The Treaty of Windsor

As I may have mentioned in these postings, I have been investigating my family history for a few years with the objective of putting it all together in a book. The project has grown so much that my writings to date suggest that my finished history will be on a scale that, by comparison, consigns such stories as War & Peace to the category of mere novelettes. I feel that my multi-volume work will need much editing before I proceed to publication. In searching the roots of my family I find myself in Lancashire in Tudor times and earlier when the county was still a wild place. I come up against land and allegiances tied to John of Gaunt [1340 - 1399], Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III and ancestor of Plantagenet kings Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI and via his illegitimate line of the Beauforts to Henry VII, Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth. Not that our family was ever anything above the level of yeoman. It is just that John of Gaunt - who does not seem to have ever had anything very much to do with Lancashire or Lancaster - was an essential cog in a vast family that controlled England and the lives of the whole population. I have just delved into this complex family structure again when I noted [via the BBC] that today is the 724th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Windsor between England [not Britain of the UK] with Portugal; this treaty is still in-force and as such is the oldest such treaty still valid anywhere in the world. The treaty marked the alliance on the occasion of the marriage of John I of Portugal to Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt. The treaty was important in cementing an alliance that recognized Spain as a common enemy. The treaty was actually a revision of a document first signed in 1373. The treaty has been invoked many times over the centuries to bring Portugal into military actions - like the Peninsula War and WWII. It seems almost a pity that we have to record that Portugal is almost unique [I know that such a condition is impossible; it is either unique or it is not] among the countries of Europe in that during a period on 700+ years we have never gone to war against them.

All this makes recording May 9th as the anniversary of Colonel Thomas Blood's attempt to steal the crown jewels in 1671 - he failed to escape and the damaged jewellery was repaired - as a mere trifle in the eons of English history. Oddly, King Charles II pardoned the Irishman and gave him lands in Ireland. Perhaps, it is suggested, the king just loved an un-restructured rogue.

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