Mistress of the Monarchy (4 page)

Although it was the normal practice for well-born little girls to spend some of their formative years in a convent, where they received an education of sorts and were taught good behaviour and household skills,
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there is no evidence that Katherine was ever in a convent; on the contrary, we have Froissart’s evidence that she was continuously brought up from her youth in princely courts — starting, of course, in the Queen’s household. The fact that Philippa spoke Dutch as well as French — two languages with which the young Katherine and her sister would surely have been familiar — must initially have been a great help to both girls. Doubtless Katherine quickly learned to speak Norman French, the official language of the English court, a much-corrupted version of the Norman dialect
spoken by William the Conqueror and his companions, and somewhat different from the French spoken on the Continent. However, in her own lifetime, Katherine would see Norman French overtaken by English as the language of the law courts (1362), Parliament (1363) and fashionable literary circles, although it remained in use by the nobility for letters and everyday converse until well into the first half of the fifteenth century.

Katherine herself must have learned English too; her long tenure as lady of the manor of Kettlethorpe, and the fact that her brother-in-law, Chaucer, wrote his great works in the vernacular, make this more than likely.

In the Queen’s Chamber (i.e. her household), Katherine and her sister would not have lacked for company of their own age. The younger princesses — Mary, born in 1344, and Margaret, born in 1346, would have been among their companions. Margaret married in 1359, Mary in 1361, but both sadly died in the winter of 1361–2. The other surviving princes and princesses — Edward, the Black Prince, born 1330, Isabella of Woodstock, born 1332, Lionel of Antwerp, born 1338, John of Gaunt, born 1340, and Edmund of Langley, born 1341 — were much older, and had long left the nursery. Froissart says that Katherine was ‘brought up in her youth’ with Blanche of Lancaster, a cousin of the King and the future wife of John of Gaunt. Blanche was eight years older than Katherine, and did spend some of her formative years in the care of Queen Philippa;
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there is later evidence to show that she and Katherine came to be fond of each other. Living in the Queen’s household, Katherine would have come to know all the members of the royal family well, including John of Gaunt, who had an affair with Marie de St Hilaire, one of his mother’s ladies, probably in the mid to late 1350s,
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and later on doubtless came frequently to the Queen’s apartments to pay court to Blanche, his future bride.

Katherine grew up to be ‘a woman of such bringing up and honourable demeanour’, and in this the influence of Queen Philippa can easily be detected. Although Katherine was a gentlewoman, she had not been born into the highest echelons of society, but the education she received in the Queen’s household formed her into a lady of many accomplishments who was able to mingle seamlessly with the elite of the kingdom. She must have been well educated and sophisticated; the fact that, at the age of only about twenty-three, she would be appointed governess to John of Gaunt’s two eldest daughters, who grew up to be highly cultivated and charming women, testifies to this, as do the intellectual interests of at least two of her own children, Henry and Joan Beaufort. Katherine’s upbringing in the Queen’s household would have qualified her uniquely for the post of governess.

From an early age, Katherine displayed a certain piety, which was perhaps in part due to Queen Philippa’s early training. The Queen was also a practical woman, and it was doubtless from her that Katherine learned the skills of household management that prepared her efficiently to run the knightly estates that were entrusted to her care and to understand the functioning of the ducal establishments of John of Gaunt. And she must have learned from Philippa of Hainault the generosity of heart and tactful diplomacy that later enabled her to draw together the diverse strands of what otherwise might have proved a highly dysfunctional family.

Katherine’s character and outlook on life would have been shaped by her spending her formative years in the privileged world of the English court. It was a brilliant but itinerant court, and she would find herself moving from place to place, lodging in turn at Windsor Castle, Westminster Palace, Woodstock Palace, Havering-atte-Bower and a number of other luxurious residences of the King and Queen. The court attracted people of rank, intellect and sophisticated tastes, and was a centre of learning and culture. Its members were wealthy, privileged and overwhelmingly preoccupied with the securing of patronage and the acquisition of material luxuries. Display was what mattered: they dined in style on rich and novel cuisine, drank to excess, and dressed in extravagantly fashionable and colourful clothes; women’s necklines were very low and often left the shoulders and breasts half-bared, while young men wore such clinging hose beneath their short jackets (paltocks) that little was left to the imagination. Elaborate headgear, shoes with long pointed toes, trailing sleeves and belts clasped seductively low on the hips completed these ensembles for both sexes, and a profusion of jewellery was de rigueur. Unsurprisingly, these pampered, gaudily attired courtiers shocked the King’s more sober subjects, not only by their revealing dress but also by their sometimes licentious conduct. All, however, could be redeemed by the exercise of good manners.

Katherine would have learned early on the strict codes of protocol and formal courtesy that were observed by royalty and the aristocracy: Froissart tells us that ‘she had a perfect knowledge of court etiquette, because she had been brought up in it continually since her youth’. Doubtless she was also taught something of the accomplishments deemed desirable in a court into which Queen Philippa had introduced many more women than had graced it in previous reigns, and hence injected a somewhat civilising influence on what was essentially a male-dominated, militaristic society. Katherine would have learned dancing, embroidery, riding, hunting, hawking and social skills. That she was a competent horsewoman is evident from the fact that she would one day ride beside John of Gaunt on a progress through his estates, and later still kept a dozen of her horses in his stables.
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She would have become familiar with the parlour games so beloved of courtiers, the songs and music performed by the King’s musicians, and with the cult of courtly love, which informed and underpinned sexual relationships within the rarefied world of castle or palace; its idealised code permitted bachelors of usually inferior rank to pay their passionate addresses to great ladies who were often married and theoretically unattainable. In practice, it facilitated adulterous relationships. Yet its emphasis on the lover posing as a devoted servant to his mistress, or wearing her favour at a tournament, or languishing hopelessly in the face of her disdain, set the tone for social interaction between men and women, and its influence on sexual behaviour in the western world is still evident today. Needless to say, courtly love had little to do with the hard-headed mediaeval approach to marriage, which among the landed classes was essentially a business contract made for material, political or dynastic advantage, gave full control of a wife to her husband, and took no account of love or personal inclinations.

But it was of love that the courtiers talked, sang and composed verse — love and martial exploits. The latter were a favourite topic of discussion in a court predominantly inhabited by a martial aristocracy and a multitude of knights. For the ladies, however, love was of paramount interest. Manuscripts of romances and love poems were always in circulation in female circles at court, and Katherine, under the guidance of her royal patroness, would surely have been taught to read, if not to write, so that she could participate fully in the social milieu of which she was to be a part for so much of her life. Katherine’s daughter, Joan Beaufort, and both her future royal charges were literate, as were many of the women in her social circle, so it is inconceivable that Katherine herself was unable to read, if not write.

The game and play of love was all very well, but it would have been drummed into growing girls like Katherine that they must wait to be addressed before speaking, must keep their eyes modestly lowered and their hands folded, and that they must avoid being over-familiar with men if they wanted to avoid scandal. But the court was a licentious place where promiscuity was rampant, since so many young men could not afford to marry, and frank, bawdy tales (such as those of Giovanni Boccaccio and, later, Geoffrey Chaucer) were very popular; Chaucer, in ‘The Squire’s Tale’, speaks of the revels, jollity and ‘dancings’ that provided opportunities for erotic intrigue, ‘when each person fully experiences the being of another’. In such an environment, young people could hardly have grown up ignorant of the facts of life, or its temptations.

The social and moral tone of the English court was set by King Edward III himself, who could be described as the archetypal mediaeval monarch:
chivalrous, warlike and accomplished in statecraft and diplomacy. Born in 1312, Edward had succeeded to the throne in 1327. His contemporaries admired him immensely: ‘This King Edward was of infinite goodness and glorious among all the great ones of the world. He was great-hearted, clement and benign, familiar and gentle to all men; affable and gentle in courtesy of speech, and profuse in largesse. His body was comely, and his face like the face of a god. He was liberal in giving and lavish in spending.’
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Like his wife, he dressed lavishly, ever the showman.

By the time Katherine came to court, Edward’s subjects ‘thought that a new sun was rising over England, with peace abounding, the wealth of possessions and the glory of victory’.
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In prosecuting his claim to the French throne, the King had inflicted resounding defeats on England’s ancient enemy at Sluys in 1340, Crécy in 1346 and Calais in 1347, and won high renown, a substantial foothold in France and international prestige for his kingdom. ‘He was the flower of this world’s knighthood, for whom to do battle was to reign, to contend was to triumph,’ observed the chronicler Henry Knighton admiringly.

Edward had created a lavish and extravagant court that was a centre of chivalry and culture. In 1348, he had founded the celebrated Order of the Garter in honour of England’s patron saint St George, and in emulation of King Arthur and his legendary knights. The annual feast of St George, which was celebrated each April at Windsor, was one of the greatest social occasions of the year, ranked with the Easter and Christmas festivities. Edward had also established a pattern of court ceremonial that underlined his majesty, proclaimed his magnificence and provided his courtiers and subjects with an endless procession of fascinating spectacles.

King Edward was devoted to Queen Philippa, and they were to enjoy a long and happy marriage. Yet he was not faithful to her: indeed, he was often ‘passionately smitten’
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with the charms of other ladies, and there was even an unsubstantiated tale that he took what he wanted by force.
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At the dances, hunts, tournaments and feasts that were a regular feature of court life, he was often to be found ‘entertaining ladies’. In other respects, he was a loving husband, and a good and affectionate father who was clearly indulgent towards his large brood. By marrying his sons to English heiresses, he secured lands and titles for them without impoverishing himself, and in the process identified the interests of the nobility with those of the royal family. That there was remarkable harmony within that family was due to this careful policy of the King and the warmly unifying influence of the Queen. Thus Edward III could count on his sons’ unquestioning loyalty and support, which was rare in the history of the mediaeval English monarchy.

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Katherine grew up in the rarefied and privileged enclave of the court, but there was a wider world that also played its part in shaping her. She lived in a society that faced similar problems to those we face today, a post-imperial world in which people were fast losing faith in an authoritarian government that seemed unable or unwilling to deal effectively with the practical problems it faced, and which insisted on pursuing victory at all costs in a war that could never be won. A world suffering from the effects of rampant monetary inflation, a terrible increase in lawlessness, a decline in morality and the rise of muscular mercantile organisations whose power was equal to that of today’s multinational corporations. A world in which people suffered under unjust increases in taxation; in which the rich experienced the breaking up of great estates, and the working classes were increasingly flexing their political muscles. A world in which religious fundamentalism was challenged by a society grown disillusioned with organised religion. And a world that, at the same time, witnessed an improvement in standards of living and the unprecedented growth of a consumer culture.

Yet in many other respects, Katherine’s world would be largely unrecognisable to us today. In the second half of the fourteenth century, England was still essentially a feudal society, with a social hierarchy that represented mediaeval man’s preoccupation with the divinely appointed order of civilisation. At the very top of this pyramid was the King; next came his tenants-in-chief, the great barons; then came the knightly classes and the gentry — the class to which Katherine belonged — then the freemen and rising merchant classes, and at the very bottom of the pyramid, the villeins or serfs, peasants who were tied to their manors and worked the land for their lords and themselves.

Feudalism had evolved in the Dark Ages in the insecure landscape of western Europe, when territorial borders were constantly changing or under threat, wars were endemic and kings had to rely on a military aristocracy that could supply them with armies, while peasants needed the protection that only an overlord, with his strong castle or fortified manor, and his train of knights, could provide. However, in England, by the thirteenth century, a strong centralised government and increasing material prosperity had led to the growth of towns, trade and commerce and a population boom.