Mistress of the Monarchy (63 page)

58
Register of Edward, the Black Prince

59
There has been speculation that Walter had a daughter named Isabel or Elizabeth (possibly after his sister, whose name is also given in both variants). In the parish church of Beddington in Surrey is to be found the memorial brass of one of the local lords of the manor, Sir Nicholas Carew, who was the son of Edward III’s Keeper of the Privy Seal, and died in 1432. Beside him is depicted his first wife, Elizabeth or Isabel Delamere (or de la Mare), who is usually described (although not in contemporary sources) as the daughter and heiress of Stephen Delamere, lord of the manor of Delamers, Hertfordshire, by his wife Alice. Nicholas married Elizabeth around 1374, and she died before 1398, when he married his second wife, Mercy Hayme. Historians have long speculated that Elizabeth was not a Delamere at all, but a Roët, for the arms on the brass are those of Carew impaling not the arms of the Delamers (of which there are many versions), but what looks like the arms of Paon de Roët; furthermore, it has been suggested that, if she was a Roët, then she was perhaps the daughter of Walter de Roët. There is one major problem with this theory. Elizabeth had two sons by Nicholas Carew, one of whom eventually inherited his father’s lands. Had Elizabeth been Walter de Roët’s daughter and heiress, she would have inherited the lands he himself had inherited from his father, and they would have passed eventually to her son, and to his descendants. Therefore there could have been no lands in Hainault in 1411 for Sir Thomas Swynford, Katherine’s son, to claim, since Katherine could not have inherited any from her father or brother. Then there is the matter of the arms, which clearly show three Katherine wheels, and not the three plain wheels borne by Paon de Roët; these arms once appeared in stained glass in Beddington Church, and were described in 1611 in an armorial manuscript (now in the British Library) by Nicholas
Charles, Lancaster Herald, as Carew impaling three silver Katherine wheels on a field of red; the Beddington arms also have downward-facing projections on the wheels, which Paon’s lack. They can be identified therefore with the arms of the Street family, who were to be found in Hertfordshire, Kent and Somerset up to the late sixteenth century; the Street arms are virtually the same as those depicted in Beddington Church and described by Lancaster Herald; thus Elizabeth Carew could not have been a Delamere after all, and she was certainly not a descendant of Sir Paon de Roët or a daughter of Walter de Roët. The likelihood is that Walter de Roët died without heirs between 1356 and 1403, and that his patrimony was divided between his surviving sisters as co-heiresses. Haines; Perry;
Victoria County History of Berkshire
; Fairbairn

60
Crow and Olsen

61
Galway: ‘Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer’; Braddy; Crow and Olsen; Ackroyd

62
Gardner; Manly:
Some New Light on Chaucer
; Galway: ‘Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer’; Selby et al. It has also been suggested that Pan. is short for Pantolf, the Pantolfs being a Shropshire family of gentry, who were lords of Wem. The Countess’s accounts record Philippa Pan being escorted from ‘Pullesdone’ to Hatfield in 1357; there is no such name as ‘Pullesdone’ listed in modern Ordnance Survey atlases of Britain, but spellings of place names tend to change over time, and it has been postulated that this place was either Pudleston near Hereford, Pilsdon in Dorset or Puleston, which lies northeast of Newport, Shropshire, not that far from Wem(70). Pullesdon has sometimes been identified with Puleston, therefore, and some historians have claimed that Philippa Pan was a member of the Pantulf family. The problem with this theory is that the Pantolfs of Wem had died out in the thirteenth century, and their lands had been inherited by the Botelers through marriage to the Pantolf heiress. A younger branch of the Pantolf family, the lords of Great Dawley, had also died out, by 1240, when their holdings were divided between four co-heiresses. Had there been any other male relatives,
they
would surely have inherited any Pantolf lands rather than those lands descending to heiresses. Thus it is very unlikely that Philippa Pan belonged to the Pantolf family. Manly:
Some New Light on Chaucer
; Crow and Olsen; Galway: ‘Pullesdon’;
Victoria County History of Shropshire; Complete Peerage

63
Manly:
Some New Light on Chaucer
; Gardner; Howard; Stow:
London;
www.BritishHistory.ac
. Soper Lane and the Church of St Pancras no longer exist. The site was near Bucklersbury.

64
Gardner; Ackroyd

65
Calendar of Close Rolls; Foedera

66
Galway: ‘Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer’

67
Gardner

1
Froissart

2
Goodman:
John of Gaunt

3
Knighton

4
Fowler:
The King’s Lieutenant; Foedera

5
Blanche’s date of birth has been much debated. Froissart, who is not always reliable, says she was born in 1347, and this date would appear to be supported by a statement in the
Calendar of Close Rolls
that she was fourteen on 16 July 1361, the date her father’s lands were apportioned. If Blanche’s birth year was 1347, then she must have been born before 3 May, as it was on that date that she was betrothed to John de Segrave, heir to an ancient baronial family. But according to
John of Gaunt’s Register
, Blanche was born in 1344; this is unlikely, as her parents were then living in Gascony, and being born abroad would have rendered her ineligible to succeed to an inheritance in England, which she in fact did without her claim being contested. However, in two of the twenty-six Inquisitions Post Mortem for her father drawn up in 1361, her birth date is given as the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March) 1342; in the rest, and in the eleven Inquisitions Post Mortem for her sister, her age is usually given as ‘twenty-one and more’. This suggests that proof of her age was not furnished to all the escheators who conducted the Inquisitions, but that in two counties people did know when Blanche had been born; that they did is credible, for 25 March was Lady Day, one of the important feasts of the Church and a popular day for collecting rents. So while it is not conclusive, the overwhelming impression this evidence conveys is that people viewed Blanche as an adult in 1361, not as a young girl of twelve. The inference must be that she was born on 25 March 1342. For Blanche’s date of birth, see Anderson; Fowler:
The King’s Lieutenant; Calendar of Close Rolls; Complete Peerage
; Verity;
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem
. Blanche never did marry John de Segrave, for he died in 1349.

6
Walsingham;
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers

7
Chaucer:
The Book of the Duchess
. I have used mainly the vivid translation by Brian Stone in
Love Visions
(London, 1983).

8
Kittredge; Chaucer:
The Book of the Duchess
; Howard; Chute

9
Only the ruined cloisters and baptistry of the abbey remain. Most of the fabric was destroyed in 1540 on the orders of the Emperor Charles V.

10
Goodman:
John of Gaunt

11
Calendar of Patent Rolls
; Goodman:
John of Gaunt

12
Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Crow and Olsen

13
Froissart

14
Ibid.

15
Cited by McKisack and Rose

16
She may have been the daughter of a Jean ‘Vilain’ de St Hilaire. Froissart;
Calendar of Close Rolls
; Crow and Olsen; Lettenhove, Froissart, editorial notes

17
Froissart; Armitage-Smith

18
Rotuli Parliamentorum

19
Ibid. On 7 April 1399, Richard II confirmed the grant of this annuity, which was presumably paid until Marie died.

20
Additional MSS. The Countess’s accounts record New Year’s gifts to John’s cook and clerk of the kitchen.

21
On 20 December, one of her father’s servants was paid for bringing letters from Blanche to the Countess Elizabeth, and these letters might have been about Blanche’s forthcoming visit or travel arrangements.

22
Only meagre ruins survive of this once great and prosperous abbey, the burial place of its founder, Henry I.

23
Exchequer Records: E.403

24
Capgrave

25
The King paid £58 (£19,560) for jewels alone for the occasion, and gave the young couple jewellery and plate costing £389.11s.6d (£131,378). Exchequer Records: E.101, E.403;
Calendar of Close Rolls

26
Anderson

27
Yardley; Emery

28
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers

29
Calendar of Patent Rolls

30
Jambeck

31
Howard. ‘An ABC’ was a translation of a French poem, ‘Le Pèlerinage de La Vie Humaine’, by Guillaume Deguilevilles, which evoked the Virgin Mary as the object of courtly love in its most spiritual sense, and Chaucer almost certainly wrote it in the 1360s. Its title is not contemporary, but was added in the next century by the poet John Lydgate.

32
Lane

33
Special Collections: S.C.1; Goodman:
John of Gaunt

34
Exchequer Records: E.403

35
John of Gaunt’s Register
; Goodman:
John of Gaunt
. John of Gaunt’s Registers, containing details of ducal warrants, grants and payments, survive in full for the periods 1372–76 and 1379–83, and are stored in the National Archives at Kew. These registers are an invaluable source of information about Katherine Swynford, who is referred to in no fewer than thirty-two documents, while Kettlethorpe, where she lived after her marriage, is referred to in eleven.

36
Bishop Buckingham’s Register

37
Knighton

38
Ellis; Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Fox and Russell

39
Most of Leicester Castle was ruinous by the seventeenth century. The arcaded great hall survives, although much altered, and now houses the crown court. Its red-brick frontage was added in
c
.1690. Parts of the castle
walls survive, as does the church of St Mary de Castro. The inner bailey is now Castle Yard. The castle mound itself has been levelled to accommodate a bowling green. Henry VIII did not suppress the collegiate foundation in the Newarke because it contained the tombs of his Lancastrian ancestors, but it was dissolved in 1547 under his son, Edward VI, and St Mary’s Church and the college buildings were demolished soon afterwards. Trinity Hospital, which was restored in 1776 and 1902, is now an old people’s home, and stands in the Newarke, opposite the modern Leicester College of Art and Technology, in the basement of which are to be seen some mediaeval archways. The aisled hall and the chapel at the eastern end of the hospital are the only surviving parts of the original fourteenth-century building. The ruined turreted gateway leading to the Newarke dates from the fifteenth century. The Newarke itself is now a busy road.

40
Leland:
Itinerary
; Leland visited the Newarke in the early sixteenth century.

41
Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Somerville; Fowler:
The King’s Lieutenant; Victoria County History: Leicestershire
; Webster

42
Calendar of Patent Rolls

43
John of Gaunt’s Register
, Duchy of Lancaster Records: DL.28; Goodman:
John of Gaunt
. Hardly anything survives at Hertford Castle from John of Gaunt’s time. The castle was ruinous by 1609, when it passed into private ownership. The buildings that still stand, including the remains of the fifteenth-century gatehouse, are mostly of a later date, and house the civic offices.

44
Goodman:
John of Gaunt; Early Lincoln Wills; John of Gaunt’s Register
; Calendar of Patent Rolls; Duchy of Lancaster Records: DL.28;
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers

45
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem

46
Cited by Silva-Vigier

47
Calendar of Close Rolls; Calendar of Patent Rolls

48
Foedera

49
Calendar of Patent Rolls
; Somerville

50
Joan, ‘the fair maid of Kent’, was the daughter of the King’s uncle, Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent (who had been unjustly executed for treason in 1330), and therefore a cousin of the Black Prince. Born in 1328, she had been brought up in the Queen’s household. At the tender age of twelve, she apparently fell in love with one-eyed Sir Thomas Holland (or Holand), and secretly precontracted herself to him. After exchanging vows before witnesses — which were as binding as a marriage in the eyes of the Church — the young couple consummated their union, but then Sir Thomas went away on a crusade in Prussia. It may be that he was thought to have died, for around 1341–2, arrangements were made for Joan to marry young William de Montagu, Earl of Salisbury, and they lived together as man and wife until 1347. But in 1349, after Holland had returned, very much alive, and reclaimed Joan, the Pope ruled that his union with her was valid, that her marriage to Montagu was null and void, and that Joan was to return to Holland and live
with him as his lawful wife. This she willingly did, despite Montagu’s protests, and the marriage was blessed with five children (one of whom was later to marry the daughter of John and Blanche) before Sir Thomas Holland died in 1360. Froissart;
Foedera
; Hicks; Goodman:
John of Gaunt

51
McKisack;
Dictionary of National Biography
; Silva-Vigier

52
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem
; Froissart

53
Ormrod

54
Knighton;
Records of the Borough of Leicester
; Ramsay

55
Complete Peerage

56
Rotuli Parliamentorum

57
Silva-Vigier

58
Walker. A wealthy nobleman might normally have at best sixty men in his retinue.

59
Cited by Hicks

60
Knighton

61
McKisack;
John of Gaunt’s Register
; Armitage-Smith

62
He is described as the eldest son of John and Blanche in both the Harleian and Sloane MSS. In the sixteenth century, Leland visited St Mary’s Church in the Newarke at Leicester, and saw the tombs of ‘two men children under the arch’ next to the head of the effigy of Henry, Earl of Lancaster, who was buried on the north side of the high altar. These were almost certainly two of the infant sons of John of Gaunt.

63
Exchequer Records: E.403

64
John of Gaunt’s Register

65
Ibid.

66
Froissart

67
Knighton

68
Ibid.

69
Knighton; Walsingham

70
John of Gaunt’s Register

71
Anonimalle Chronicle
. The
Anonimalle Chronicle
is fiercely anti-Lancastrian and critical of John of Gaunt.

72
Froissart; John of Gaunt’s Will, in
Testamenta Eboracensia

73
Knighton

74
John of Gaunt’s Register

75
Stow:
London

76
For the Savoy Palace, see
John of Gaunt’s Register
; Palmer, A. & P.; Webster; Dalzell; Stow:
London
; Rose; Beaumont-Jones; Powrie; Green, V.H.H.; Duchy of Lancaster Records: DL.28, DL.42; Silva-Vigier; Dunn; Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Armitage-Smith; Fowler:
The King’s Lieutenant
; Delachenal. The remains of John of Gaunt’s palace were razed by Henry VII, who founded the Hospital of the Savoy on the site. In 1553, the hospital was suppressed by Edward VI during the Reformation, although the chapel served as a parish church until at least 1598. By the seventeenth century,
the hospital buildings were dilapidated and crumbling, and had become the haunt of thieves and vagrants. In the eighteenth century, part of the complex was used as a military prison, housing among others deserters who had been sentenced to die by firing squad in Hyde Park. By 1820, the old hospital was largely derelict, and in 1864, fire destroyed all that was left of it except the walls, which were cleared to make way for the approaches to the new Waterloo Bridge. The site remained empty until 1880, when Richard D’Oyly Carte purchased it in order to build the Savoy Theatre. All that is left of the Savoy today are parts of the stone walls of Henry VII’s chapel. Nothing survives from John of Gaunt’s time.

77
Fortescue; Armitage-Smith; Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Barnes

78
Goodman:
John of Gaunt

79
The London Spy
by Ned Ward (1699), cited by Hahn

80
Goodman:
John of Gaunt

81
Cited by Armitage-Smith

82
Binski; Shaw

83
Dugdale:
History of St Paul’s
; Sandford

84
The Duke’s privy seal, bearing his arms and helm only, is in the British Library; his great seal as King of Castile and León is in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

85
Cotton MS Nero Dvii f7r.; Goodman:
John of Gaunt

86
Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Baker; Hutchinson

87
John of Gaunt’s Register
. A late-fourteenth-century stained-glass window in the parish church of St Mary at Long Sutton in Lincolnshire has a figure of St George killing the dragon, for which John of Gaunt has traditionally been thought to be the model. John was lord of this manor, then one of the most prosperous communities in the area, and it is indeed possible that he donated the glass, as he probably did at Old Bolingbroke, also in Lincolnshire, where the east window of the chancel bore his arms. But in the absence of other evidence, apart from the Long Sutton glass being of a quality commensurate with John’s status and wealth, we cannot be certain if the oral tradition relating to the glass has any basis in fact. Perry; Hebgin-Barnes; Knightly

88
Lopes

89
Walsingham; Armitage-Smith

90
Froissart

91
Rotuli Parliamentorum

92
John of Gaunt’s Register

93
Chaucer:
The Book of the Duchess

94
Froissart; Jones:
Ducal Brittany