Mistress of the Monarchy (64 page)

95
Walsingham

96
Cited by Hicks

97
Westminster Chronicle

98
Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Panton;
Extracts from the Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham

99
John of Gaunt’s Register

100
Cotton MS Nero

101
Cox; Shaw; Fox and Russell;
John of Gaunt’s Register; Calendar of Patent Rolls
; Legge

102
John of Gaunt’s Register
; Duchy of Lancaster Records: DL.28

103
Chaucer:
The Book of the Duchess

104
Pearsall;
The Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn

105
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers; Rotuli Parliamentorum

106
John of Gaunt’s Register; Calendar of Patent Rolls

107
Chaucer:
The Book of the Duchess

108
Goodman:
Honourable Lady; John of Gaunt
; Wathey; Froissart;
The Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn
; McFarlane

109
Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Cowling

110
Political Poems and Songs

1
The drawing is in Dugdale’s Book of Monuments in the British Library.

2
Dudley

3
Claims have also been made that four carved heads on the gateway of Butley Priory near Woodbridge, Suffolk, represent Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt, Henry IV and Henry Beaufort. The gatehouse, however, dates from 1311–32 — it is all that remains today of the original twelfth-century priory, while the royal arms on the gateway pre-date 1340, when Edward III had them quartered with the ancient lilies of France in pursuance of his claim to the French throne. The heads most probably survive from this earlier period, and there is, moreover, no written evidence in the records of Butley Priory to connect John of Gaunt or Katherine Swynford with it; Suffolk was one of only two English counties where John did not hold any manors or other property. Butley Priory is now a hotel. Wood; Armitage-Smith

4
MS 61, fol. lv, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

5
Ackroyd

6
Williams

7
Loomis

8
Goodman:
Honourable Lady

9
For Katherine’s appearance and character generally, see Lucraft: ‘Missing from History’; Silva-Vigier; Given-Wilson; Goodman:
Honourable Lady
; Bruce; Tilbury

10
The correct mediaeval form of his name was Hugh de Swynford, but, in order to comply with popular usage, I have chosen to omit the ‘de’ throughout the text.

11
Silva-Vigier

12
For the Swynford family, see chiefly Perry;
Excerpta Historica
; Nicolas; Cole.

13
It has been claimed that Sir Thomas Swynford was possibly a younger son, or more likely a grandson, of Sir Thomas de Swynford of Knaith in Lincolnshire, who died in 1312, but that is less likely. Sir Thomas was certainly related to John de Swynford, who was Lord of Burgate in 1311, but seems not to have been Sir Robert’s father — and to Sir John de Swynford, who was MP for Huntingdonshire and died in 1332; their shields all bore three gold boars’ heads on a field of silver. Another reason for believing that Sir Thomas was Robert’s son is that, in the fifteenth century, Thomas’s great-granddaughter, another Katherine Swynford, was to marry into the Drury family, whose seat was at Rougham, Suffolk, and whose favoured place of burial was Burgate parish church; this suggests a long-standing connection with Burgate. Farrer;
Excerpta Historica
; Cole; Campling; Perry

14
The name is given variously as Copledike, Cobledike or Cubbledykes. This family had acquired Coleby in 1315.

15
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem
; Goodman:
Katherine Swynford; John of Gaunt’s Register
; Chancery Records: C.143

16
Calendar of Patent Rolls
; Cole. Although it is often stated that Nichola’s father was Sir Robert de Arderne of Drayton, Oxfordshire, she was probably the daughter and heiress of John Druel, who in 1311 was lord of the manor of Newton Blossomville, Bedfordshire; his wife was named Amice. The Druel family had been at Newton Blossomville since at least the thirteenth century, and two of its members were rectors of the parish church of St Nicholas. Nichola must have been John Druel’s daughter or heiress, because she inherited Newton Blossomville. When she married Sir Thomas Swynford, he became lord of this manor in her right, and apparently settled there until 1357, when he and Nicola conveyed Newton Blossomville to Sir Ralph Basset of Drayton.
Complete Peerage
; Cole;
Calendar of Close Rolls; Victoria County History: Buckinghamshire
; Lipscombe

17
Calendar of Patent Rolls; Calendar of Close Rolls
; Cole; Exchequer Records: E.358

18
Victoria County History: Bedfordshire

19
Feet of Fines, 30 Edward III, No. 8, cited by Cole

20
Cole;
Calendar of Close Rolls

21
Ibid.

22
John of Gaunt’s Register

23
This was something of a family tradition, for Hugh’s uncle, Sir Norman Swynford, had served Duke Henry in four military and diplomatic enterprises; see Fowler; Duchy of Lancaster Records: DL.27.

24
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem

25
Calendar of Patent Rolls

26
Galway: ‘Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer’

27
Bishop Buckingham’s Register

28
There is no historical evidence for them being married at St Clement Danes Church in the Strand, as several internet sites — following Anya Seton — assert.

29
Excerpta Historica
; Perry; Birch

30
Williams; Krauss; Gardner

31
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem
— I.P.M. for Sir Thomas Swynford, 1361; Perry

32
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem

33
Thorold

34
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem
. Nothing remains of the fourteenth-century church today; it was mostly rebuilt in the nineteenth century, and the only mediaeval survival is the fifteenth-century battlemented tower.

35
For Kettlethorpe generally, see
www.kettlethorpe.com
; Perry; Cole; Mee; Leese; Goodman:
Katherine Swynford; John of Gaunt
; Tilbury;
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem; Kettlethorpe
: Strutt and Parker Sale Brochure, 1981 (Lincoln Reference Library).

36
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem

37
For Coleby generally, see
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem
; Perry; Richardson;
Coleby Village: Home of Koli
; Tempest. Today, Coleby is a small rural hamlet with picturesque stone buildings.

38
Calendar of Patent Rolls

39
Crow and Olsen; Goodman:
Katherine Swynford

40
Wickenden; Knighton; Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Mee

41
Hill:
Mediaeval Lincoln

42
Silva-Vigier

43
Camden

44
Additional MSS.

45
Archaeological Journal
, XXI, 1864

46
For ‘John of Gaunt’s Palace’ see chiefly Hill:
Mediaeval Lincoln
; Green:
Forgotten Lincoln; The History of Lincoln
; Mee. By the eighteenth century, the ‘palace’ — now known as ‘Broxholme’s great house’ — had been divided into three tenements; John of Gaunt’s arms were in place until at least 1737, but in 1783 much of the house was pulled down. In 1849, what was left was auctioned off and soon afterwards demolished. A beautiful Decorated triple-lighted oriel window, boasting ogee canopies, finials, quatrefoils and carved figures and foliage, was removed in its entirety from the south end of the condemned building and set in the castle gatehouse, where it may be seen today. A fragment of the mediaeval house survives, and a fifteenth-century window. Opposite the ‘palace’ stood ‘another ancient building known as “John of Gaunt’s stables”, but according to William Camden, this was ‘more likely to have been his palace than the other’, which suggests that the ‘stables’ were in a better state of repair than the ‘palace’ in the late sixteenth century. In 1784, the sceptical Grimm referred to ‘the old house pretended by some to have been the stables of John of Gaunt, by some a religious house, and by others the old town hall and a prison’. In fact, the building was St Mary’s Guildhall, which was erected around 1150–60; today, only parts of two walls remain from that time, the rest having been demolished
in 1737. Additional MSS. For Lincoln generally, see Hill:
Mediaeval Lincoln
; Duffy;
Calendar of Patent Rolls
; Goodman:
Katherine Swynford; Honourable Lady; John of Gaunt
; Silva-Vigier; Crow and Olsen; Beaumont-Jones; Hamilton Thompson; Powrie. Lincoln Castle now houses the Georgian gaol and the Assize Courts.

47
Calendar of Patent Rolls

48
For Katherine’s daughters, see Perry; Loftus and Chettle; Sturman;
John of Gaunt’s Register.

49
Stapleton; Cole

50
Farmer; Attwater

51
William de Belesby, Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1382 and 1388, was married to one Elizabeth Swynford, who was the daughter and heiress of William de Swynford of the Huntingdonshire branch of the family, who also held lands in Lincolnshire; it is also possible that Gilbert de Beseby, the chamberlain at Kettlethorpe was a member of this family, as spellings of surnames often vary. Andrew Luttrell, who died in 1390 and whose father had commissioned the famous
Luttrell Psalter
, probably married another Swynford girl, for the Swynford arms were once visible on his brass in Irnham Church. Lansdowne MSS.; Perry

52
Speculation that there was another daughter of Katherine and Hugh is probably unfounded. A Katherine Swynford appears on a list of nuns at Stixwould Priory, a Cistercian house twelve miles east of Lincoln, in 1377. Given that Margaret Swynford was of an age to enter a London convent in 1377, it is just possible that she had a sister old enough to enter Stixwould that year, and as we have seen, it was not unheard of for girls to enter nunneries when they were still in childhood. It is also possible that one of Katherine’s daughters by Hugh was given her mother’s name. But there is nothing else to suggest that this Katherine Swynford was the daughter of Hugh and Katherine. There were many branches of the Swynford family, and little evidence to show how they were interrelated, therefore this nun could have belonged to any of them. Furthermore, Stixwould was a poor house compared to those in which Margaret Swynford and her cousins Elizabeth and Agnes Chaucer were placed in 1377 and 1381. Founded in the twelfth century, it now housed just twenty-eight nuns; back in the late thirteenth century it had been one of only five nunneries able to export at least fifteen sacks of wool, but after the Black Death there was clearly a decline, for by the late fourteenth century, Stixwould’s assets were modest, and in 1419 the nuns were excused payment of a subsidy on account of their poverty. More to the point, by the mid-1370s, Katherine Swynford was sufficiently wealthy to have found a far better foundation for one of her daughters. Therefore it is highly unlikely that the nun at Stixwould was her child. McHardy:
Clerical Poll Taxes
; Nichols; Knowles and Hadcock; Graves;
Victoria County History: Lincolnshire
; Joy; Perry

53
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers
. The full text of the petition, and a translation into English, is given by Kelly.

54
Perry

55
Kelly

56
John of Gaunt’s Register

57
Perry; Goodman:
Katherine Swynford
; Crow and Olsen

58
Calendar of Patent Rolls; John of Gaunt’s Register
; Crow and Olsen

59
Exchequer Records: E.403

60
He was buried with his brother and namesake in St Mary’s Church in the Newarke (Lane).

61
Bishop Buckingham’s Register

62
John of Gaunt’s Register

63
Ackroyd; Ayala; Honoré-Duvergé

64
Calendar of Patent Rolls
; Crow and Olsen

65
Chancery Records: C.81. It was Robert Glover, Somerset Herald, who, between 1571 and 1588, first identified Philippa Chaucer with Philippa de Roët. The Elizabethan antiquary, John Stow, also stated that Geoffrey Chaucer ‘had to wife the daughter of Paon Roët’. That this identification is correct is almost conclusively proved by the appearance of the Roët arms on the tomb of Philippa’s son, Thomas Chaucer. Crow and Olsen; Speght; Krauss:
Three Chaucer Studies

66
Ibid.

67
Calendar of Patent Rolls

68
Dictionary of National Biography
; Chute

69
McKisack

70
Gardner

71
Howard

72
Pearsall

73
Gardner

74
Gardner; Lounsbury

75
Given-Wilson; Gardner; Lounsbury

76
Emerson; Armitage-Smith; Hardy; Bryant; Johnson; Packe; Norwich. For Pedro’s deposition, see Chandos Herald; Froissart;
Foedera
; Russell; Gardner;
Calendar of Patent Rolls
. Regarding Chandos Herald, in
c
.1385, an anonymous herald of Sir John Chandos wrote a laudatory poem about the exploits of Edward, Prince of Wales in 1366–7. His fulsome praise for John of Gaunt, and the likely date of the poem, has led John Palmer to suggest that it may be the work of a Lancastrian propagandist who supported John’s claim to the kingdom of Castile.

77
Excerpta Historica; Foedera

78
Bolingbroke Castle remains to this day the property of the Duchy of Lancaster; it was maintained as a royal castle until the sixteenth century, but thereafter fell into decay. The walls and towers were largely destroyed by the Parliamentarians in 1643, and the gateway collapsed in 1815. The remaining
walls and mounds have recently undergone excavation, which revealed some buried stonework, and partial restoration. These ruins are located off an unclassified road in the village of Old Bolingbroke.

79
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem; Calendar of Close Rolls

80
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem; John of Gaunt’s Register

81
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem

82
Jones, Major, Varley and Johnson; Jones, Stocker and Vince; also the works on Lincoln listed under note 46.

83
Cole

84
Froissart

85
Chandos Herald; Froissart

86
Some historians place Henry’s birth in the spring of 1366, but that was when his brother John was born; and on 1 June 1367, we find Edward III rewarding one Ingelram Ffalconer for delivering letters from the Duchess Blanche in which she announced Henry’s arrival, while on 14 July, the King also rewarded Blanche, widow of Sir Robert Bertram, for bringing him news of the birth. Goodman:
John of Gaunt
; Exchequer Records: E.43, E.403