Publisher's Synopsis
In THE LAST KNIGHT, renowned historian Norman Cantor presents a brilliant portrayal of John of Gaunt and the age in which he lived. Cantor brings to life a captivating historical figure, providing a glimpse into an era marked by the end of chivalry and the onslaught of the plague as well as the beginning of the Renaissance and the modern world.
At the end of the fourteenth century, John of Gaunt , the Duke of Lancaster, was the richest man in Europe. A man of honour and chivalry, raised to fight on horseback, he presided over one of Europe's most cultivated courts. He was Chaucer's patron, a champion of an emerging strain of Protestantism, and the last leader of the Plantagenet family and the founder of the Lancastrian Dynasty before the War of the Roses. The adventures and accolades of this celebrated knight serve as an ideal backdrop for an exploration into the tumultuous era in which he lived, and Cantor offers a compulsively readable tour. THE LAST KNIGHT expertly draws readers into a fascinating time of cultural achievements and peasant revolts, wars and disease, courtly love and bloodshed.
