Mistress of the Monarchy (30 page)

Late in 1377, the Pope had been moved to condemn the teachings of John Wycliffe, but thanks to the protection of John of Gaunt and Joan of Kent, the reformer was allowed to stay on at Oxford and pursue his work unmolested. Undeterred by papal censure, Wycliffe now wrote a series of works challenging the Church and its teachings, and in the spring of 1378, he published a controversial treatise on the Bible, which provoked Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, to summon him before his court at Lambeth to answer for his heresy. Again, thanks to the intervention of Joan of Kent and John of Gaunt, the reformer escaped with a mild rebuke and was once more left in peace for a time. John’s loyalty to Wycliffe in the face of mounting censure was staunch: regardless of his own unpopularity and any consequences that might ensue, he kept the controversial doctor under his protection, declaring that he believed Wycliffe and his followers — who were disparagingly nicknamed Lollards, or ‘mumblers’ — to be ‘God’s saints’, and ‘was an invincible guardian in all their needs, for otherwise they would have fallen into the pit of destruction’.
⁶⁸

When the invasion fleet sailed on 7 April 1378, the Duke was not with it. In his ‘Scandalous Chronicle’, Walsingham asserts that there was growing condemnation ‘for his wicked and disgraceful behaviour because he himself put aside respect for God’s dread’, and alleges that John delayed his arrival at the port for months for fear of the enemy’s fleet — the implication being that the Duke was guilty of cowardice. It was at that point that John first appeared in public with Katherine, this being the occasion that made their affair so notorious, and one that Walsingham did not hesitate to exploit in his prolonged and determined campaign to discredit John of Gaunt. Outraged, he claimed that, having ‘deserted his military duties’ and ‘put aside all shame of man and fear of God, [John] let himself be seen riding around the Duchy with his unspeakable concubine, a certain Katherine Swynford, holding her bridle in public, not only in the presence of his own wife, but even with his people watching on in all the principal towns of the country’. By this, Walsingham meant ‘the county’, and he was probably referring to Leicestershire, where the Duke was staying in March 1378.
⁶⁹
By so brazenly flaunting his mistress, John ‘made himself abominable in the eyes of God’.

Walsingham says the people were indignant and despairing at this scandalous conduct, and feared that the Almighty would soon vent His displeasure by punishing the whole kingdom for the Duke’s sinfulness, and he accuses the latter of betraying the King’s youthful innocence and putting him and his realm in jeopardy.
⁷⁰
Monkish chroniclers invariably wrote their accounts with a view to illustrating moral precepts and demonstrating that human failings had divine consequences; the objective study of current events and history, as we know it, was rare in mediaeval times. But Walsingham may truly be reflecting the opinions of a majority of the common people, who already blamed the Duke for so many ills, and whose views on his private life might consequently not have been as accepting or forgiving as those of the aristocracy or the court. Walsingham says that it was as a result of his blatant and unashamed appearances with Katherine, whom he refers to as ‘a witch and a whore’, that ‘the worst curses and infamous invectives started circulating against [the Duke]’. However, it may not have been the sexual relationship between the lovers that caused the greatest offence, for such affairs were common among kings and nobles, but the way he was unabashedly flaunting it publicly, to the injury of his virtuous wife, and — even more pertinently to the class-conscious and xenophobic English — the fact that Katherine was of comparatively lowly birth, and a foreigner. Above all, Katherine was tainted simply through being associated with the most hated man in the kingdom.

Walsingham’s passage quoted above is the only description that survives of John and Katherine together;
⁷¹
it is also the first mention of Katherine’s name in any chronicle, and it is evidence that she had now become notorious. Although it is worth pointing out that no other chronicler mentions this specific public display by the lovers, Katherine was from now on to be referred to elsewhere in disparaging terms. To the monkish author of the
Anonimalle Chronicle
, she was ‘a she-devil and enchantress’, a charge that echoed Walsingham’s branding of her as a witch, and was therefore highly provocative and detrimental, and reveals just how perilous Katherine’s position might have become. Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester, castigated the Duke from his pulpit for being ‘an adulterer and pursuer of luxury’,
⁷²
while Froissart, writing decades later, thought Katherine ‘a woman of light character’. Even Henry Knighton, the pro-Lancastrian chronicler from Leicester, who admired John of Gaunt, clearly did not approve of his mistress: ‘in his wife’s household, there was a certain foreign lady, Katherine Swynford, whose relations with him were greatly suspect’. Knighton reveals that members of the Duke’s household were very concerned about the effect of their master’s involvement with his mistress; they, as well as he, were aware that it was his duty, as lord and
master, to set a good moral example to his servants, as the Church enjoined. John himself disclosed in 1381 that he had been repeatedly warned by his clerics and his servants of the detrimental effect his relationship with Katherine was having on his reputation, but had chosen to ignore them.
⁷³

Not everyone disapproved. Katherine seems to have been held in lasting affection by the Cathedral Chapter of Lincoln, and by the Mayor of Leicester, who, probably in company with a lot of people, took a pragmatic view of her dubious position. Between 1377 and 1379, he paid £3.6s.8d (£1,165) for a horse and £2.0s.6d (£708) for an iron pan (probably a large cauldron), both of which were presented to Katherine in gratitude for ‘expediting business touching the tenement in Stretton,
⁷⁴
and for other business for which a certain lord besought of the aforesaid Katherine with good effect, and besought so successfully that the town was pardoned the lending of silver to the King in that year’.
⁷⁵
(The Mayor seems to have had the better part of the bargain.)

In assessing Walsingham’s stance on John of Gaunt’s affair with Katherine Swynford, it is important to remember that he loathed and feared John for many reasons, and always seized upon every means to discredit him;
⁷⁶
he was not above exaggerating the Duke’s faults, or even making things up, and in his view John was foolish, unscrupulous and ‘without conscience’.

When it came to sexual matters, Walsingham was at his most inventive, claiming that the Duke’s character ‘was dishonoured by every kind of outrage and sin. A fornicator and adulterer, he had abandoned lawful wedlock’ and deceived both of his wives. ‘He not only dared to do such things secretly and privately, but also took the most shameless prostitutes to the beds of these wives, who, grief-stricken as they were, did not dare to protest.’ This assertion is uncorroborated elsewhere and entirely at variance with what we know of John of Gaunt; this particular calumny surely stems solely from the chronicler’s desire to discredit the champion of the heretical Wycliffe, and it can be dismissed as pure character assassination, born of moral outrage and a fevered imagination.

Learning that John had publicly flaunted his relationship with Katherine gave Walsingham further ammunition against the hated Duke. It has been claimed that his comments about Katherine were aimed primarily at John, and were not intended to cast aspersions on her character beyond the charge of immorality,
⁷⁷
yet being branded an ‘unspeakable concubine’ was pretty damaging to the reputation of a woman who was, after all, governess to the Lancastrian princesses. Let it not be forgotten that adultery and promiscuity were then perceived to be far more sinful in a woman than in a man, and carried a greater stigma. The fact that Katherine did not
take a second husband for twenty-four years may have been a matter of personal choice — with the Duke supporting her, she had no need to, although marriage could confer a veneer of respectability upon royal mistresses — but it may also indicate that there was a shortage of suitors due to her living in open adultery with the Duke, and that her increasing notoriety lessened her chances of remarrying.

There can be little doubt that, once it became clear that his marriage to Constance had failed, and the crises of 1376–7 had passed, John and Katherine had grown reckless and ceased to exercise the same discretion they had employed in the early years of their affair, nor that the liaison was now public knowledge. The notorious reputation and conduct of Alice Perrers had prejudiced public opinion against royal mistresses, and it would not be surprising if people viewed Katherine too as an immoral and self-seeking woman and a corrupting influence on the Duke, nor that they were incensed that the Duchess Constance should be so slighted and insulted. For if she had not been too bothered before about her husband’s mistress, she had — with the affair now exposed — been forced into an impossible position that gave her just cause for complaint, and could no longer discreetly turn a blind eye to what was going on. That cannot have improved relations between her and the Duke and it appears to have led to an informal separation. Later evidence suggests that Constance felt herself to be at fault with regard to the breakdown of the marriage, and in time it was she who begged for John’s forgiveness, so there seem to have been more factors at play here than his affair with Katherine, although that was probably the catalyst for the separation.

Given public sympathy for Constance, John of Gaunt’s enduring reputation for lechery, as well as contemporary observations about, and responses to, his relationship with Katherine, there can be little doubt that the publicising of their affair did indeed damage his political standing in England, and ruined her reputation.

But it was certainly not Katherine who had kept John from sailing to France. On 29 April, after seeing his wife and elder daughters admitted with the Princess Joan to the confraternity of the Garter at Windsor, he was at a council meeting at Westminster,
⁷⁸
and in May, he was at the Savoy, busy commandeering the extra ships that were so urgently needed;
⁷⁹
on the 20th, he levied an aid for the knighting of his heir, Henry of Derby,
⁸⁰
and early in June, he attended another council meeting. Five days later, the invasion fleet returned to England, but when, later that month, Castilian ships threatened St Malo in Brittany, which was perilously close to home, John decided to take the offensive. On 17 June, he was appointed King’s Lieutenant in France and Aquitaine, and thereafter he divided his time between Southampton and the Savoy, making preparations for his
attack and waiting for a favourable wind.
⁸¹
In July, he appointed Henry of Derby Warden of the Palatine County of Lancaster, and soon afterwards sailed for France with his navy. None of this sounds like idle dalliance with his mistress.

John spent August and September besieging St Malo, to no effect. Repulsed by the Castilians, he returned ignominiously to England in September to face accusations of cowardice and incompetence.
⁸²
‘And the commons of England began to murmur against the noblemen, saying how they had done all that season but little good.’
⁸³
There were wild and unfounded rumours that John had appropriated for himself the taxes voted by Parliament for the war, and even that he and Wycliffe were plotting the destruction of the Church itself.
⁸⁴
It seemed that the superstitious predictions of divine retribution were being fulfilled, and that John’s failure to take St Malo was God’s punishment for his sins.

Between 28 May and 19 September 1378, Geoffrey Chaucer had been abroad on business in Lombardy. On 21 May, before Geoffrey left, John of Gaunt arranged for Philippa Chaucer’s royal annuities to be paid by the Sheriff of Lincoln and other officials from Michaelmas 1378.
⁸⁵
From this, we may infer that Philippa had taken up residence with her sister Katherine at Kettlethorpe. But what may have begun as a temporary arrangement ended up lasting for a minimum of four years, for until 1383 at least, Philippa’s royal annuities were paid to her by the Sheriff of Lincoln and other officials in Lincolnshire;
⁸⁶
furthermore, from 1381 to 1386, all customs receipts were divided between Chaucer and his wife. From this, we may infer that the Chaucers had decided they were happier living apart.

It may be that they had finally agreed that they were incompatible, yet there was possibly another woman involved, for in May 1380, there is an intriguing record of Alice Perrers’ stepdaughter, Cecily Chaumpaigne, releasing Geoffrey from any action resulting from ‘my rape and other causes’.
⁸⁷
Rape in the fourteenth century was not necessarily a sexual crime: although it could refer to sexual assault as well as forced intercourse, it could also mean abduction. Either way, it was a serious offence, punishable by hanging (and formerly by castration), and thus very rare.
⁸⁸

In this case, the rape — if it was that — may have involved penetration. We know that Chaucer had a son called Lewis, who was born probably in 1381; Lewis seems to have been a very bright boy because he was admitted to Oxford University when only about nine, and it was to ‘little Lewis my son’ that Chaucer dedicated his
Treatise on the Astrolabe
in 1391; at that time, Lewis had reached ‘the tender age of ten years’. Given the long gap between the births of Elizabeth and Thomas Chaucer and that of Lewis, it could be conjectured that Philippa was not Lewis’s mother,
and some historians have credibly suggested that he was Geoffrey’s son by Cecily Chaumpaigne. If so, he was perhaps not the fruit of rape, but of an affair: Cecily, with the proverbial fury of a woman scorned, may initially have pressed the rape charge in the hope of gaining some financial provision for her child. But Chaucer brought forward four eminent witnesses in his defence: the King’s chamberlain and two of his household knights, as well as the Collector of Customs, Chaucer’s own superior.
⁸⁹
Their testimony persuaded Cecily to drop the charge, but that there was some substance to her accusations is evident in Chaucer paying her £10 (£3,877) in compensation for her ‘rape’ two months later.