Gone Medieval - Medieval Royal Bastards

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

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!MOREThe Anarchy: Disruptive WomenListen on AppleListen on SpotifyWhat Happened to the Princes in the Tower?Listen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone 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 for more information.

From long-loss 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 Jarniger, 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 forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianaga 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 gobsmacking 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. 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 theater of dynastic politics. But what happened to the children of kings and princes, of queens and contesses, who were born out of wedlock?

The so-called royal bastards of the Middle Ages. Were they spurned, rejected, and lost to the midst 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? 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 history. father Henry the 8th. The story of medieval bastardry is as much about proximity to power as it is about exclusion from it. In many cases, these men and women stood at the very center of political life, commanding armies, governing kingdoms, marrying inter-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, and dynastic threats, and explore why ultimate Ultimately, questions of legitimacy mattered so deeply in the medieval imagination. Well, Lauren, welcome to God Medieval. Thank you. I'm excited. I'm going medieval all the time in my life. Nice to have gone for once. Listen, today is no exception. We're going to 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? This is kind of like a fan favorite. Do you think it's because it feels like a scandal or is it just because it kind of proves that not all medieval people are like these boring religious people? Like, what is it you think? 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 bull, Aldrich's Turnip. That's our level of society. 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. Yeah, I mean, I suppose that that's true, but I just want to say to all of my fellow

peasant stock, 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 clearly that's not the case. 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 a bastard? 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, 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 1,200s 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 just say, I marry you, I marry you too. And that's 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 is illegitimate. And that would, you know, cause all sorts of problems. So 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 legateen 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 for it to be a real marriage. 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. Yeah, and the Saxons as well. Absolutely normal. And 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 in places in Europe?

Because it seems to me that this is sort of like regional variance that we're looking at here. Yeah, I definitely think it varies by different areas. I mean, as you say, William the Conquer is probably the most famous. example of this. And he is called William the 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 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 Bastardis or Bastada, which is the feminine version, which I think is a very exciting name

for possibly folk rock band. Maybe. I was going to say a cat, but, you know. 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. 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?

Well, do they even have paperwork? If people can't read, not much point having paperwork. Spoiler, no. 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 source, even, it turns out, which are kind of adulterated versions of something. 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 now? 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 10-100s, 1100s. It is extraordinary.

And then everyone starts sort of behaving a bit for a while. And then as soon as you get Edwards on the throne, bastardy arises again. It's pinning it. We're pinning it to the name, Adwark. I think that's the chief trouble, yes. Okay. Listen, we're going to zone in on England, right? Because there are a lot of very famous royal bastards of English kings.

I think if we're going to have this conversation, we've got to sort of start out with Henry I first and his illegitimate son, Robert of Gloucester. Because this is possibly one of the most consequential father-illigimate son duos that we have in English history, right? Yeah, I think so. And Henry I 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. He's very consequential. He's 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 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, 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. 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, you know, 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. But yeah. 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? 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 first's illegitimate children. So I think there's a kind of good fortune for Roberts 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 named Matilda as his heir, and he makes all of the lords and bishops come and give fealty to her in the 11-20s, Robert has a falling out 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. 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. Always. Obviously. 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? 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 Vonjou 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 von Jue, 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 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. Well, they're 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. I do love the West Country. You know, what could I say? Me too. That's where I'm from. Yay, good vibes. Yeah. 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 recognises that female power 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 II. 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. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about Henry the first other illegitimate kid, his daughter, Sybil? Yes. 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. 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 I 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 think. feel like Sybil Corbett or Sibia Corby possibly. It's probably French. Yeah, so Sybil is one of a number of illegitimate children born to Sybil and Henry. 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, all 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. 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 influential up to her death, it seems like. So, yeah.

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. Yeah, because I was going to ask,

we kind of see this happen more commonly with illegitimate girls than illegitimate boys, right? 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. 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. Well, look at this, Lauren. What a perfect segue you have set us up for because we're going to have to talk about him. Who is the man, the myth, the legend, Jeffrey Plantagenet. Your boy, Jeff. That is my boy. Jeffie P. Yeah.

He's an interesting. interesting on, 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 II's illegitimate children are interesting. And they've kind of understandably perhaps paled into insignificance behind Henry the second's legitimate children who spend the entire time fighting him and trying to wrestle bits of a kingdom away. Whereas Geoffrey Plantagenet, who seems to have been Henry II's eldest child, illegitimate or otherwise, born when Henry the Second's just a teenager, 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 decades. He is the one who defends his father to the 10th 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 serious.

similar you see with some of Jeffrey's later behaviour, like him and his father, they're quite charismatic, but they're incredibly stubborn, like, stubborn to the points of making enemies rather than admit they're wrong. And that's, that's like a fundamental of Jeffrey's personality. 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. Well, I think that certainly Richard I would agree with you, right? Because, you know, we've got, we got Jeffrey kind of bopping along, you know, and like, that's fine, you know, but then eventually we get Richard I first come to the throne. And this is a whole different ballgame, right? And he approaches the matter of his brother, I think slightly differently. Oh yeah, he hates him, I would say. Richard the first, again, deeply unpleasant human being. Really not a nice guy. Oh, I hate him. I really don't like him, unfortunately. Yeah. Don't let Eleanor Valkoutrain hear me say that. I know he's her favorite, but, you know. That's like the only thing in his.

favour, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, Richard I 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, lent 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 I becomes king, he's like, right, you're Archbishop, then 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,

even though he definitely doesn't like Richard. He doesn't like Richard's chief advisors. 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. 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 Jeffrey, 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 is about attempting to sort of like cork his teeth as it were. 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 Jeffrey spends pretty much the rest of his own life, which is longer than Richards, just excommunicating anyone who annoys him,

which I've got a lot of time for. If you're going to be an archbishop. He's so real for that. He's so real for that. That's exactly what I would do. Yeah, he's like, oh, are you an abbess who wants some land that I've got? No, excommunicated. Yeah, over and over again.

The current church could learn a thing or two, right? I'm like, let's go. Make with it. Yeah, more excommunication. That's what we need. But yeah, he wields it constantly. 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, uh-huh, and I'm like, uh-huh, and then he was also away being arrested, and also just dick it around on the continent, seizing people's castle. You know, it wasn't always crusade. He's also just off being a jerk, right? And Jeffrey'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 Longshamp, right? Yeah, exactly that. There's a, I mean, so many of the things in the period of the Andgevins, 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 Longsham is left behind

as Justicea with another person, incidentally, the bishop. of Durham who Jeffrey hates. He hates them both. And William Longsham says to Jeffrey, all right, yeah, you can be the Archbishop of York, obviously. You can come and 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, but also you swear allegiance to me as his justiciar. And you'll never guess what Jeffrey 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 Longsham'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 Beckett cosplay, but that's effectively what happens, is they burst in and sees 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 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 of William Longsham, 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 Longsham to like just drive him out of the kingdom effectively. So, I mean, you don't want to annoy Jeffrey, I would say. That's the long and short of it. He will excommunicate you. He's playing. He's playing. He's playing. a blinder here though. I think that in a way I almost read it as him goading them to come and beck at him, right? And I Oh, I absolutely think so. It's a very

effective piece of sort of political playmaking, right? Like, the man is not stupid. We can definitely say that about Jeffrey Plantagenet. He was probably doing mass every 30 seconds just to be like, when they come in, I am going to be at the altar. Much smarter than any of his brothers, in my opinion. I've really got a lot of time for Jeffrey.

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 Longsham, but we have to talk about William Longs Sword. There's a lot of longs kicking about the place. Can you tell us a little bit about him? Yeah. I find Geoffrey and William Long Sword. They're kind of like two sides of a coin.

I think that Jeffrey gets a lot of the belligerence and rage, that like devil's rage of hemorrhury. Henry the Second. And William Longsaw 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, or Geoffrey, basically. He is, he's from way later in Henry the Second's life. He's actually a very similar age to Prince John, who's born in the 1160s. 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 Long Sword? Why does he get the really good name? It sounds so powerful. Yeah, it is a good one. 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 Duttony.

And it's the Dutoni line who have this claim to the name Longsword. So it's, yeah, brilliant. I would call myself that, Lauren Longsword. Absolutely. And 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. 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. Yeah. 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 seems to have got on really well.

Like they gambled together. There's payments and gifts and things from John to his brother. So probably that's partly why William, likes him. He gets presents and isn't starved to death in a castle or anything like some of John's other friends. But yeah, so William is there when John submits to the Pope. He's there at the Battle of Bovine 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 being beaten off his horse by a bishop, standard medieval bishop behavior there.

Yeah, obviously, yeah. 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. 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 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 the 3rd is only a tiny little baby, you know? And, you know, we've got William Marshall and we've got

William Longsword, who were sitting here kind of doing the right thing, right? 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 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 think he was like, well, Louis seems 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 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.

And he says that very consistently, even whilst he is doing the classic noble thing of besieging other people because he wants their castle. 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 variable set of ideas, right? This way, I think we're going to have to go to the War of the Roses, Lauren, because I feel like 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 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's something a little bit magical or sacred about their 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 the Duke 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 there's some really confused ideas around at this time, I feel like. Well, can we talk a bit about Richard III? That'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 the tower, these are bastards. Okay. Do you think he is technically right? Or is this just like a pretty good pretext to like kidnap his nephews and put them in a tower, right?

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 accept it at the time, I think, that Edward VIII 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 was very believable that he was. 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. 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 was,

were true that these children were legally illegitimate. I feel like there's been enough done by Edward VIII in his lifetime to assert their legitimacy, that people kind of accepted that they were royally legitimate, if not maritally legitimate. You know, he'd had his queen have a public coronation. His children had publicly been invested, and there'd been great big court celebrations and ceremonials and things. One of the princes in the Tao was already married. The other one had been acting as Prince of Wales for years. Like everything public that could be done by Edward VIII

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 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 tower being kings. I don't think legally it was enough of an argument. 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. And also, look, I mean, two things can be true, I suppose, is one thing about this. Yeah. I feel like we should also remember that Richard the third 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. A little bit of a side track, you know, side quest here. Your good friend and mine, Perkin Warbeck,

right? There's some people who say that Perkin Warbeck might have been one of Edward the Forth's several many bastards. What do you think about this as an idea? 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 one of Richards, 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 and a bit good-looking. Like that's sort of it. 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.

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. But we do know, okay, we've got a legit, 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 the fourth 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 Lancasterian offshoot on the throne? Yeah, and first of all, I have to say, I would like a T-shirt that says Bonafide Bastet, because that would be amazing. That would be good. 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 Edward IV are really, I think, cared for by the Yorkist regime. And yeah, Arthur is absolutely an example of that. He goes on to serve in the household of Elizabeth of York who I

well she's his half-sister I get really confused once we get into the Yorkist 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 the 7th

then later on he serves Henry the 8th he's a big jouster which obviously Henry the 8th flipping loves that'll help yeah yeah okay and then eventually he's a vice admiral a Viscount and he's the deplet

of Calais, which Richard the Third'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 the 7th's mother, and Elizabeth of York, his 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 the Tudor court. And I think that's a really important policy which we kind of see embodied in Henry the 8th 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. 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, 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 to take a part in court life. And so if Hedery the 8th wants to do that, that kind of seems fine, right? Yeah, I think so. I think he is definitely inheriting that medieval idea. He's kind of reasserting it. He's very like Edward VIII, I think, Henry VIII. Interestingly, Lancasterians, very chaste, like absolute virgins, the Lancasterians, almost all the Henry's. Henry V, Henry the 6th, Henry the 7th. Not one of them has an illegitimate child, certainly in the time they're married. Possibly Henry the 7th does before that. So yeah, it's interesting that Henry the 8th really jumps back on the old bastardy bandwagon.

Well, he was making up for everybody else, right? He's like, these guys didn't do it, so I'm going to have to really make up for lost time, right? Yes. And 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'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's. take so long for Henry the 8th 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. But yeah, you do kind of wonder if Jane Seymour had not had a son and if, most of the most of the Most importantly, if Fitzroy had not died in 1536, what could have happened? What might he have been King Henry the 9th?

I think it is possible. 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 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 English. Yeah, and a boy who's old enough.

Right? Like, that's the big thing is he's old enough to be king, whereas even Edward VI is a child when he becomes king in the end. Lauren, this has been an incredible dash through the illegitimate

children of England. You know, the beautiful flowers of the roadside here, you know, if we... The flowers of the roadside. The poor illegitimate children. We love them. We know them. And frankly, you know, 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?

Yeah, absolutely. Don't live in the Middle Ages if you want a good time. 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. Yes. To talk about bastardry with you. Oh, well, thank you for having me. discuss bastards at any moment. 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 forward slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until all your friends and family that you've Gone Medieval. Until next time.