Mistress of the Monarchy (12 page)

There are problems with this theory. Chaucer wrote
Troilus and Criseyde
probably between 1385 and 1388, by which time Joan of Kent was dead. Even so, the manuscript was not produced until early in the fifteenth century, so it would be likely to depict courtiers who were prominent towards the close of Richard II’s reign. The lady in pink next to the faceless man identified — probably correctly — as Richard may actually be his child-queen, Isabella of Valois; it was common for children to be represented as adults in an age that did not fully understand realism or perspective. Almost certainly John of Gaunt is one of the five well-dressed men, probably the dignified bearded man in striking red robes standing to the left. At the end of Richard’s reign, Katherine was his duchess, and as such the second lady in the land; thus the prominent female figure in the ermine-and-gold-trimmed tight-fitting blue gown, whose dress clearly marks her out as being a royal lady of some importance, must be her. The fair girl in blue to the left, hitherto tentatively identified as Katherine Swynford, looks too young to be a woman of at least forty-six; her position next to Katherine Swynford, who has an arm around her, and in front of the man who may be John of Gaunt, suggests she was perhaps their daughter, Joan Beaufort; indeed, her image bears a close resemblance to Joan Beaufort’s tomb effigy, which suggests that the painter had seen his subjects.

Other evidence supports this identification: in the fifteenth century, the manuscript was owned by Joan’s daughter, Anne Neville, Countess of Stafford, having probably been bequeathed to her by Joan, Chaucer’s own niece, for whom it had almost certainly been made.
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It would therefore be natural for Joan’s parents to be conspicuously depicted in
it, and for Joan to be shown with them. Later evidence (which will be discussed elsewhere) strongly suggests that Joan was committed to rehabilitating Katherine’s reputation, and emphasising her mother’s importance as second lady in the realm by having her portrayed as the most prominent female figure in the picture would be a logical consequence of this.

Bearing this in mind, there are sound reasons for believing that this ermine-and-blue-clad lady in the
Troilus
frontispiece is Katherine, and thus we may have come, at last, face to face with her. If so, she was fair-haired and buxom, with a tiny waist, high stomach and wide hips, a woman ideally proportioned to suit fashionable notions of the female figure in that era. Her neck was long, her face round with a high forehead, and her hair elegantly swept up and pinned beneath a golden coronet, which in itself identifies her rank. If she looked as voluptuously handsome as this when she was in her late forties, it is easy to see why John of Gaunt had been so taken with her charms a quarter of a century earlier, and why her beauty became legendary.

Much of what we can glean of Katherine’s character and interests has to be inferred from the fragmentary sources that have come down to us; we have to look beyond the scathing criticisms of monastic chroniclers shocked by her liaison with the Duke to the sounder evidence to be found in less sensational records. It is noteworthy that her worst critics, Thomas Walsingham and the anonymous author of the
Anonimalle Chronicle
, were men who did not know her personally, while Walsingham had an ulterior motive for reviling her, as will become clear. Henry Knighton, the Leicester chronicler whose house was under the patronage of John of Gaunt, and who may well have met Katherine, has nothing really bad to say about her personally, and it is clear that she maintained good relations with the Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral throughout her adult life, and that they were happy to lease a house to her during the years of her ill fame.
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In fact, most of what we can surmise or know of Katherine Swynford suggests she was a remarkable, attractive, fascinating and sympathetic woman. An early request for a private altar strongly suggests a devout religious faith instilled in childhood. By contrast, her long love affair with John of Gaunt implies allure, sensuality, charm, loyalty, emotional depth, and perhaps forwardness and a degree of ambition. She must have relished the material benefits that were to come her way as a result of John’s devotion, but she does not seem to have been the most demanding of mistresses, and it is doubtful if she was driven very much by mercenary motives: her love for John was to survive concealment, long separations,
social ostracism and public vilification, which argues that it was deep and true. Her admirable discretion and tact helped smooth the path of the lovers, and when tragedy and loss struck, she had sufficient wisdom and strength of character to survive with dignity. We will learn that she cherished strong family ties and was concerned about how others saw her. She was to prove capable, responsible, caring and successful in nearly all her enterprises.

A warm and kindly heart may be evident in Katherine’s lasting love for John, and in her apparent affection for children, her own and all those who came into her orbit. She was clearly good with the young, and had, it seems, an innate sensitivity that made it possible for her to create unity from disparity — witness the successful bonding of the legitimate heirs of the House of Lancaster with Katherine’s own children, her bastards by John of Gaunt, and the Chaucers, bonds that surmounted the barriers and taboos created by adultery, death, rank and illegitimacy. Much of this was doubtless due to the powerful influence of the Duke, but Katherine herself must surely also take a great deal of the credit for it.

All this suggests that Katherine learned much from the examples and influence of Queen Philippa and the Duchess Blanche. Froissart said of her in later life that she was ‘a woman of such bringing up and honourable demeanour’ that she was ‘well-deserving’ of the respect of those about her. The undoubted esteem in which she was held in the Lancastrian household, and by three kings of England, argues that her integrity and other qualities were recognised, and that she was skilled in courtly accomplishments, sophisticated in her tastes, sociable, courteous, literate, intelligent and a good conversationalist. She would have needed to have been most of these things to become such a respected member of the Duchess’s entourage, and later to attract and hold the attention of the Duke. She would also have absorbed the cultivated ambience of the ducal court, in which John of Gaunt actively promoted the education of women and encouraged a love of learning in his wives and daughters.
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It was not unusual for members of royal households to marry each other, nor was it surprising that the husband chosen for Katherine de Roët, a servant of the Duchess of Lancaster, should have been a retainer of the Duke of Lancaster. His name was Sir Hugh Swynford,
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and he was lord of the manors of Coleby and Kettlethorpe in Lincolnshire. The choice of Hugh Swynford suggests that the marriage was arranged by the Duke himself at his wife’s instance. Possibly Queen Philippa was consulted, for it was she who had placed the Roët girl with the Lancasters. Marriage
to one of John of Gaunt’s retainers would certainly have strengthened Katherine’s ties to the House of Lancaster.

The Swynford family was an old one, although claims that its ancestry could be traced back to Anglo-Saxon times
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are unsubstantiated. Hugh’s forebears probably came from Swinford — originally Swine’s Ford — in Leicestershire, but there is no record of them there in Domesday Book. The family had many branches, and there are numerous references in mediaeval records to its early members, but attempts to discover their exact relationships and make any sense of the family genealogy prior to the fourteenth century have so far proved largely fruitless.
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The only one of Hugh’s forebears of whose relationship to him we can be certain is his father, Sir Thomas Swynford, who was probably the son of Sir Robert de Swynford of Burgate, Suffolk, whose arms were the same three gold boars’ heads on a field of silver as Sir Hugh Swynford displayed.
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By 1343, Sir Robert Swynford had sold the manor of Burgate; this would have left his heirs landless, and might well explain why, in August 1345, Sir Thomas Swynford acquired from the de Cuppledyke family
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the manor of Coleby in Lincolnshire, which he held in chief of the King and in part of John of Gaunt, in whose Honour of Richmond it lay.
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Sir Thomas married Nichola, the widow of Sir Ralph Basset of Weldon.
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From the mid-1340s until 1356, we find him appointed in turn to the shrievalties of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Rutland, while in 1344 he was a Commissioner of the Peace in Bedfordshire, and in 1345–7 an escheator for that county and for Buckinghamshire.
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Far from keeping the peace, he appears to have rather thrown his weight about: in 1356, he and his falconers caused chaos hunting pigeons on the manor of Barton, in defiance of the reeve’s protests.
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That year, Thomas bought from John de la Croy (or Croix) the manor of Kettlethorpe in Lincolshire,
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which was to become the chief seat of the Swynfords until 1498; it would also be Katherine’s marital home and become forever associated with her. Kettlethorpe was not far from Coleby, which Thomas had held since 1345. In 1357, Thomas and Nichola settled permanently in Lincolnshire,
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where Sir Thomas again served as a Commissioner for the Peace.

Hugh Swynford — who is incorrectly named as Otes Swynford in Weever’s description of the inscription on Paon de Roët’s tomb in St Paul’s, in which Philippa de Roët is erroneously called Anne — had been born in 1340 at the latest; his father’s Inquisition Post Mortem of December 1361, taken in Lincoln, gives his age as twenty-one years and more.
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This made him at least a decade older than Katherine, and possibly the same age as his master the Duke.

Hugh was a soldier by profession — ‘a shrewd and terrifying fight-er’
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— and would appear to have begun his career in royal service as a retainer of the Black Prince, for in 1356, he had fought under the Prince at Poitiers, and perhaps been knighted afterwards. It was probably after the Black Prince removed to Aquitaine in 1361 that Hugh had transferred to the retinue of his feudal overlord, the Duke of Lancaster, to whom he owed knight’s service.
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It was as well he did so, for when his father, Sir Thomas Swynford, died on 3 November 1361,
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Hugh came into only a poor inheritance, and would have badly needed the money he received as the Duke’s retainer and any profits he could make from campaigning. He would also, almost certainly, soon have begun looking about him for a wife to bear him heirs and hopefully boost his social standing and his finances. He had little to offer beyond his knightly status, so Katherine de Roët, the alluring object and recipient of royal esteem and favour, with her family connections and her inheritance in Hainault, would probably have appeared an ideal choice.

For a long time, basing their conclusions on the likely birth date of her son, historians assumed that Katherine was married to Sir Hugh Swynford around 1366–7. Yet we know that she was the mother of a daughter called Blanche, who was old enough to be placed in the train of the Lancastrian princesses before 1368, and it appears that Katherine was probably also the mother of one Margaret Swynford, who was of sufficient age to become a nun in 1377.
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Of course, girls sometimes entered convents in their tender years — witness Mary, a daughter of Edward I, who became a novice at Amesbury Abbey in 1284, aged six; or Bridget, the youngest daughter of Edward IV, who was perhaps seven when she was placed in Dartford Priory around 1487. But it was more usual for girls to be adolescents of thirteen or fourteen at the time of their reception.
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It would seem that there was a tradition of offering Roët daughters to God — witness the cloistering of Elizabeth de Roët and the eldest daughter of Katherine’s sister Philippa; therefore, if Margaret became a nun at the usual age, and Blanche was the eldest child of Katherine and Hugh, the Swynfords are likely to have been married no later than 1362, not long after Hugh came into his inheritance and Katherine reached marriageable age. Certainly they were joined in wedlock before 24 January 1365, as an entry of that date in Bishop Buckingham’s register refers to Katherine by her married name.
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Their marriage may have taken place in one of the ducal chapels — even perhaps the magnificent chapel of the Savoy.
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Once married, Katherine’s arms of three silver wheels on a red background would have been displayed impaling those of her husband, which
were three golden boars’ heads on a black chevron with a silver background. These are the arms that appeared on her seal of
c
.1377, which no longer survives.
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It used to be said
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that Katherine married into an ancient landed aristocratic house. Although it is true that the Swynford family was old-established in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Essex and Suffolk, it was hardly landed and certainly not aristocratic, for its members never rose above the rank of knight. In fact, Hugh was impoverished. He held only two manors, neither of which was profitable, and both had been recently acquired by his father
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— hardly ancient wealth by any reckoning, as Katherine was to find out when Hugh first took her to his manor house at Kettlethorpe, which after his marriage he held jointly with his new wife of the King and John Buckingham, Bishop of Lincoln.
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Kettlethorpe was to become inextricably linked to Katherine in her own lifetime; for forty years she was known as the Lady of Kettlethorpe, and her memory is very much alive there today for the many visitors who make the journey — some would say pilgrimage — to this pretty, quiet but rather isolated Lincolnshire village, which is situated about twenty feet above sea level, and lies twelve miles west of Lincoln, just north of the border with Nottinghamshire. The River Trent flows west of Kettlethorpe, and the Fossdyke meanders along its eastern and northern boundaries. It is ‘a romantic spot, embowered by trees’.
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