Blanche of England John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, he was the heir of the Duchy of Lancaster. Blanche was named after her paternal grandmother. Blanche's mother died on 4 June 1394 in Peterborough Castle after giving birth to her last child, Philippa. Five years later, on 13 October, Blanche's father deposed his cousin Richard II and usurped the throne. Three years later in 1402, her father was remarried, to Joanna, daughter of King Charles II of Navarre and widow of Duke John V of Brittany. There were no children of this marriage. After his accession to the English throne, King Henry
John of Gaunt at Richard's behest. It may be that he felt he had to maintain this posture of loyalty to protect his son Henry Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV), who had also been one of the Lords Appellant, from Richard's wrath; but in 1398 Richard had Bolingbroke exiled, and on John of Gaunt's death the next year he disinherited Bolingbroke completely, seizing John's vast estates for the Crown. John of Gaunt was a patron and close friend of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, most famously known for his work "The Canterbury Tales". Near the end of their lives, Lancaster and Chaucer became brothers-in-law.