Katherine Swynford Part 8

It is unlikely that with the exception of Bishop Beaufort, who was based at Lincoln Cathedral, a stone's throw from the Priory the widowed Katherine saw much of her sons. In the summer of 1400, John and Thomas Beaufort accompanied Henry IV on a military expedition to Scotland,35 and after the King came south in September, John Beaufort accompanied him on a tour of North Wales,36 while Thomas was appointed Sheriff of Oxfords.h.i.+re. John was granted the lands of the Welsh rebel Owen Glendower in November,37 and he was in London in December for a council meeting and to prepare for the coming visit of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II. At this time, Katherine was again looking after affairs at Kettlethorpe: in a deed dated there on 13 October, Thomas Aylemere of Kettlethorpe confirmed to her, as d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster and Lady of Kettlethorpe, the grant or purchase of a small garden plot.38 In 1401, John Beaufort was appointed Captain of Calais, an office he would hold until his death,39 and that same year he was chosen to escort Richard II's grieving young widow, Queen Isabella, back to France.40 Later, he was in Calais negotiating a truce with the French. On 26 November 1401, the King gave further evidence of holding John in high favour by standing G.o.dfather to his eldest son, who was named Henry in his honour, and by granting the infant a generous annuity of 1,000 marks (121,492).41 It is unlikely, with all this going on, that John Beaufort had much leisure to visit his mother, and from Michaelmas 1401, Katherine was even more isolated because Henry Beaufort was at Oxford for most of the academic year.42 Then, in May 1402, he went to court, where thanks to his royal blood and his clever brain he soon became one of the chief statesmen of the realm. In the month of his arrival there, he and his brother Thomas witnessed the appointment of proctors for the proposed marriages of Henry of Monmouth, now Prince of Wales, and his sister Philippa,43 and in the autumn, Bishop Beaufort was appointed to the King's Council.

Henry IV remarried in 1402: his bride was Joan of Navarre, and John Beaufort was present at the proxy wedding that took place on 3 April at Eltham. In June, John was entrusted with escorting the King's daughter, Princess Blanche, to Germany for her marriage to Rupert, Duke of Bavaria and King of the Romans.44 That month, John Leventhorpe, the King's trusted Receiver-General of the Duchy of Lancaster, travelled to Lincoln to speak with Katherine.45 We do not know the nature of their business, and it was not unusual for Leventhorpe to leave his office in London and travel about the Duchy estates in the course of his work. It is possible that Katherine realised that her health was beginning to fail and that she wished to put some of her affairs in order.

Thomas Beaufort received his first military command as Captain of Ludlow Castle on the Welsh Marches in August 1402;46 that year, Henry IV confirmed John of Gaunt's bequest of an annuity to him. In November, however, the King refused to accede to a parliamentary pet.i.tion that John Beaufort be restored to his former rank of marquess; both Henry, and indeed John Beaufort himself, felt that that particular t.i.tle was 'alien', too closely a.s.sociated with Richard II and with Robert de Vere, for whom it had been created.47 John was sent to Brittany that month to escort Queen Joan to England; their party docked at Falmouth in February 1403, and on the 7th, Bishop Beaufort officiated at the royal wedding in Winchester Cathedral.48 There is no record of Katherine attending, nor does she seem to have been present at the new Queen's coronation on 26 February, which suggests that her health did not permit her to travel far these days, for these were great state occasions for most of the n.o.bility, and as Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster she would have occupied a position of honour at them.

At the end of February, Henry Beaufort was appointed to the high office of Chancellor of England, a post he would hold under three successive sovereigns. The following month, John Beaufort was sent to take up his command in Calais, where he seems to have remained until June.49 That March, work on John of Gaunt's new chantry in St Paul's was completed the chantry priests were established there in July and on the 8th, Henry IV granted licence to his late father's executors to found the chantry for Constance for which the late Duke had made provision in his will.

The next reference to Katherine is ominous. At Eltham, on 12 April 1403, in response to a pet.i.tion by her, the King granted that two of the four tuns of wine received by her each year could be sent instead to Thomas Swynford and his wife.50 Because this pet.i.tion was made so close to her death, it is more than possible that Katherine was ill and knew she would no longer need so much wine for her household, and so asked for half of it to be given to her son.

In May we find Thomas Beaufort still serving as Captain of Ludlow. Sadly, neither he nor his brother John, abroad in Calais, would ever see their mother again. She died, perhaps unexpectedly soon, probably in the solar wing of the Priory, on 10 May 1403, aged about fifty-three.51 She was buried in Lincoln Cathedral, in the Angel Choir, on the south side of the sanctuary, in the western arch of the two bays near the high altar. As d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster, she was ent.i.tled to such an honourable burial place, and no doubt her son, Bishop Beaufort, saw that she got it; he probably officiated at the funeral for which no information survives and may well have commissioned his mother's table tomb, or carried out instructions she had left for it in her will. Harvey makes a good case for its being designed by Thomas Prentys, a master sculptor from Chollaston in Northamptons.h.i.+re, for Katherine's tomb has similarities to others he is known to have designed.52 Silva-Vigier romantically suggests that Katherine's heart was buried with John of Gaunt in St Paul's, but that is highly unlikely, since heart burial had become virtually obsolete in England by this time.

Katherine's fine tomb chest of Purbeck marble, with its moulded plinth and lid, had armorial s.h.i.+elds encircled by garters along each side; it was surmounted by a canopied bra.s.s depicting Katherine in her widow's weeds, and bearing her arms impaled with those of John of Gaunt, while above it was raised a vaulted canopy with trefoiled arches, cusped lozenges and miniature rose bosses. The canopy and a.s.sociated stonework would have been painted in bright colours. Her epitaph, recorded by Lancaster Herald, Francis Thynne, around 1600, was as follows: Ici gist dame Katherine d.u.c.h.esse de Lancastre jadis feme de le tresn.o.ble et tresgracious prince John Duk de Lancastre fils a tresn.o.ble roy Edward le tierce, la quelle Katherine mourust le X jour de May l'an du grace MCCCC tiers de quelle alme dieu eyt merci et pitiee. Amen.53 This translates as: Here lies Dame Katherine, d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster, once the wife of the very n.o.ble and very gracious Prince, John, Duke of Lancaster, son to the very n.o.ble King Edward III, the which Katherine died the 10th day of May in the year of grace 1403, on whose soul G.o.d have mercy and pity. Amen.

On 27 June 1403, annuities amounting to 1,300 (416,705) that had been paid to Katherine out of the issues of the Duchy of Lancaster were transferred to Queen Joan.54 The late d.u.c.h.ess's pa.s.sing had apparently occurred virtually unnoticed, for no chronicler comments on it, and there is no record of court mourning. She died as she had lived during those sad years of her widowhood, quietly and without any stir, almost as a private person. Certainly the wording of her epitaph does not reflect the grandeur of her own position, but rather emphasises her husband's rank and lineage and her need for divine mercy; this emphasis on humility and an awareness of the innate sinfulness of human nature, as well as specific sins, was typical of the age, and probably derived from the ageing Katherine's own feelings about herself and her life.

Lucraft has pertinently pointed out that we would know more about the latter if Katherine's will had survived, but there is no trace of it, either in Lincoln or in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury records.55 We know that a will was made because not long after her death, the Lincoln Chapter's Clerk of the Common rode to Liddington in Wilts.h.i.+re to discuss the proving of her testament with Bishop Beaufort;56 and in her own will of 1440, Joan Beaufort bequeathed to her eldest son a psalter willed to her by 'the ill.u.s.trious lady and my mother, Lady Katherine, d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster', which she directed should go to each of her sons in turn, clearly intending it to be an important family heirloom.57 Of the will's other provisions, there is the likelihood that Katherine bequeathed Gisors Hall in Boston to Thomas Beaufort.

On 19 May 1403, sixteen days after Katherine had died, the Priory was leased to Canon Richard of Chesterfield, but he withdrew from the agreement on 29 June 'on account of fear of the Queen'; it seems that Joan of Navarre, with the King's consent, had promised the house to Elizabeth Grey, the widow of Philip, Lord Darcy, who lived in a house nearby. Katherine had probably known her, given their close proximity and the fact that Elizabeth Grey's daughter-in-law, Margaret Grey, the present Lady Darcy, later became Sir Thomas Swynford's second wife; Elizabeth Grey could well have been a friend of Katherine's, indeed, Katherine may even have asked Queen Joan to arrange for Lady Darcy to lease the Priory after her death. Be this as it may, the King did grant it to her.58 Plans for the foundation of the chantry chapel at Lincoln for which John of Gaunt had obtained a licence in 1398 were shelved: three times, in 1400, 1402 and 1413, the Duke's executors acknowledged their failure to carry out his wishes.59 Not until 1437 do we hear that an altar had been set up, but even then no formal foundation had apparently been made.60 Katherine's chief legacy to history was her Beaufort children. John Beaufort continued to serve as Captain of Calais until 1404 or 1405, when Sir Thomas Swynford was acting as his deputy. In 1407, John Beaufort asked Henry IV to clarify the status of himself and his siblings, whereupon the King, on 10 February that year, confirmed the statute of 1397 that legitimised them, but added the words excepta dignitate regali ('excepting the royal dignity') in his Letters Patent, denying them the right of succession to the Crown,61 an act of dubious legality that would be called into question in the years to come, for it was never approved by Parliament, and the original Act had been left unamended. There has been speculation that Henry IV had always privately feared the implications of the Beauforts being legitimised, and while he himself had four strapping sons and must have known that John Beaufort's loyalty and that of his siblings was beyond question, he could not rely on the fealty of subsequent generations; so this clause probably reflects his determination to pre-empt any future threat to the senior Lancastrian line.

John Beaufort died on Palm Sunday, 16 March 1410, aged only thirty-seven, in the Hospital of St Katherine-by-the-Tower, a royal charity founded in 1148 by Matilda of Boulogne, the wife of King Stephen, to offer spiritual comfort and alms to the poor; given the fact that its patrons had always been royal ladies, that John Beaufort died there, and that John of Gaunt had founded a chantry in the hospital, as well as its connection with her name-saint, it is highly likely that the hospital had been under Katherine's patronage when she was d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster.62 John was buried in St Michael's Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, near his uncle the Black Prince and the shrine of St Thomas a Becket, a resting place probably chosen for him by Henry IV, who was himself buried nearby in 1413.63 John was succeeded as Earl of Somerset by his eight-year-old son, Henry. His widow, Margaret Holland, became the wife of Henry IV's third son, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, and in due course she and her second husband were interred in the same tomb as John Beaufort, with the effigy of Margaret rec.u.mbent between those of her two spouses. The latter are similar, but John's effigy is shorter and his face, distinguished by its Plantagenet nose and heavy-lidded eyes, may well be an attempt at a likeness.

Henry Beaufort was the most dynamic of Katherine's sons. In 1404 he was translated from the See of Lincoln to that of Winchester. He stood high in the counsels of Henry IV and his son, Henry V (who succeeded his father in 1413), was one of the chief mainstays of the House of Lancaster, and played a prominent role in the history of England during the first half of the fifteenth century, becoming enormously rich and influential in the process; it has been said that he was probably the greatest royal creditor of the age.64 In 1418, he narrowly missed being elected Pope. Three years later, he was nominated G.o.dfather to Henry V's only son, and when that infant became Henry VI in 1422, he was entrusted to the care of Henry and Thomas Beaufort. During the minority of Henry VI, Bishop Beaufort was a leading figure on the regency Council, and in 1426 was made a cardinal, achieving one of the highest accolades the Church could bestow. In 1431, he was one of the judges who condemned Joan of Arc to be burned at the stake. He died at Wolvesey Palace, Winchester, in the spring of 1447, aged seventy-two, and was buried in the chantry he had founded in Winchester Cathedral; his parents were among those for whom he had requested that perpetual prayers be said there.65 He had one b.a.s.t.a.r.d child, a daughter called Joan. It has often been stated that her mother was Eleanor FitzAlan, daughter of the Earl of Arundel,66 but there is no evidence to support that claim.67 There is a fine effigy of Cardinal Beaufort, wearing his red robes and wide-brimmed hat, on his tomb, and a stone head of him at Bishop's Waltham Palace, Hamps.h.i.+re. It has recently been suggested that a portrait of a cardinal by the celebrated Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck may also portray him. The sitter was once thought to have been Cardinal Niccolo Albergati, but his well-fleshed appearance and fur-trimmed robe does not ride with what we know of the ascetic Albergati. Henry Beaufort was in Ghent in 1432, at the time this portrait is thought to have been painted, and clearly the sitter was an important man.68 Could this cardinal, with his closely shaven face, large nose, keen brown eyes and pleasant, playful smile, have been the son of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt?

The very able Thomas Beaufort also had a distinguished career in royal service. In 1403, soon after his mother's death, he was made Admiral of the Northern Fleet,69 and on 21 July that year he fought under the future Henry V at the Battle of Shrewsbury. He again served as admiral in 14089, and in 1410, he reached the pinnacle of his career when he was appointed Chancellor of England, as well as Captain of Calais. He resigned the chancellors.h.i.+p in 1412, the year he was created Earl of Dorset, and in which he saw military service in France, Henry V having abandoned the peace policy of his grandfather, John of Gaunt, and resurrected England's ancient claim to the French throne. Thomas was the King's Lieutenant in Aquitaine in 1413, and in 1415, with his cousin Thomas Chaucer, he wielded his sword for Henry V in the French campaign that ended with the jubilant English victory at Agincourt. The town of Harfleur was also taken, and Thomas Beaufort was made its captain. He was appointed Lieutenant of Normandy in 1416, and created Duke of Exeter on 18 November that year.70 Two years later, he took an active part in Henry V's ruthless push to conquer Normandy, and was created Count of Harcourt on 1 July.

Thomas was widely renowned for his highly developed sense of chivalry, his moral rect.i.tude, his Christian piety, and his charity to the poor and to travellers. He was impervious to corruption, refusing all gifts and rewards, and he forbade swearing, tale-bearing and lying in his household.71 It is tempting to wonder if he had been deeply humiliated by the irregularity of his birth and his former b.a.s.t.a.r.dy, and if all this stiff propriety was a subconscious attempt to compensate for those stigmas.

When the King's brother, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, was defeated and killed at the Battle of Beauge in 1421, Thomas Beaufort was taken prisoner by the French; he was released the following year. Soon afterwards, Henry V died, having entrusted the guardians.h.i.+p of his heir, the infant Henry VI, to his 'dear and true Duke of Exeter, full of all worthyhood',72 whereupon Thomas returned to England to share responsibility for the upbringing of his nephew with his brother, Bishop Beaufort. From 1424, their cousin, Thomas Chaucer, was also a member of the regency Council.

Thomas Beaufort died on 31 December 1426, and was buried in the Lady Chapel of the abbey of Bury St Edmund's in Suffolk. He left no heir, his only son Henry having died young. In his will, he made provision for Ma.s.ses to be celebrated for the souls of his parents, and left a silver-gilt cup to his half-brother, Sir Thomas Swynford.73 His tomb was lost when the Lady Chapel was pulled down in 1538 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In 1772, a lead coffin thought to be Thomas Beaufort's was found by workmen on the supposed site of its altar. The remains it contained were well preserved in cerecloth, and were reburied in a wooden casket near the north-east crossing pier.74 Thomas Chaucer, who had turned down a knighthood, died on 14 March 1434 and was buried at Ewelme. His only daughter Alice married William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and thus became a d.u.c.h.ess, the highest rank to which a woman could aspire outside the royal family. Her son, John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, was to marry Edward IV's sister Elizabeth of York, and their son, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was acknowledged as heir to the throne by Richard III after the latter's son died in 1484. Thus the descendants of Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of a London vintner, were raised to the highest echelons of the n.o.bility and might, but for a turn of fate, have become kings of England and it was all largely due to Geoffrey's sister-in-law having become the mistress and later wife of the mighty Duke of Lancaster.

Joan Beaufort proved to be a strong-willed, formidable lady, with wide literary interests she liked pious works, romances and histories, and the poet Thomas Hoccleve dedicated a book to her.75 Yet she also demonstrated a deep religious piety that embraced the mysticism of Margery Kempe, the holy woman of Lynn. In 1404, Joan's husband, Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, conscious of his lady's royal connections and dynastic importance, disinherited his legitimate son by his first wife in favour of Joan's children, provoking a legal wrangle that would drag on for years, but in which the ruthlessly determined Joan would ultimately triumph.

In 1424, Joan's daughter Cecily Neville married Ralph Neville's ward, Richard, Duke of York. York was the grandson of Edmund of Langley, fifth son of Edward III and younger brother of John of Gaunt, and he was also descended, through Philippa of Clarence and the Mortimers, from Lionel of Antwerp, Edward III's second surviving son. Thus he had a strong claim to the throne, which he would a.s.sert in 1460 during the Wars of the Roses, insisting that he had a better right to rule than Henry VI. York was killed that same year at the Battle of Wakefield, but his claim was inherited by his son, Edward, Earl of March, the eldest of the fourteen children born of his marriage to Cecily Neville.

Ralph Neville died in 1425, and was buried in Staindrop Church, County Durham, beside his first wife. His effigy may be seen there today, lying between those of both his ladies, but although Joan founded a chantry at Staindrop for herself and her husband in 1437, she was never to be buried with him. Either she disdained to lie for eternity near his first wife, or she wanted to be with her mother: in her will, dated 10 May 1440, the thirty-seventh anniversary of Katherine's death, she asked if the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln would enlarge her tomb enclosure so that she, Joan, could be interred 'in the same altar where the body of Lady Katherine, d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster, my mother, is buried'.76 On 28 November 1437, she had obtained a royal licence for her second foundation, a perpetual chantry in Lincoln Cathedral for the souls of both her parents, finally fulfilling their wishes almost forty years after John of Gaunt had obtained licence to found such a chantry 'for the good estate of himself and Katherine his wife'. The foundation, which dated from 16 July 1439, was to be formally called 'the Chantry of Katherine, late d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster, in the cathedral church of Lincoln'. Two chaplains were appointed to celebrate Ma.s.s each morning at 7 a.m. at the altar beside the tomb, and Joan made provision for prayers to be offered for Henry IV, Henry V and her late husband, Ralph Neville, as well.77 Joan herself died on 13 November 1440, at Howden, Yorks.h.i.+re, aged fifty-nine, and was buried with Katherine as she had wished; their two table tombs stood side by side, and Joan's also had a memorial bra.s.s and arms encircled by garters and Lancastrian collars of SS. Her epitaph, engraved on a bra.s.s plate, was recorded by Sandford in the seventeenth century; unlike Katherine's, it depicted its subject in heroic vein, a.s.serting, 'The whole nation mourns her death.'78 It was after Joan's interment, when the tomb s.p.a.ce was enlarged, that an ornamental wrought-iron grille was set up to enclose it, as she had requested.79 As Bishop Beaufort was a supervisor of his sister's will, he may have been responsible for the commissioning of her tomb.80 I am indebted to Jackie Goodman, the wife of Professor Goodman, for sharing her interesting theory concerning Joan Beaufort. There is a miniature of Joan and her daughters in the Neville Book of Hours,81 and in it there appears a scroll on which is written the first verse of Psalm 50: 'Have mercy on me, O G.o.d, according to Thy great Mercy.' This rather echoes the sentiments in Katherine Swynford's epitaph, and expresses a similar humility, awareness of sin, and penitence. But verse 6 of the Psalm says, 'For behold, I was conceived in iniquities: and in my sins did my mother conceive me.' If Joan was responsible for this psalm being quoted in the miniature, which is possible, then Jackie Goodman may be making a very valid point when she suggests that Joan's sense of her own sinfulness derived from the circ.u.mstances of her birth and her early awareness of her b.a.s.t.a.r.dy, and that to some extent she bore the burden of her mother's guilt, which she attempted to expunge all her life by religious observance and the study of contemplative literature, just as her brother Thomas had sought to occupy the moral high ground. Hence her desire to share Katherine's sepulchre, honour her memory and secure for her eternal salvation.82 We have seen how, by 1450, through advantageous marriages, Joan's Neville children came to be related to nearly every peer in the realm. But there was greater glory to come. In 1461, her grandson, Edward, Earl of March, deposed Henry VI and seized the throne as Edward IV, first sovereign of the House of York. Henry was briefly restored in 1470 through the machinations of the man who had once been the mainstay of Edward's throne, Warwick the Kingmaker another of Joan's grandsons. When Henry VI was murdered in 1471, the direct line of the royal House of Lancaster, the kings descended from John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, became extinct. In 1483, Edward IV himself died, and yet another of Joan's grandsons, his brother, Richard III, ascended the throne. Thus did Katherine, the herald's daughter, become the great-grandmother of kings.

Of course, John of Gaunt had many other descendants; indeed, he could justifiably be termed the 'grandfather of Europe'. In the Iberian kingdoms, and among the Burgundian Habsburgs, his memory was long honoured as a n.o.ble progenitor of dynasties. In 1406, his grandson, Catalina's son, Juan II, succeeded to the throne of Castile. In 1469, Juan II's daughter, Isabella, Queen of Castile, would marry Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and thus unite Spain as its joint sovereigns. Their youngest daughter, Catalina of Aragon, born in 1485, was named for her great-grandmother, Catalina of Lancaster (who had died paralysed in 1418), and became with her name anglicised as Katherine of Aragon the first wife of Henry VIII of England, and by him the mother of Mary I. Thus the bloodline of John of Gaunt was continued in the royal families of Spain and, through intermarriage, Austria, and was carried back into the English royal family.

It flowed in Portugal, too, where Philippa of Lancaster died of plague in 1415. In 1433, her son Duarte I succeeded to the Portuguese throne, and for the next two hundred years, her descendants would rule there. Her sister, the spirited Elizabeth of Lancaster, Katherine Swynford's other erstwhile charge, died in 1426 and was buried in Burford Church, Shrops.h.i.+re, where a fine painted effigy graces her tomb.

John and Katherine had many descendants in the Beaufort line. John Beaufort's eldest son, Henry, Earl of Somerset, died young at seventeen in 1418, when he was succeeded by his fourteen-year-old brother John. Their sister, another Joan Beaufort, married James I, King of Scots, in 1424, and thus Katherine's granddaughter became a queen. Through Queen Joan, the sovereigns of the royal House of Stewart (later Stuart) traced their descent from John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford.

In 1443, the younger John Beaufort was created Duke of Somerset by Henry VI, the second of Katherine's descendants to achieve ducal rank. That year, his wife, Margaret Beauchamp, bore their only child, a daughter, the Lady Margaret Beaufort. John Beaufort did not long enjoy his dukedom. He died, perhaps by his own hand, on 27 May 1444, and was buried in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, leaving his daughter as his heiress. In 1450, the young Lady Margaret was the unwitting focus of a plot by William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (the husband of Alice Chaucer), to marry her to his son and make her Queen of England upon the murder of Henry VI a treasonable plan that cost the Duke his head. Yet it was proof enough that a Beaufort claimant to the throne was a viable prospect to some.

In October 1455, Margaret Beaufort, aged only twelve, was married to Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the twenty-five-year-old son of Henry V's widow, Katherine of Valois, by Owen Tudor, with whom she had formed a misalliance some say a marriage, although there is no proof of that in the late 1420s and 1430s. Margaret's marriage did not last long, for Edmund died in November 1456, leaving his young wife pregnant. Their son, Henry Tudor, was born on 28 January 1457. After the deposition of Henry VI in 1461, Henry Tudor was deprived of the earldom of Richmond, and was forced to spend most of his youth in exile.

From the 1450s onwards, the Beauforts were prominent in public life. John Beaufort's brother Edmund succeeded to the dukedom of Somerset and was a mainstay of Henry VI and one of the chief rivals of Richard, Duke of York at the onset of the Wars of the Roses, before his death in 1455 at the Battle of St Albans. His son, Henry Beaufort, the third Duke, another prominent Lancastrian, was executed in 1464, and his brother Edmund lost his head in 1471, after fighting for Henry VI at the Battle of Tewkesbury; another brother, John, fell in the battle. Thus the male line of the Beauforts died out. Henry, the last Duke, had never married, but he left a b.a.s.t.a.r.d son, Charles Somerset, born around 1460. He was later created Earl of Worcester, and died in 1526, in the reign of Henry VIII. The present Duke of Beaufort, whose dukedom was created in 1682 by Charles II in recognition of his 'most notable descent from King Edward III by John de Beaufort, eldest son of John of Gaunt by Katherine Swynford' is descended from him. There is an amusing but apocryphal story of how Henry Charles FitzRoy, 8th Duke of Beaufort, showed Queen Victoria doc.u.ments containing proof that John of Gaunt had married Katherine and fathered John Beaufort before the birth of Henry IV, thus rendering spurious the claims of every English sovereign after 1399; Victoria is said to have thanked him for bringing the papers to her attention, then promptly thrown them into the fire.83 From the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses, the possibility that the Beauforts might have a claim to the throne began to be taken more seriously. Henry IV had barred them from ever succeeding, but on dubious legal grounds, a matter that exercised not a few legal minds. In the 1470s, the exiled Henry Tudor clearly regarded himself as Henry VI's heir and the rightful Lancastrian claimant to the throne, and when Richard III usurped the throne in 1483, after having almost certainly eliminated Edward IV's sons, the so-called Princes in the Tower, Henry Tudor vowed to marry the Princes' sister, Elizabeth of York, and take the English throne. In retaliation, Richard III publicly a.s.serted that Henry had no true claim to it because the Beauforts had been 'gotten in double adultery',84 an a.s.sertion that was only half-true, but has been accepted by many as a fact. We have seen, however, that the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Katherine Swynford was a widow when she became the mistress of the married John of Gaunt.

In August 1485, Henry Tudor invaded England and defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, where the latter was killed. In October, the victor was crowned Henry VII, first sovereign of the House of Tudor, and in January 1486 he married Elizabeth of York, thus uniting the Houses of Lancaster and York. Henry and Elizabeth were both Katherine Swynford's great-great-grandchildren. In 1485, in Henry VII's first Parliament, Richard II's statute of 1397, which removed the stigma of b.a.s.t.a.r.dy from the Beauforts, was re-enacted.

Notwithstanding this, the Tudor sovereigns made very little of their descent from Katherine Swynford, which is perhaps understandable; her notoriety had not dimmed witness Richard III's libel, which clearly presupposed that people would know what he was talking about and her ancestry left something to be desired. It may be for this reason that Katherine merits barely a mention in Tudor chronicles. Much as he had glossed over scandal in an epitaph for his grandmother, Katherine of Valois, when it came to providing a new inscription for John of Gaunt's tomb in St Paul's, Henry VII laid emphasis on Katherine's beauty rather than her virtues, as has been noted. It is unlikely that his fourth daughter, Katherine, born at the Tower a century after Katherine Swynford's death, was named after her, as some have suggested;85 probably she was so called after the Queen's sister, Katherine of York, or Katherine of Valois.

In the reign of Henry VIII, who succeeded his father in 1509, Katherine was still discreetly omitted from the royal pedigree. In a pageant given at Leadenhall in 1520 to honour the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, an actor representing John of Gaunt sat at the foot of a tree, from which rose many branches representing all the kings and queens who could claim lineage from him. Some were sprung from Katherine too, but she was not alluded to. Again, in plans drawn up for Henry VIII's funeral by the Garter King of Arms, reference is made tantalisingly to 'a banner of Lancaster with the marriage', which probably refers to the union of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York rather than that of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford.86 Thus Katherine was virtually erased from history, and the fleeting references that were made to her by historians over the centuries usually referred disparagingly to her immorality or made a brief mention of her being the ancestress of the Tudors. Until 1954, that is, when Anya Seton's Katherine was published, and people began taking a more sympathetic and romantic view of its heroine.

After Katherine died, the Swynfords lived on at Kettlethorpe, and for a time her son Sir Thomas continued his career in royal service, being involved in 14046 in peace negotiations with France and Flanders.87 From 1406, he was retained by his half-brother, Thomas Beaufort, and there is no further record of his being employed by the Crown. He does not appear to have fallen from favour, though, for in 1411, when Thomas was having problems laying claim to 'divers inheritances in the county of Hainault' that had 'lately descended' to him 'from the most renowned lady Katherine de Roelt, deceased, late d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster, his mother', Henry IV stepped in to a.s.sist 'our beloved and truly trusted knight'. And Thomas was in need of such help, having recently been declared an outlaw on account of being in debt to a London draper.88 We do not know who was then in possession of those lands in Hainault, which Katherine had clearly owned it was possibly Roet relatives who had entrenched themselves thinking their tenure would not be disturbed by their English kinsfolk. But whoever it was, 'certain persons in those parts' were determined not to be ousted: they had expressed their doubts that Sir Thomas Swynford 'was begotten in lawful matrimony', and had 'not permitted the said Thomas to possess the said inheritance or to receive the farms, rents or issues thereof'. The implication was surely that Thomas was Katherine's b.a.s.t.a.r.d son by John of Gaunt, their affair having become notorious on the Continent as well as in England. But Henry IV was quick to set the matter straight: in October 1411, he issued a mandate under his Great Seal firmly attesting Sir Thomas's legitimacy: Be it known unto you all that the aforesaid Thomas is son and heir of the aforesaid Katherine, begotten and born in lawful wedlock, and that a certain writing of the said Thomas, to these our present letters annexed, sealed with his seal of arms, is his deed; and that he and his father, and all his paternal ancestors, have in times past borne the said arms and used the like seal.89 We hear no more of the matter, or whether Thomas was successful in his claim. Possibly his absence from royal service can be accounted for by his need to visit Hainault to pursue it and perhaps set his affairs there in order. In 14267 there is a record of him reclaiming Kettlethorpe;90 possibly he had needed to lease or mortgage it to finance himself while he was living abroad.

Thomas's wife, Jane Crophill, died between 1416 and 1421. She had borne him two known children: his heir, Thomas, around 1406 (he was twenty-six when his father died in 1432),91 who spent his youth in the service of his uncle, Thomas Beaufort,92 and a daughter, named Katherine after her grandmother. This Katherine had married Sir William Drury of Rougham, Suffolk, by 1428, and bore him six children before dying in 1478.93 By 1427, Cardinal Beaufort had secured an heiress, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Beauchamp of Powick, as a bride for young Thomas Swynford.94 Before July 1421, Sir Thomas Swynford had married a second time, his bride being Margaret Grey, daughter of Henry, Lord Grey de Wilton, and widow of John, Baron Darcy.95 There was one son of this marriage, William Swynford, to whom Cardinal Beaufort left 400 (181,426) and some silver plate in his will.96 Sir Thomas died on 2 April 1432, and was probably buried in Kettlethorpe Church, although there is no proof of that, since the church has long been rebuilt and there are no records of the mediaeval memorials. His widow, Margaret, survived until 1454. Because he had enfeoffed his estates to trustees, he died effectively landless.97 His son, the younger Sir Thomas, did not long outlive him: he was dead by 8 January 1440, when his heir, Thomas Swynford III, was aged four or five. In 1468, this latter Thomas conveyed Kettlethorpe and Coleby to his uncle, William Swynford, the son of the first Sir Thomas by his second wife; William pa.s.sed away before 1483, having willed those properties back to his nephew.98 When Thomas Swynford III died childless on 3 May 1498, the male line of Hugh and Katherine Swynford's descendants came to an end, and Kettlethorpe and Coleby pa.s.sed to the heirs of Thomas's daughter Margaret, the wife of Thomas Pauncefote.99 Kettlethorpe descended in turn to the Beaumonts, the Meryngs and others before coming into the possession of the Amcotts family in the eighteenth century. Their arms are still displayed above the front door. In the mid-seventeenth century, the brick walls that still encircle the gardens were built, while the hall itself was largely remodelled in 1713, at which time the fourteenth-century gatehouse was probably reconstructed. A drawing by J. Claude Nattes of the refurbished house, then called Kettlethorpe Park, survives from 1793, and shows it to have been a large but undistinguished residence. In the early nineteenth century, the hall was allowed to fall into a decline; in 1857, Weston Cracroft-Amcotts had it demolished and built a plain redbrick Victorian house, into which was incorporated some of the mediaeval fabric surviving from Katherine's time.

That is the house that stands today, in seventeen acres of grounds. Traces of Katherine Swynford's deer park also survive. In 1983, Kettlethorpe was purchased by the Rt Hon. Douglas Hogg, QC, MP, Viscount Hailsham, whose coat of arms, like that of the Swynfords who once inhabited the manor, bears three boars' heads.100 In the second half of the fifteenth century, during the Wars of the Roses, the tomb of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster was defaced and the original painted alabaster effigies destroyed.101 It was John and Katherine's descendant, Henry VII, who in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century had the tomb restored and a new epitaph set up to 'the ill.u.s.trious Prince John, named Plantagenet, King of Castile and Leon, Duke of Lancaster, Lieutenant of Aquitaine, Grand Seneschal of England'. This is the epitaph in which it is incorrectly stated that it was Constance, and not Blanche, who was buried with the Duke, and in which Katherine's beauty rather than her virtue was emphasised: 'His third wife was Katherine, of a knightly family, and an extraordinarily beautiful and feminine woman; they had numerous offspring, and from these came the maternal family of King Henry VII.'102 The chief function of the epitaph was to publicise the Duke's ill.u.s.trious descendants and connections. New effigies, wearing Tudor costume and armour (the Duke in a surcoat emblazoned with his arms, the d.u.c.h.ess in an ermine-trimmed mantle), with hands clasped in prayer, were placed on the tomb, probably in the 1530s, since Blanche's headdress is of that date; an earlier headdress would have had longer lappets.

During the Reformation, the chantry founded for the souls of John and Blanche was dissolved and its endowments appropriated by the Crown.103 Little damage appears to have been done to the tomb itself, which was described in 1614 as 'a most stately monument'.104 A drawing of it was made in c.1610;105 Wenceslaus Hollar did an engraving,106 as did Sir William Dugdale, Garter King of Arms,107 then Richard Gaywood (around 16645) for the royal genealogist Francis Sandford.108 These pictures show an arcaded tomb chest with trefoil motifs and a fine triple-arched canopy with a tabernacle screen, on which the Duke's armorial achievements his lance, cap of maintenance and s.h.i.+eld were displayed. The canopy or tabernacle was defaced during the Civil War, and never repaired.

On 4 September 1666, when Old St Paul's Cathedral was destroyed during the Great Fire of London, John of Gaunt's tomb 'suffered the violence of the late conflagration' and was irrevocably lost, 'burnt to ashes'.109 It is unlikely, therefore, that the corpses of John and Blanche were among those that were dragged from the ruins and propped up in Convocation House Yard for pa.s.sers-by to gawp at.110 Katherine's tomb, and that of her daughter Joan, standing side by side, were described by John Leland in the early sixteenth century,111 and were also engraved by Dugdale around 1640.112 Today, those tombs stand end to end, with Joan's, the smaller, apparently cut down at some stage, at the foot of Katherine's. There are matrices where the canopied bra.s.ses once lay, and Katherine's tomb has indents to show where armorial s.h.i.+elds were originally displayed. The patterned vault of the heavily restored canopy, its east and west abutments and the wrought-iron grille on its b.u.t.tressed stone plinth are all that survive of the chantry chapel that once housed the tombs.113 The perpetual chantry set up by the Countess Joan lasted until the mid-sixteenth century. It was dissolved during the reign of Edward VI, at which time it was valued at 13.6s.8d (4,203), and contained two chalices, two silver cruets (for holding holy water and communion wine), a silver pax and a silver sacring bell.114 In 1644, the tombs were defaced, the bra.s.ses ripped off and stolen, and the stonework of the chantry badly damaged during the sacking of Lincoln Cathedral by Cromwellian soldiers in the Civil War;115 a 'bargeload' of spoils was floated down the River Witham to the sea, and the bra.s.ses and other tomb furniture may well have been on it.116 By 1672, the tomb chests had been moved into their present positions and the canopy clumsily restored.117 A nineteenth-century plan for a 'Gothic' restoration of the monuments was fortunately abandoned.118 Of the tombs of John of Gaunt's three wives, Katherine's is the only one to survive. Claims on the internet that the tombs are empty and that the remains of Katherine and Joan were despoiled by the Roundheads are unsubstantiated; there is no record of the bodies being disturbed, and they are probably still in a vault under the pavement beneath the tombs.

On 10 May each year, Katherine's name is always included in the obit prayer offered up during Evensong in Lincoln Cathedral. She is worthy of remembrance, and not only because of the famous and ill.u.s.trious people who have descended from her and John of Gaunt among them the present Queen Elizabeth II, who is also d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and nearly every monarch in Europe; five American presidents, George Was.h.i.+ngton, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and George W. Bush; Sir Winston Churchill, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and the philosopher Bertrand Russell, 'besides many other potent princes and eminent n.o.bility of foreign parts'.119 Her memory is also honoured because she is a unique figure in the annals of mediaeval England, a royal mistress who became a d.u.c.h.ess and the foundress of the Tudor dynasty, and above all a lady, as Chaucer said, so 'well deserving' of the fame that is still hers today.

Appendix: Anya Seton's Katherine

In my efforts to discover the truth about Katherine Swynford or as much of the truth as we can ever know or guess at I have remained very conscious of the fact that Anya Seton's novel continues to exert a tremendous influence over many people's vision of Katherine. I can testify myself to the novel's popularity: during the course of many events at bookshops and elsewhere, I have frequently been asked what my next project is to be about, and there is invariably a frisson of excitement in the audience when I say, 'Katherine Swynford.' Afterwards, I can guarantee that several delighted people will come over and say, 'I read Katherine . . .' Even in the solemn stillness of Lincoln Cathedral, the notice by Katherine Swynford's tomb reads: 'This is Katherine, of Anya Seton's famous historical book.' The Cathedral Library holds annual Study Days on Katherine, and tickets are in high demand. If you enter 'Katherine Swynford' on any internet search engine, you will get thousands of responses.

Of course, there have been other fictional portrayals of her she is the model for Bronwen Morgan in Susan Howatch's ambitious saga, The Wheel of Fortune, and she appears prominently too in Jean Plaidy's Pa.s.sage to Pontefract, a fictionalised life of Richard II. But nowhere is she depicted so vibrantly as in Katherine, which has been called one of the best historical novels ever written, 'an all-time cla.s.sic'1 on a par with the works of Margaret Mitch.e.l.l, Mary Renault and Dorothy Dunnett.

Seton spent several years researching Katherine, and her book has been repeatedly commended for its historical accuracy. It has even been listed in the bibliographies of works of historical non-fiction, which is no mean achievement. On the debit side, this has resulted in it achieving more credibility for accuracy than it deserves: Jeannette Lucraft, in her recent academic study of Katherine Swynford, has a.s.serted that I myself quoted details from it as facts in my book Lancaster and York; actually (and apologies are hopefully in order), they came from F. George Kay's Lady of the Sun, a biography of Alice Perrers published in 1966, and it may be that Kay, in his day, relied more heavily on Katherine than he should have done, as Lucraft is correct in a.s.serting that those details are not to be found in any contemporary source. For Katherine is essentially a novel, and although its author made impressive and commendable efforts to get her facts right, there are three good reasons why we should not accept hers as a valid portrayal of the historical Katherine Swynford.

First, Katherine is essentially of its own time. Seton's John of Gaunt is derived partly from nineteenth-century perceptions of him,2 and partly from Clark Gable's portrayal of Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind:3 one internet reviewer described John of Gaunt, as depicted in the novel, as 'the s.e.xiest hero since Rhett Butler'. Then, by her own admission, Seton applies Freudian psychology in determining reasons for her characters' behaviour. Above all, the morality that informs Katherine is essentially that of the 1950s, not the 1300s: the heroine agonises over her illicit love in the manner of an early-nineteenth-century romantic, and when it comes to s.e.x, she is a pa.s.sive partner, leaving her man to initiate it. And she believes that a marriage based on love is a normal aim for any woman, a concept quite foreign to the fourteenth-century mind.

Second, Katherine is as much about Anya Seton as it is about Katherine Swynford. Anya Seton was born Ann Seton in 1906,4 the only child of two highly successful, eccentric and fame-hungry writers.5 Ernest Thompson Seton (18601946) was born in Durham, England, but later emigrated to Canada and the USA, and wrote more than fifty celebrated books on wildlife and anthropology, while his highly independent wife, Grace Gallatin (18721959), published seven popular books about her own exotic travels. Both of Ann's parents journeyed widely in order to research their books, and she inherited their restless spirit, wanderl.u.s.t and thirst for fame and fortune. Like her heroine, Katherine Swynford, she grew up to be stunningly beautiful, and although she was clever and extremely knowledgeable, she was essentially a socialite and a style icon, who was feted by the high society of New York and Old Greenwich, Connecticut. A thousand guests attended her first wedding.

By the age of seventeen, Ann had abandoned her former ambitions to be a doctor or an opera singer; she now dreamed of becoming a writer. She was already keeping journals that reveal her adolescent obsession with her appearance, and her early amorous adventures. In 1923, after a pa.s.sionate courts.h.i.+p, she married a young Rhodes scholar, Hamilton Cottier, and then spent two very interesting and enjoyable years living with him in England at Oxford before moving to the duller academic world of Princeton, New Jersey, where her husband was based from 1925. By 1928, she was the mother of two children, Pamela and Seton, and feeling restless and suffocated by boredom. A highly publicised divorce in Reno was quickly followed by a second marriage in 1929, to an investment counsellor called Hamilton Chase, by whom Ann had another daughter, Clemencie.

In the 1930s, Ann began writing in earnest, selling articles on home-making to magazines. She published her first short story in 1938, and in 1941, her debut novel, My Theodosia, immediately hit the best-seller lists, bringing Anya Seton, as she was now calling herself, fame, fortune and legions of fans. In 1946 alone, her earnings from her books totalled a staggering $94,000. Nine more hugely successful novels were to follow; all were 'Book of the Month Club' choices, and two were made into Hollywood films. In 1954, there were calls for Katherine to be made into a movie starring Charlton Heston and Susan Hayward, but in the moral climate of 1950s America in which one critic branded the book as 'obscene and evil'6 it never happened, because it would have been impossible to show two adulterous lovers living openly in sin, producing four b.a.s.t.a.r.d children and then enjoying a happy ending without incurring any penalties for their immorality.7 In some ways, the novel mirrors Seton's own colourful private life which was the subject of extensive media interest. And her sympathetic portrayal of Katherine Swynford must reflect her own views on adultery and illicit s.e.x. It is on record that she at first found the accusations of immorality amusing, then offensive, then simply tedious.

Seton became renowned for her meticulous research she refused to compromise historical accuracy in the interests of telling a good story, and she travelled widely in search of information, feeling that she could not put her subjects in authentic settings unless she had visited the places where they lived their lives. She spent four years researching Katherine, and journeyed all round England; even today, people remember her hard at work in Lincoln Cathedral Library. She hated it when her books were described as 'historical romances', preferring to call them 'biographical novels'. She might have said 'autobiographical', for she invested them with many of the moral, emotional, psychological and cultural aspects of her own life.

Anya Seton was divorced from her second husband in 1968, and published her last book, Smouldering Fires, in 1975. Although her journals reveal that she remained obsessed with her 'love life' well into her seventh decade, her declining years were overshadowed by an advancing illness that prevented her from writing. She died in 1990, her fame long forgotten.

The third reason why we should be cautious in accepting Anya Seton's portrayal of Katherine Swynford as historically accurate is that Katherine is essentially a romantic novel in the cla.s.sic sense. Not just an old-fas.h.i.+oned love story, it is an emotional a.s.sertion of the self and a vivid exploration of the individual experience of its heroine. It is progressive in its champions.h.i.+p of the beauty of s.e.xual freedom and its implied condemnation of conservative morality, yet it also captures a sense of the spiritual with its theme of love and redemption. Threaded through it are the cla.s.sic romantic cliches of remembered childhood, unrequited love, cruel conflict and lonely exile. It is an intense book, a romantic novel in the widest sense: pa.s.sion and the sublime are at its core. And Katherine herself is the perfect romantic heroine: beautiful, sensuous and loving.

Despite its substance, and Seton's own objections, Katherine was more often than not regarded as a lightweight 'romance novel', and was frequently displayed in this category in bookshops and libraries. Hence, when bodice-rippers became the fas.h.i.+on in the 1970s, Katherine, with its few discreetly erotic s.e.x scenes, appeared outdated and fell from favour, as did Anya Seton's other novels. Yet for many readers, clearly, it remained a favourite book, and recent years have seen its reappearance in print, both in Britain and the USA, where an edition featuring the full original text (which was never printed in Britain) is now available. There can be no doubt that this book, with its lovely but flawed heroine, is held in deep affection by a large number of people. It is important to remember, however, that although as Anya Seton herself stated it is based on history, it is a work of fiction.

Author's Notes

I have used the form 'Katherine' (rather than 'Catherine') throughout, as Katherine's name is usually spelt with a K in contemporary sources.

The correct mediaeval form of her name is 'Katherine de Swynford', but I have chosen to refer to her as 'Katherine Swynford', as she is traditionally and popularly known.

It is worth noting that in John of Gaunt's Register, Katherine's name is given as either 'Katherine' or 'Kateryn(e)'. The language of the court and the aristocracy at this time was Norman French, and these spellings indicate that John and others probably p.r.o.nounced her name in the French way as 'Katrine'.

The modern equivalent of fourteenth-century monetary values has been given in brackets throughout the book. For currency conversion, I have used an invaluable internet website, Measuring.Worth.com, produced by Lawrence H. Officer, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Samuel H. Williamson, Professor of Economics, Emeritus, of Miami University.

Notes and References

Page numbers refer to the printed edition of this book.

1 'Panetto's Daughter'

1 Wylie 2 Brook; Lejeune. See Genealogical Table 1, which is compiled from numerous sources.

3 Gilles Rigaud de Roeulx, who died in 1308, was a grandson of Eustace IV, Sire de Roeulx, and nephew of Eustace V. By his marriage to Isabeau de Ligne, Lady of Montreuil, he was the father of seven children, including Eustace VI, Fastre and Gilles. It has been suggested that this second Gilles may have been Katherine's grandfather, who was baptised Gilles but usually bore the nickname Paon. This is unlikely, because the arms of the lords of Roeulx, and thereby Gilles's eldest son, Eustace VI de Roeulx, were 'or, three lions gules', and as a younger son, Paon would have borne the same arms differenced, which he did not. Cook: 'Chaucerian Papers'; Perry: 'Judy Perry's Katherine Swynford Coat of Arms'; (www.geocities.com); The Wijnbergen Armorial. Turton (Plantagenet Ancestry) failed to find genealogical evidence to link Paon with the lords of Roeulx.

4 His name is spelt Paon in the Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut and by Froissart. Jean Froissart, one of the greatest of mediaeval chroniclers, was born in Hainault and came to England in 1361, where he was 'brought up in the court of the n.o.ble King Edward the Third, and of Queen Philippa his wife, and among their children'. In 1362, he was appointed one of the clerks of the chamber to the Queen, his countrywoman. He left England in 1366 and accompanied the Black Prince on a campaign in Gascony. Although he remained nominally in Queen Philippa's service until 1369, he did not return to the English court until 1395, when he met Richard II. He would have known John of Gaunt, and probably also Katherine Swynford, whom he would have found interesting because she too was a Hainaulter. Froissart's chronicles are vividly written, but although they make for entertaining reading, especially in their repet.i.tion of court gossip, their accuracy cannot be relied upon, chiefly because he wrote mainly from memory, or relied on hearsay, and has been proved wrong in several instances.

5 For Paon's descent, see Brook.

6 Ibid. The lion was the heraldic lion of Hainault.

7 Speght; Rietstrap; 'The Visitation of the County of Warwick'

8 'Inventories of Plate, Vestments etc.'

9 Howard 10 Galway: 'Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer'. 'Paonnet' is not a diminutive form that would be 'Paoncel' or 'Paonciel' and may be just an affectionately extended nickname.

11 Notably Froissart 12 Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut 13 Perry 14 Galway: 'Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer'

15 Calendar of Patent Rolls 16 Cook: 'Chaucerian Papers'

17 Galway: 'Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer'; Hardy 18 Several genealogical sites on the internet give names for Paon's wife (a few even ludicrously calling her 'Mrs de Roet'!) but none cites any contemporary source wherein their claims can be substantiated. Some identify her as 'Chenerailles Bonneuil (131572)', but these are names of places rather than people: there are four places called Chenerailles or Chenerilles in France, and seven places called Bonneuil. The name Chenerailles does appear as a name in French genealogies, but without specific sources being cited, it is impossible to pursue this claim further. See, for example, www.goldrush.com 19 See, for example, Turton; www.childsfamily.com; dannyreagan.com; www.rootsweb.com 20 Some internet websites state that Katherine's mother was Katherine d'Avesnes, a sister of William III, Count of Hainault (c.12861337), father of Queen Philippa, and therefore a daughter of John II d'Avesnes, Count of Hainault (12471304) by Philippine, daughter of Henry II, Count of Luxembourg. There are two problems with this claim: first, Katherine is nowhere listed with William III's known sisters, Margaret, Alice, Isabella, Jeanne, Marie and Matilda, and second, if she was born at the latest by 1304, the year her father died, she is hardly likely to have borne a child, Katherine, around 1350. Others a.s.sert that Katherine d'Avesnes was the daughter, not the sister, of Count William III. That would make her Queen Philippa's sister, and Katherine Swynford the Queen's niece, something disapproving chroniclers would surely have commented on, because such a relations.h.i.+p would have placed Katherine and John of Gaunt, Philippa's son, firmly within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity as would also have been the case if Katherine's mother had been the Queen's aunt. When applying for a dispensation to marry Katherine, John of Gaunt did not cite such an impediment. Furthermore, William III is recorded as having had six or seven daughters, Sybilla, Margaret, Philippa, Joan, Agnes, Isabella and perhaps Elizabeth, who in 1375 died a nun at St Leonard's Abbey, Bromley, Middles.e.x (see Manly: Some New Light on Chaucer).

21 It has recently been suggested that Paon married one Jeanne de Lens. There is a record of Simon Lalaing, Lord of Quievrain and Hordaing, and Bailiff of Hainault from 136860, marrying the daughter of Gilles de Roeulx, Lord of ecaussines by Jeanne de Lens, who was possibly a relative of the Lord of Ligne. In 1414, Jacqueline, daughter of a lord of Lalaing, was made a prebendary of the abbey of St Waudru in Mons, like Paon's own daughter Elizabeth more than half a century earlier. There is nothing conclusive here. The arms of Simon Lalaing do not incorporate those of Rouelx or Roet, and there were at this time several members of the Roeulx family called Gilles; genealogical records are incomplete, and any one of them could have married a Jeanne de Lens; Gilles Rigaud de Roeulx married Alice de Ligne, and his son married Isabeau de Ligne. Nor is Paon anywhere referred to, especially by the knowledgeable Froissart, as the Lord of Ecaussines. The St Waudru's 'connection' is probably purely coincidental: one would expect to find daughters of these local lords and gentlefolk entering this prestigious abbey. See Perry: 'Katherine Swynford' (katherineswynford.blogspot.com) 22 Galway: 'Walter Roet and Philippa Chaucer'

23 Froissart 24 Weever. A king of arms was a herald with expert knowledge of the laws of arms and aristocratic pedigrees, whose chief responsibility was to ensure that coats of arms were correctly awarded and borne. His was an increasingly important function in a world in which kings and lords were obsessively preoccupied with chivalry and heraldry. A king of arms also played a diverse ceremonial role, officiating and umpiring at tournaments, or serving as an envoy in time of war.

25 His appointment would appear to be borne out by a grant of c.1334 from the 'King of Arms of the Duchy of Guienne, Sergeant of Arms' to two brothers surnamed Andrew, which bears a drawing of a seal bearing three plain silver wheels, the arms of Paon de Roet. Thomas Speght, who in 1598 published the works of Chaucer with biographical details, states that he had it on the authority of a sixteenth-century herald, Robert Glover, that Paon was Guienne King of Arms; doubtless Glover too had seen the tomb inscription. Apart from the latter, the grant of c.1334 is the only fourteenth-century source to identify Paon as Guienne King of Arms, although there is some disputed evidence that the post of Guienne King of Arms existed sporadically from the late thirteenth to the late fifteenth century; during the latter period, its holder was apparently little more than a glorified herald. Doubt has been cast, however, on the authenticity of doc.u.ments dating the office from the reign of Edward I, and if they are indeed forgeries, then there is no historical evidence beyond the grant and inscription cited above for the existence of a Guienne King of Arms before the reign of Henry VI (142261). It is on record, however, that during the fourteenth century, several new kings of arms were appointed, among them Windsor, Norroy, Surroy and Clarencieux, so it is not beyond the bounds of probability that Guienne was at that time a new creation. 'The Visitation of the County of Warwick'; Crow and Olsen; Goodman: Katherine Swynford; Ruud; McKisack; Brewer; Howard 26 Froissart 27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 McKisack 30 Cited by Lettenhove, introduction to Froissart 31 A prebend was a member of the chapter of a monastery or convent. This prebend had become vacant due to the death of one Beatrix de Wallaincourt.

32 Galway: 'Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer'

33 Newton 34 The Vatican suppressed St Katherine's feast day in 1969.

35 Weever incorrectly calls her Anne.

36 Weever 37 Lucraft: Katherine Swynford. Lucraft believes that when Thomas Speght, the Elizabethan editor of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer (whom Philippa was to marry), referred to her as 'altera filiarum', he meant 'second daughter', but Speght was perhaps using the alternative meaning of altera and referring to Philippa as the 'other' sister, who was less famous than Katherine; had he described her as the second daughter of Paon, that would have made Philippa the elder of the two, as they had an older sister, Elizabeth, although Speght may not have known that, in which case he may indeed have meant that she was younger than Katherine.

38 In a royal writ of deliverance of cloth and furs for Queen Philippa's ladies, dated 10 March 1369, both Philippa Chaucer (who was almost certainly Paon's married daughter) and Philippa Picard are listed; the former was then a damoiselle (lady-in-waiting) of the Queen, the latter a veilleresse (night watcher) of the Queen's Chamber. Philippa Picard may have been the daughter of Henry Picard, a rich London vintner, who was Mayor of London in 1356 and a fellow guildsman of Chaucer's father.

39 Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut; Leese 40 Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut 41 Galway: 'Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer'; Foedera; Complete Peerage. Paon is mentioned again in the Cartulaire on 1 May and 4 August, these entries referring to his routine expenses.

42 Perry 43 It is intriguing to discover that a s.h.i.+eld bearing what appears to be Paon's coat of arms, impaling the arms of the See of London (which feature crossed swords), was painted on the ceiling of Old St Paul's. It was one of a number of painted s.h.i.+elds placed there that have been dated to no later than 1525, and which were recorded in the reign of Charles II by Thomas Dingley. Similar arms were also recorded in 1575 by the Elizabethan antiquary William Lambourne in a window in the Divinity School of Oxford, 'in one place contiguous to the s.h.i.+eld of the See of London', implying a connection with the painted arms in St Paul's. In northern Europe, it was and still is the practice for bishops to marshal their personal arms with those of their diocese; however, since the Roet arms were not borne by any bishop of London, it has been suggested that those on the ceiling belonged to a member of the Roet family who was perhaps appointed Dean of St Paul's. There has been speculation that this could have been a son of Walter de Roet, but unfortunately, no Roet features on the roll of deans of St Paul's, which is complete from 1322 to the Reformation, so the likelihood is that these arms were