This week we hear from Librarian Antony Ramm, who briefly explores the distant links between a 14th-century diplomatic treaty and a modest commuter town in the Leeds metropolitan district…

As no doubt many readers are aware, tomorrow marks the 650^th anniversary of the oldest continuous diplomatic treaty in existence: the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373, signed on 16 June between King Edward III of England and King Ferdinand and Queen Eleanor of Portugal, and establishing “perpetual friendships, unions [and] alliances” between the two states.

The historical context for the signing of this treaty in the broader Hundred Years War (1337 – 1453) is explored in a recent article in the June edition of the excellent History Today journal – Jenny Benham’s ‘Friends to Friends, Enemies to Enemies’ (pages 74-83).

You can read a copy of that article by visiting our Local and Family History department on the 2^nd floor of the Central Library – History Today is just one of many high-quality journals and magazines Leeds Libraries subscribe to on behalf of the people of Leeds and which can be accessed for free through that department (which has inherited the old Information and Research stock and services).

If – when! – you read Benham’s article, you’ll discover the origins of the Treaty in an earlier Treaty, signed on 10 July 1372 by King Fernando I of Portugal and representatives of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and son of King Edward III. That 1372 Treaty was wrapped up – as Benham explains – in John of Gaunt’s personal ambitions as a claimant to the Crown of Castile.

A recent biography of John of Gaunt explores that Iberian side-context for the Hundred Years War in much more detail: Helen Carr’s The Red Prince: The Life of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster (2021). That book can be loaned from Leeds Libraries, and is highly-recommended to anyone interested in the fascinating figure of its central character, a man who can lay claim to a truly significant, central role and influence in his own times. (Historiography nerds might be interested to know that Carr is the great-granddaughter of E.H. Carr, author of the classic What is History? Indeed, she has co-authored and edited a recent follow-up to her ancestor’s book, called What is History, Now?)

But what is perhaps most notable about Carr’s biography of Gaunt is that it opens in a very-local place indeed: the Holy Trinity Church in Rothwell, some 5 miles outside Leeds city centre. And that’s because John of Gaunt is quite intimately connected to Rothwell (as he is to many other towns around England, it should be said): the former owner of land in the area, including the royal hunting lodge that was located right across the road from the Holy Trinity Church, near to the former Rothwell Castle.

Gaunt is said to have been a frequent visitor to that lodge and its related royal hunting park (now Rothwell Country Park), and famously is the subject of a local legend claiming he killed the last wild boar in England while hunting in the Styebank Lane area. Carr’s main interest in Rothwell in the context of her biography, however, is that the Holy Trinity Church claims to possess an old, rare hunting coat that once belonged to Gaunt; Carr highlights this surviving physical object as a way of directly connecting the distant medieval past to the present day, a way of bringing a seemingly unrelatable figure like Gaunt into quotidian proximity.

Carr’s book includes a photograph of the coat, which cannot be reproduced here for copyright reasons – but, thankfully, our amazing Leodis website, an archive of historical photographs and images of Leeds, does feature a view of the coat. You’re still urged to get hold of a copy of the book, however, to see this wonderful historical relic for yourself, and to immerse yourself in the world of John of Gaunt – and, when you’ve finished, visit the Holy Trinity Church in Rothwell, and marvel at how an unassuming town just outside Leeds is connected, albeit tenuously, to the oldest surviving diplomatic alliance in the world.

You can read more about our collections relating to Rothwell in our Rothwell & District Research Guide.