Mistress of the Monarchy (34 page)

John stayed in Edinburgh until 10 July, awaiting Richard II’s assurance that it would be safe for him to return to London, and — more to the point — that the King would welcome him there. When this was forth-coming,
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he rode speedily south via Berwick — where he was joined by his military escort — Bamburgh, Newcastle, Durham and Northallerton, which he reached on 19 July.
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Here he met his wife, who had left Knaresborough and was travelling north in response to his summons.

Constance had suffered a nightmare journey. Terrified in case she herself become a target of the rebels, she had fled north from Hertford and sought
refuge in Pontefract Castle, only to find the gates barred to her by its faint-hearted — or perhaps over-cautious — constable, who said he did not dare to admit her. Hearing this, many of her frightened servants deserted her, so, ‘smitten in her heart with great fear’,
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and with only a small escort, she rode by lanternlight through the night and the forest, braving footpads and outlaws, to Knaresborough Castle, where to her relief the castellan afforded her a sympathetic welcome.
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This experience had left her thoroughly frightened and vulnerable, and she now looked ‘to find safety under the wing of her lord’.

Seeing the Duke approaching, and with her retinue drawn up behind her, Constance went to meet him. There, on the road, she prostrated herself three times before him, as if
she
were the one in need of forgiveness — John may not have been the only one whom recent events had shocked into a fit of conscience. Quickly he dismounted, raised her up, took her by the hand and kissed her, then listened compassionately to her woeful tale, while she in turn expressed sorrow at the perils and misfortunes that had befallen him. At length, John asked her pardon for ‘his misdeeds to her’, and ‘she forgave him willingly’. That evening, they repaired to the Bishop of Durham’s strongly fortified and moated palace, a favourite stopping place of royalty that stood two hundred yards west of All Saints’ Church, Northallerton, ‘and there was great joy and celebration between them, and with their companions that day and night’.
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We can only imagine with what reluctance John of Gaunt returned to his wife. Severing his emotional and physical connections with Katherine must have been deeply painful, however strong his moral convictions. There can be little doubt that he genuinely felt he had to make amends for his sins, but there was probably more to it than that. Never a man to concern himself overly with public opinion, he must yet have been aware of the need to defuse the threatening situation in which he now found himself, and to make it clear that he was abandoning a way of life that had conceivably brought down divine vengeance upon him, and indeed upon the kingdom. To have persisted in it would have been to court further disaster.

His concern was not only for himself. Perry makes the pertinent point that the Duke’s property had been destroyed, his physician and several officers murdered and his wife thoroughly frightened, while the mob had violently targeted the Flemings and demanded his own head. Only by disassociating himself from Katherine, therefore, could he hope to protect her and their children.

There were political considerations too. John now had much more realistic hopes of winning the throne of Castile, and would have realised that
he stood a greater chance of success — with Parliament and the Castilians, as well as the Almighty — if he presented a united front with Constance. A convincing reconciliation was therefore imperative. In this, the Duke and Duchess would willingly collaborate, brought together by their shared ambitions and by his increasing reliance on her knowledge of her kingdom, her judgement and her advice.
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Only compelling reasons such as these could have persuaded him that he must give up Katherine Swynford. Was he sincere? Did he truly mean to sever all illicit connections with her? At the time, almost certainly he did. There is no doubt that the Peasants’ Revolt had been cataclysmic for him.

It might also be argued that, after nine years together and four children, John had tired of Katherine anyway, but the facts do not bear this out: the two of them were to keep in touch, mutually supportive of each other, for many years to come, while John proved a good father to their children, continued to extend his patronage to Katherine’s family, and eventually risked public censure by marrying her, while she clearly continued to play an important role in his life. All those things argue a deepseated and long-cherished love between them — in which case, John’s public renunciation of Katherine and all that they meant to each other must have cost him dear, and occasioned him deep private suffering. It is surely no coincidence that, on 23 July, just days after he announced his intention of separating from her, he granted land for the foundation of a chapel dedicated to her name-saint and the Virgin Mary — for whom he himself had a special devotion — at Roecliffe in Yorkshire;
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nor would it be too far-fetched to imagine that he was founding this chapel in the hope that the grateful saints would guard and watch over Katherine in the difficult days ahead. On the other hand, there is no evidence that the chapel was ever built, so perhaps the Duke came to a belated awareness that openly associating himself with a foundation dedicated to his repudiated mistress’s name-saint was not the wisest of gestures.

Knighton, often well-informed, says that as soon as John returned to his estates in England, he ‘at once took occasion to send [Katherine] away, that she should no longer dwell with him’. The wording of this passage suggests that she was already with him when he returned — which we know was not the case — or waiting for them to be reunited at a prearranged location. As to returning to his estates, John was at Pontefract Castle from 20 to 21 July, before meeting up with Constance, and at Leicester from 28 July to 4 August. Constance’s presence apart, the Mayor of Leicester had called out the militia at the height of the Peasants’ Revolt, anticipating an attack on the castle, so it is hardly likely that Katherine had sought
refuge there. But she might have been at Pontefract: the twelfth-century castle was strongly fortified and garrisoned, some good way north, and easily accessible from Lincolnshire — just the kind of place where the Duke would have sent his lady for safety, for he had ordered his household to go there when he went to Edinburgh, and had arranged for firewood and barrels of the best wine to be delivered to them.
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It was also, as the centre of the Lancastrian administration and one of the favoured northern residences of the Duke, who had expended a fortune on lavish improvements there, a fitting residence for Philippa of Lancaster, who — as has been noted — may have been with Katherine. And Katherine’s presence there might have been one of the reasons why the Duchess Constance was refused admittance. Considering that the Duke’s household was already lodging there, there were no grounds for the constable to bar the door to his Duchess.

Knighton implies that John imparted his fateful decision to Katherine in person before sending her away. We can only imagine that excruciatingly painful interview and the devastating impact his renunciation would have had on her. Not only had she lost her royal lover, but she was also to lose her position in the Lancastrian household. There was no question now that she could remain as governess or companion to Philippa of Lancaster — her name was too synonymous with scandal
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— and in February 1382 an entry in
John of Gaunt’s Register
referring to her as ‘recently governess of our daughters’ confirms that she had ceased to occupy that office.
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We may assume that her duties came to an end at the same time as her affair with the Duke, when she delivered Philippa into his care.

What
is
likely is that, at the same time as he informed Katherine that their sexual relations must cease, John assured her that she would always have his friendship and that he would continue to look after the interests of their children — his actions in the years to come bear this out. The fact that their relations remained amicable — at the very least — confirms that he made the break as kindly as possible. Of course, they would have a legitimate reason — and need — for keeping in touch with each other: the young Beauforts.

Shocked and desolate as she must have been, Katherine may yet have shared John’s qualms of conscience and fear of divine retribution — such was the mediaeval mindset. She may have been shocked to hear that he had had other women during the course of their nine-year relationship. But she was also, clearly, a survivor. Initially, she probably returned to Kettlethorpe, trying to recover her equilibrium and decide what she should do. Certainly she would never be in want: the Duke’s generous provision for her had seen to that, while she had been a careful preserver of her son’s inheritance. And there was to be further proof of John’s care for her:
on 7 September 1381, he substantially increased her annuity to 200 marks (£24,831) for life, in consideration of ‘her good service to his daughters’ — and possibly to reward Katherine for sheltering Philippa during the Peasants’ Revolt. This grant has been seen as a pay-off,
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and it probably does mark the formal termination of Katherine’s service as governess. Ten days later, the Duke ordered that moneys owing to her ‘from the issues of land and tenements’ that belonged to her ward, Eustacia de Savenby, be paid; and if the tenants did not pay their dues, the lieutenant of Tickhill was to ‘distrain the lands and tenements of all goods and chattels’.
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It was probably later in 1381 that Katherine (perhaps using her new funds) took a lease on the Chancery, a fine house in Minster Yard (the cathedral close)
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in Lincoln, which was to remain her town residence until at least 1393. The fact that she kept this house on for at least twelve years argues that it was at first a refuge for her, a place that had no connections with the Duke, and that in time she came to feel at home in it. The Cathedral Close must have held some happy memories for her: at least one of her children had been baptised (and perhaps born) there, and she was apparently well thought of by the clergy who resided in the neighbouring houses. Maybe she was grateful for their support, and the chance to withdraw into this closed and protective community, a world dominated by the regular pealing of the cathedral bells.

At the Chancery, as at Kettlethorpe, Katherine lived in some state. This important house had been the official residence of the cathedral chancellors since 1321, but was some years older than that, having been built before 1260, when it was leased by Canon Thomas Ashby; at that time, it had probably occupied the site of the brick range that now fronts Pottergate, the street that lies east of the cathedral; the vanished church of St Margaret, where Thomas Swynford was baptised, stood opposite on what is today a green situated beside by the Greestone Stairs to the city, while the Bishop’s Palace lay a few yards to the west. When Chancellor Anthony Bek (later Bishop of Norwich) acquired the house in 1321, needing adequate space for study and recreation, he built a wing stretching north at right angles to the existing building, added a stately timber hall and extended the garden, creating a grand residence. For this, he was paying an annual rent of 10s. (£172) — a pittance for such a fine house. Fourteen new windows were inserted in the property by carpenters in 1343, at which time the Chancery boasted at least one stone privy.

The Chancellor was the senior clergyman responsible for overseeing the diocesan grammar schools and the cathedral library. The close, which was surrounded by a strong high wall, two turrets of which still stand in the garden of the Chancery, contained the Deanery and other spacious
houses for the cathedral canons, some of which survive at least in part today. For much of the second half of the fourteenth century, thanks to the Black Death and poor endowments, chancellors were in short supply, and consequently the Chancery — the oldest of the clergy houses, and known by this name before Katherine’s time — was sublet and rented out to various persons in succession, including a number of canons, the ‘Lady of Withornwick’ (who came from a knightly family in Holderness) in 1379–81, and after her, Katherine Swynford.

By the end of the 1380–1 financial year, the Lady of Withornwick had vacated the house, then from 1381 to 1386, an unnamed female tenant paid the very reasonable annual rent of 40s. (£751), plus 10s. (£188) towards the cathedral’s fabric fund. This must have been Katherine, because in 1386–7 we find ‘the Lady Katherine, renter of the house’ doing repairs there. In 1391–2, Katherine Swynford is again referred to in the Chapter accounts, when the new Chancellor, John Huntman (who had been appointed in 1390) received a remittance from the Chapter on account of the Chancery, because it was then occupied by her by ‘an old grant of the Chapter’ (which no longer exists), and was obliged to ask for another house in which to live. Katherine therefore appears to have taken out a long lease on the Chancery, for at least twelve — and possibly fifteen — years, because of which poor John Huntman was unable to take possession of his official residence until after 1396. It was in 1390–2 that John of Gaunt secured a settlement highly favourable to the close in a long-running dispute with the Bail, so the Chapter are hardly likely to have put pressure on Katherine to vacate the Chancery at that time.

In moving into this almost exclusively ecclesiastical male enclave, which was inhabited by nearly 130 men in holy orders in 1377, Katherine was isolating herself from the citizens of Lincoln — with whom she was clearly not popular, as will be seen — and surrounding herself by people who had shown themselves friendly, such as the canons who had served as sponsors at the font for her son, who were now among her neighbours.
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However, their willingness to accept such a notorious woman into their community may have stemmed not so much from their past esteem of her as from a desire to ensure that John of Gaunt continued to show favour to the close, especially in its endemic conflicts with the Bail; as a member of its Confraternity, he had a great spiritual affinity with the cathedral, which must have predisposed him to partiality towards the close. The cathedral’s sub-Dean, John of Belvoir, seems to have been instrumental in obtaining the tenancy for Katherine. In so doing, he and his brethren were acknowledging the continuing friendship that was perceived to be between her and the Duke after the ending of their love affair.