriting. It seems like even at this point, being illegitimate is seen as probably being a barrier to inheriting, probably. But it's, yeah, it's very revealing, I think, that he chooses to make a point of like, no, I should go first, I should bend down first.

• 16:42Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, I like that he is at least doing what I consider to be the right thing because I'm team Matilda, like all right-thinking individuals.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Always.

• 16:52Eleanor Janega?

  Obviously.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:54Eleanor Janega?

  And he does end up being a really staunch ally of Matilda's. You've already hinted at this. Can you talk a little bit about how he did serve her and how that kind of falls apart when he dies?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, the main way he serves her is he's the military might, because that's Matilda's big problem is female rule she can do in so many ways. She's an experienced politician because she's been living in the Holy Roman Empire for years, seeing how that works. She has existing relationships with the Pope, she understands the importance of the Church, she speaks multiple languages, she's got this connection by marrying the Duke of Anjou, or the Count of Anjou, to various different French territories as well. So in all of the kind of logistical ways, she's a great ruler, but she can't fight, and that's like her big downfall as a woman. So she really relies on her husband Geoffrey of Anjou,

• 17:53Speaker 02

  who's a bit fickle, and especially her brother, Robert of Gloucester, to fight for her. And that's why we see during the anarchy that Matilda's like, main area of power is the West Country, because that's Robert of Gloucester's area, that's his part of the world where from Bristol Castle, he is basically dominant. Although interestingly, there's actually quite a few other illegitimate children knocking around the West Country as well. So possibly it's like this little lovely enclave of little half siblings all hanging out and being like, "Yay, Matilda!"

• 18:25Eleanor Janega?

  Ah, I do love the West Country, you know, what can I say?

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Me too, that's where I'm from!

• 18:30Eleanor Janega?

  Yay, good vibes, good vibes, yeah.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Yes, so essentially, that's Robert's role. And I think Matilda's kind of lucky and unlucky in that she has a son who kind of takes over her claim to the English throne, but he's too young at the time Robert dies to immediately step up and kind of take over Robert's position as military leader. So there's this period of years after Robert dies, when there just isn't a kind of military presence that Matilda can rely on. So she's left effectively on the continent, kind of trying to, you know, influence things from a distance, which just doesn't work. And I think she recognizes that female power

• 19:14Speaker 02

  isn't going to be capable of becoming female queenship at this point in English history. Because she then pretty much hands over the claim to the throne to her son, who becomes Henry the Second.

• 19:25Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, she does play a blinder with that one, to be fair. You know, sometimes you have to know when people are just not going to play the game. So, you know, in the end, she wins. We have to say that, I think.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:37Eleanor Janega?

  Can we talk a little bit about Henry the First's other illegitimate kid, his daughter Sybil?

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:43Eleanor Janega?

  Because she is a really interesting one. Because, you know, we're talking about how, oh, there are these barriers to whether or not you can have power when you're illegitimate. This girl marries Alexander of Scotland, right? Like, this is an incredible come up for someone who is not legitimate.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, she marries a king. It's amazing. And that's, it's also, it's really significant in Anglo-Scottish relations and Norman-Scottish relations, because it's the first time a king of Scotland is sort of acknowledging that the Norman ruling dynasty have taken control of England by marrying into it, by marrying Sybil, whose mother seems to have been a woman with whom Henry the First had quite a long-term relationship and a number of children, who's called Sybil Corbett, which is just a very pleasantly northern sounding name, I feel like, Sybil Corbett, or Sibia Corbe, possibly, it's probably French. That, yeah, so Sybil is one of a number of illegitimate children born to Sybil and Henry.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  And clearly, she is, you know, she must be quite well considered by him for the fact that she then marries a king. And there doesn't seem to be any comment at the time about, you know, oh, this is really bad for the King of Scotland to be marrying this lowly illegitimate woman. Like, she's the child of a king. She has the royal blood. That's the key. And she becomes extremely influential in Scottish, particularly religious matters. Her and her husband found Schoon Abbey, you know, this ancient site where all the kings of Scotland have been inaugurated. They found the abbey there. Uh, she seems to mediate between her husband and the church at various points. And even though they never have any children, her and Alexander, she continues to be very

• 21:30Speaker 02

  influential up to her death, it seems like. So, yeah, a really important woman. And actually, there's a few instances, I think, of other illegitimate children and daughters particularly marrying into ruling families, like King John's daughter Joan marries a Welsh prince as a way of kind of, and then she becomes a hugely important mediator between Wales and England. So it's definitely a really sensible thing to do, I think, is to put an illegitimate daughter into that position as queen.

• 22:01Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, because I was going to ask, it's, we kind of see this happen more commonly with illegitimate girls than illegitimate boys, right?

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think illegitimate sons often end up in the church, partly because that's safer. If you're in the church, you're not going to be contesting. In theory, there might be someone we talk about who very much does not fit this. Uh, but in theory, once you're in the church, that's it. You shouldn't have temporal power in the same way. You shouldn't be able to become king. So it's a way of saying, oh, this person is very important and also they are contained. They have a religious position of power and that is it.

• 22:41Eleanor Janega?

  Well, look at this, Lauren. What a perfect segue you have set us up for because we're gonna have to talk about him. Who is the man, the myth, the legend, Geoffrey Plantagenet?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Your boy, Jeff.

• 22:55Eleanor Janega?

  That is my boy.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Jeffy P. Yeah. He's an interesting one, isn't he? Again, he's someone who I feel like has sort of been forgotten about a bit. Actually, quite a few of Henry the Second's illegitimate children are interesting and they've, they've kind of understandably perhaps paled in, into insignificance behind, uh, Henry the Second's legitimate children who spend the entire time fighting him and trying to wrestle bits of the kingdom away. Whereas Geoffrey Plantagenet, who seems to have been Henry the Second's eldest child, illegitimate or otherwise, born when Henry the Second's just a teenager.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  He goes on to be incredibly loyal to his father, like an absolute stalwart of Henry the Second throughout all of the turmoil that happens with the Angevin dynasty over the next decade. He is the one who defends his father to the nth degree, to the extent that Henry the Second says to him, it's my other children are the real bastards, you're the only true child I have. And I think also they're really similar. You see with some of Geoffrey's later behaviour, like him and his father, they're quite charismatic, but they're incredibly stubborn, like stubborn to the point of making enemies rather than admit they're wrong. And that's, that's like a fundamental of Geoffrey's personality.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  But again, Henry tries to do the clever thing and put Geoffrey into the church. He puts him into minor orders as a deacon. But the sneaky thing with old Geoffrey is that if you're in minor orders, you can still technically come out of them again. So he never gets ordained as a full priest while his father is alive, because he's like, well, if I'm not a full priest, then I could, I could perhaps come back and maybe I could claim the throne. Could happen. And I think that is a very real possible threat.

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• 25:59Eleanor Janega?

  Well, I think that certainly Richard the First would agree with you, right? Because, you know, we've got Geoffrey kind of bopping along, you know? And like, and that's fine, you know? But then eventually we get Richard the First comes to the throne, and this is a whole different ballgame, right? And he approaches the matter of his brother, I think, slightly differently?

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, he hates him, I would say. Richard the First, again, deeply unpleasant human being, really not a nice guy.

• 26:31Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, I hate him. I really don't like him, unfortunately, yeah. Don't let Eleanor Vauquell chain hear me say that. I know he's her favorite, but, you know.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  That's like the only thing in his favor, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, Richard the First definitely thinks that Geoffrey might try and take the throne. So one of his early act, and allegedly this is following on from Henry II on his deathbed, while Geoffrey is, you know, leant over him, swatting away flies that are buzzing around his imminent corpse. Allegedly, Henry II had said, "Oh, I want Geoffrey to become Archbishop of York." But certainly, as soon as Richard the First becomes king, he's like, "Right, you're Archbishop. Then that's, uh, that's you taken care of. You have to become a priest now. That's just definitely have to be a priest before you can be Archbishop of York, and then I'll leave you alone." And it's interesting that at that point Geoffrey kind of goes along with it,

• 27:21Speaker 02

  even though he definitely doesn't like Richard. He doesn't like Richard's chief advisers. He does sort of accept it, which I suspect is a kind of probably out of the memory of their father. I think it's more than anything that he does that out of respect for his father. And maybe also that he recognizes he can have a lot of power.

• 27:40Eleanor Janega?

  Well, I think it's an interesting one because to me, the move suggests that Richard is at least stressed, right? Richard is not comfortable, I think, with the person of Geoffrey, or he wouldn't be doing all this, right? It's an awful lot to be pushing forward someone for Archbishop of York, which is not an inconsiderable, I mean, I would say it's probably the second most important religious office in England after Archbishop of Canterbury. So it's a really significant role. So on the one hand, it is very difficult to say no. But I do think that this, this is about attempting to sort of like cork his teeth, as it were.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's exactly that. I think he's trying to undercut him. And then it kind of comes back to bite him on the bum because Geoffrey spends pretty much the rest of his own life, which is longer than Richard's, just excommunicating anyone who annoys him, which I've got a lot of time for, if you're gonna be an Archbishop.

• 28:39Eleanor Janega?

  He's so real for that. He's so real for that. That's exactly what I would do.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's like, "Oh, are you an abbess who wants some land that I've got?" No, excommunicated. Yeah, over and over again, that is the pattern.

• 28:52Eleanor Janega?

  The current church could learn a thing or two, right? I'm like, "Let's go make with it."

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, more excommunication. That's what we need.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Um, but yeah, he wields it constantly.

• 29:04Eleanor Janega?

  But he's also kind of an important guy while Richard is away on crusade. And also just, can I just be so real? I get really frustrated when everyone's like, "Oh, when Richard is away on crusade?" And I'm like, "Uh huh." And then he was also away being arrested and also just dicking around on the continent, sieging people's castles. You know, it wasn't always crusade. He's also just off being a jerk, right? And Geoffrey's kind of important at the time, right? Which is interesting because he does end up beefing, technical term there, with some of Richard's other regions that he's left in place, like in particular William Longchamp, right?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. That's, there's a, I mean, so many of the things in the period of the Angavins, I feel like you can, you can just put yourself into that scene in a film. And one of them is that when Richard goes away on his jolly to the Holy Land, William Longchamp is left behind as Justitia with another person, incidentally, the Bishop of Durham, who Geoffrey hates. He hates them both. And William Longchamp says to Geoffrey, "All right, yeah, you can, you can be the Archbishop of York, obviously. You can come, come back to England from Normandy where you've been living and exercise your power here. But I really think it's important that you don't just show your allegiance to Richard,

• 30:26Speaker 02

  but also you swear allegiance to me as his Justitia. And you'll never guess what Geoffrey does." He says, no, he says, absolutely not. He probably tries to excommunicate William at that point. He immediately runs into hiding at a church in Dover, where William Longchamp's main men surround the church, wait a few days, and then, I mean, I don't know if they were aiming actively to do a kind of Thomas Becket cosplay, but that's effectively what happens, is they burst in and seize Geoffrey at the altar where he's doing mass, and grab him by the legs and sort of like drag him down the steps of the altar, banging his head on the

• 31:11Speaker 02

  steps as he goes to get him out and put him in prison, which Geoffrey doesn't take kindly to, and definitely milks for all it's worth, once he is surrounded by other people who might like him again, and keeps making the point that William Longchamp, you know, he's so evil, he's so wicked, look what he did, he dragged me out of sanctuary. Can this be the person you want in control of government? And he manages through kind of force of willpower, really, to, and kind of a spirit of vengeance, I suspect, to unite all of the people who he one time hated against William Longchamp, to like just drive him out of the kingdom, effectively. So, I mean, you don't want to annoy Geoffrey, I would say. That's the

• 31:55Speaker 02

  long and short of it. He will excommunicate you.

• 31:59Eleanor Janega?

  He's played a blinder here, though. I think that in a way, I almost read it as him goading them to come and becket him, right? And I

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Oh, I absolutely think so.

• 32:09Eleanor Janega?

  It's a very effective piece of sort of political playmaking, right? Like, the man is not stupid. We can definitely say that about Geoffrey Plantagenet.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  He was probably doing mass every 30 seconds, just to be like, when they come in, I am going to be at the altar.

• 32:25Eleanor Janega?

  Much smarter than any of his brothers, in my opinion. I've really got a lot of time for Geoffrey. You know, it's a shame about it all, but we've got another bastard in the mix, though. I know we've just been talking about William Longchamp, but we have to talk about William Longsword. There's a lot of longs kicking about the place. Can you tell us a little bit about him?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I find Geoffrey and William Longsword, they're kind of like two sides of a coin. I think that Geoffrey gets a lot of the belligerence and rage, that like devil's rage of Henry II. And William Longsword gets a lot of the charm and competence, I would say. He's, like, if you were going to meet one of them, be friends with them, it would be William, not Geoffrey, basically. He is, he's from way later in Henry II's life. He's actually a very similar age to Prince John, who's born in the 1160s.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  And he seems to be one of the only people, and I say this advisedly, the only people in England who actually gets on with John, which is an astonishing achievement. Not coincidentally, he also acts as a diplomat quite often, making diplomatic embassies to various different places, which probably helps. And the Longsword name, I looked this up because I was like, why Longsword? Why does he get the really good name? It sounds so powerful.

• 33:50Eleanor Janega?

  That is a good one.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  And apparently it's taken from his mother's ancestors. His mother's ancestor was the Duke of Normandy called Longsword. She is called Ida de Tony.

• 34:02Eleanor Janega?

  Oh.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  And it's the de Tony line who have this claim to the name Longsword. So it's, yeah, brilliant. I would call myself that, Lauren Longsword.

• 34:10Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. And I mean, so we've got this kind of age thing at play. He's around the age of his brother John, another one of our worst kings.

• 34:21Eleanor Janega?

  But he does stay loyal to John during the big crisis that happens in the years between like 1213 and 1216, right? The Magna Carta is imminent years.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:32Eleanor Janega?

  We call it.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, he's really important. And again, just at every instance, it feels like he's the voice of reason. He's the one who's kind of appealing to the very tiny shard of John that is a better nature. And the two of them seem to have got on really well. Like, they were, they gambled together. There's payments and gifts and things from John to his brother. So probably that's partly why William likes him is he gets presents and isn't starved to death in a castle or anything like some of John's other friends. But yeah, so he's, William is there when John submits to the Pope. He's there at the Battle of Bouvin and actually is sensible enough to say, I don't think we should have this terrible battle. Oh, we are. All right, fine. I'll fight anyway. And he gets taken prisoner after

• 35:17Speaker 02

  being like beaten off his horse by a bishop. Standard medieval bishop behaviour there.

• 35:23Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, obviously, yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  And then again, he is, it seems he is at the signing of the ceiling of Magna Carta because there's a reference to him, to William advising John that he should grant Magna Carta. So it really seems like he is, yeah, he's this kind of lone good person in this period of history, like lone person who really seems to be trying to make the best of things.

• 35:52Eleanor Janega?

  There's got to be one. I mean, dear Lord, because the rest of these guys are just straight up trash. But I mean, he, he kind of keeps going in terms of his mediating influence within the family, right? Because he still also has a bit of influence at the point when we are to Henry III. But Henry III is only, only a tiny little baby, you know, and, you know, we've got William Marshall and we've got William Longsword, who are sitting here kind of doing the right thing, right?

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. And I think Longsword maybe has been a bit unfairly forgotten. William Marshall, man, that guy had good PR. Like, just any good thing that happened, he claimed it was his. But yeah, William Longsword was there too. He was fighting, literally fighting the fights for different people. There was a little blip, admittedly, where he kind of went over to Louis of France. Because I, I think he was like, well, Louis seemed slightly better than John or his odd child. But then he went back, so you know, can't hold it against him. And yeah, he's, he's one of the leading voices who is saying, we need a form of government based on a council. That is the true form of government, is having a king's council around him and holding him accountable.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  And he says that very consistently, even whilst he is doing the classic noble thing of besieging other people because he wants their castle.

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• 38:24Eleanor Janega?

  Well, yeah, yeah, listen, it's good to have some values, but it's even better if the person with the values is the king and maybe not you. I think that's a, that's a variable set of ideas, right?

• 38:40Eleanor Janega?

  This way, I think we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to go to the War of the Roses, Lauren, because I feel like

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Yay!

• 38:46Eleanor Janega?

  This is, what a time to be a bastard, right? I think that we have a lot of super prominent bastards at play in the War of the Roses. I mean, do you think that's just because we've got such a death toll at the point in time that it's like, it's time to shine if you're illegitimate, right? You can kind of come out of the woodwork because we're running out of children?

• 39:05Speaker 02

  I think it is a bit that, like, certainly Lancaster, the House of Lancaster, in the early 1400s, there are four sons, very capable sons, who are available to potentially inherit the throne, and they all die young, which is incredible bad luck. So I think that's part of it. I think also, by this point in time, it's become so important to have royal blood. This is the era when you first start really seeing the brothers of kings insisting that they should be called a prince and not a duke. This idea that there, you know, there's something a little bit magical or sacred about their

• 39:49Speaker 02

  bloodline, and I think that carries over into illegitimacy as well. And it's interesting, because there's such a, like, a double standard going on in the 15th century, I feel like, that on the one hand, illegitimate children and illegitimate lines are very much accepted, and for instance, the Beaufort family, even though they are 100% illegitimate, could not be more illegitimate. They still eventually managed to get an heir on the throne in Henry Tudor at the end of the Wars of the Roses. And then, on the other hand, you have people, mainly Richard III, and his, and the Duke

• 40:29Speaker 02

  of Clarence, who are using illegitimacy as a way to claim that that should be a bar to having the throne, that if you're not a legitimate member of the Yorkist family, you should not have the throne. So it's, there's some really confused ideas around at this time, I feel like.

• 40:46Eleanor Janega?

  Well, can we talk a bit about Richard III? Matt's not here, so he can't get mad at me, okay? But fundamentally, right, that there is this idea, so that Richard III says, "The princes, who end up getting put in this tower, these are bastards." Okay? Do you think he is technically right? Or is this just like a pretty good pretext to like?

• 41:11Eleanor Janega?

  Kidnap his nephews and put them in a tower, right?

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100% it's a pretext to kidnap his nephews and put them in the tower, then take their throne. But I do think it is possible that they were illegitimate by the legal standards of the time. Because I think that, and this is partly why people accepted at the time, I think, that Edward IV was sufficiently known to be a philanderer and probably to have tried to seduce women by promising marriage with them when he didn't really intend to marry them at all. That it was very believable that he would have done that with Elizabeth Woodville. And somehow her and her family just managed to maneuver it so that he couldn't get out of it in the end.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  But also, I would say that throughout the Wars of the Roses, people attack women by saying that in some way they are sexually misbehaving. Like, almost every powerful woman of the Wars of the Roses is faced with that slander. And it doesn't always stick in quite the same way it does. And I just, I feel like probably even if it were true that these children were legally illegitimate, I feel like there's been enough done by Edward IV in his lifetime to assert their legitimacy. That people kind of accepted that they were royally legitimate, if not marital legitimately. You know, he'd, he'd had his queen have a public coronation.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  His children had publicly been invested and there'd been great big court celebrations and ceremonials and things. One of the princes in the tower was already married. The other one had been acting as Prince of Wales for years. Like, everything public that could be done by Edward IV to assert these children being legitimate had been done. And I think that had been accepted. I think that was part of what was very shocking, was people could see, oh, okay, yeah, well, maybe that, yeah, maybe there is a bit of a question mark about whether these are truly legally royal children. But also, we all were colluding with the idea they were for the past, however long, 15 years. So yeah, I don't think it was enough of an argument to prevent the princes in the

• 43:26Speaker 02

  tower being kings. I don't think legally it was enough of an argument.

• 43:31Eleanor Janega?

  Like, I don't love it as an argument because, as you say, it does just kind of, you know, hinge on calling a woman who isn't particularly wealthy a bit of a slag, which is not my favorite thing, you know. So, and also, look, I mean, two things can be true, I suppose, is one thing about this.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like we should also remember that Richard III and his brother Clarence both said their mother had had an affair and that Edward was the result of that affair. So like, we're talking about a family that really loves just laying this stuff out to undermine each other.

• 44:05Eleanor Janega?

  Little bit of a sidetrack, you know, side quest here. Your good friend and mine, Perkin Warbeck, right? There are some people who say that Perkin Warbeck might have been one of Edward IV's several many bastards. What do you think about this as an idea?

• 44:25Speaker 02

  I think there is literally no evidence for it. So I think it's an interesting idea. I think it's a fun bit of counterfactual history. I cannot see that there is evidence for it from everything I have read from this era. And interestingly, from memory, when Perkin Warbeck kind of first appears on the scene and people are going, oh, you look a bit like so and so, they say Richard. They say, oh, could you be related, could you be one of Richard's bastards? And then they kind of move on from that. And they're like, oh, could you be the Earl of Warwick? And then they go, oh, could you be this other one, actually? Could you be Richard from the tower? And it is just that he looks a bit like the Yorkist family, which presumably means he's tall and either blonde or red-haired

• 45:09Speaker 02

  and a bit good looking. Like, that's sort of it. I Unfortunately, as much as I would really like to think that the princes in the tower did not both die in there and that these adolescent boys were able to live their lives, I think that they were both dead by the end of the summer 1483. And I think Perkin Warbeck was just a Dutch boy who was colluded into this giant fraud and paid a huge price for it in the end.

• 45:40Eleanor Janega?

  Listen, this is a safe space, Lauren. I couldn't agree with you more. You know, it's fine. You've come to the right place to have the correct opinion. Thank you very much.

• 45:52Eleanor Janega?

  But we do know, okay, we've got a legit bastard. That's a fun way of thinking about it, I guess. But we know a dedicated, bona fide bastard. We've got Edward IV's bastard, Arthur Plantagenet. And he kind of goes on to influence at the court of Henry VIII, right? So like, how does he manage this, given the fact that he could almost be a threat, right? Like, is that kind of like unusual to do, especially considering that we've got a Lancastrian offshoot on the throne?

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And first of all, I have to say, I would like a T-shirt that says bona fide bastard, because that would be amazing.

• 46:34Eleanor Janega?

  That would be good.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  And, so merchandise, please. Yeah, Arthur's really interesting, because he's basically, he's kind of resurrecting the Robert of Gloucester-type style of bastardy that hasn't actually been around for quite a long time. Mostly illegitimate children have sort of just been kind of in the background for a long time. And just to give an example of how Edward IV's illegitimate children were accepted as a kind of a contrast, maybe, with the princes in the tower, there is a daughter of his called Grace, who is still serving Elizabeth Woodville, so Edward IV's widow. She is literally at Elizabeth Woodville's deathbed and burial. She's one of very few people who are there. So these children of

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Edward IV are really, I think, cared for by the Yorkist regime.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  And yeah, Arthur is absolutely an example of that. He goes on to serve in the household of Elizabeth of York, who I, what would, she's his half-sister? I get really confused once we get into the Yorkists, because my word, there's nine million of them. He's called my lord the bastard in various accounts. But yeah, he serves Elizabeth, then he serves Henry VII, then later on, he serves Henry VIII. He's a big jouster, which obviously Henry VIII flipping loves.

• 47:54Eleanor Janega?

  That'll help. Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  And then eventually he's a vice admiral, a viscount, and he's the deputy of Calais, which Richard III's illegitimate son had also been briefly, interestingly. So yeah, he's a really important figure. I would say, though, that actually the Tudors are not fully Lancastrian. This is my slight take on things, is that there is a real effort, I feel like, particularly on the part of Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother, and Elizabeth of York as queen. I think they really strive to invest the Yorkists in the Tudor regime, particularly by marrying them into it. So you have a lot of, for instance, Yorkist princesses who marry Lancastrians, and their children go on to essentially be

• 48:41Speaker 02

  the Tudor court. And I think that's a really important policy, which we kind of see embodied in Henry VIII when he becomes king. There's literal coronation poems where they're like, oh, the twin roses of the Wars of the Roses are in King Henry's cheeks. It's like, okay, yeah, he's got pink cheeks, we get it. But yeah, that like, literally, he is the symbol of it. So it makes sense. He brings together York and Lancaster, and I think Arthur's probably part of that.

• 49:09Eleanor Janega?

  I think we kind of got to end at the Tudor court, right? Because we do have this very important bastard by the time we get there, and that's Henry VIII's son, Henry Fitzroy. And I think we could argue that this is probably the most famous. Of the English royal bastards and I, you know, we're not going to go into him for too long because now we're in the 16th century and that is not what this program is all about. But I do think he's worth talking about because he really gets a lot of power and influence. And I mean, to me, it kind of seems like this is a result of the fact that we see all of these medieval bastards, you know, being able to wield power, being able

• 49:52Eleanor Janega?

  to take apart in court life. And so if Henry VIII wants to do that, that kind of seems fine, right?

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. I think he is definitely inheriting that medieval idea. He's kind of reasserting it. He's very like Edward IV, I think, Henry VIII. Interestingly, Lancastrians, very chaste, like absolute virgins, the Lancastrians, or almost all the Henrys, Henry V, Henry VI, Henry VII. Not one of them has an illegitimate child, certainly in the time they're married, possibly Henry VII does before that. So yeah, it's interesting that Henry VIII really jumps back on the old bastardy bandwagon.

• 50:30Eleanor Janega?

  Well, he was making up for everybody else, right? He's like, these guys didn't do it, so I'm gonna have to really make up for lost time, right?

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Yes. And I, I mean, Henry Fitzroy is one of those absolute what ifs, isn't he? Because he's, again, he seems to have been very capable. He's very well educated. He is, he's given a lot of power that, I mean, maybe it's kind of setting him up to be an heir to the throne, a male heir, because it takes so long for Henry VIII to have a legitimate, living, male heir. But also possibly, like Fitzroy's given lots of responsibility in the north of England. He's the warden of the marches, which is quite a traditional sort of younger son way of doing things. So maybe Henry, even at that point, has in mind, this could be the sort of safe half-brother of the future heir to the throne.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  But yeah, you do kind of wonder if Jane Seymour had not had a son. And if, most importantly, if Fitzroy had not died in 1536, what could have happened? What might he have been?

• 51:35Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  King Henry the ninth? I think it is possible.

• 51:38Eleanor Janega?

  I really think it is possible because, I mean, fundamentally, the way that they were trying to shake things out legally at the time was to pretend that Elizabeth wasn't legitimate either. So it's sort of like, well, if we're, if we're saying that illegitimate children can inherit, here's one. And lo and behold, it's a boy, right? You know, which is apparently the only thing in.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a boy who's old enough.

• 52:00Eleanor Janega?

  Right?

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Like, that's the big thing is, is he's old enough to be king. Whereas the, even Edward the sixth is a child when he becomes king in the end.

• 52:09Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, Lauren, this has been an incredible dash through the illegitimate children of England. You know, the, the beautiful flowers of the roadside here, you know? If we.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  The flowers of the roadside. The poor illegitimate children.

• 52:26Eleanor Janega?

  We love them, we know them. And frankly, you know, I don't, I can't feel too sorry for any of these people because fundamentally they're living much nicer lives than the average peasant. So, you know, life's tough. What can I say?

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Don't live in the middle ages if you want a good time.

• 52:41Eleanor Janega?

  That, that is a rule of thumb that I try to live by. Yes, absolutely. Lauren, thank you so much for coming by. What a treat. What a rom.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:52Eleanor Janega?

  To talk about bastardry with you.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Oh, well, thank you for, for having me. Happy to discuss bastards at any moment.

• 53:02Eleanor Janega?

  Thank you so much once again to Lauren for joining me. And thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you were interested in some of the topics we mentioned in this episode, you might want to go back and check out our past episodes on the anarchy and of course, Matt's favorite, the princes in the tower. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, The Trials of Joan of Arc, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time. You