Contents
Cover
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Alison Weir
Illustrations
Dedication
Title Page
Introduction
Prologue: Spring 1378
1 ‘Panetto’s daughter’
2 ‘The magnificent Lord’
3 ‘The trap of wedding’
4 ‘Mistress of the Duke’
5 ‘Blinded by desire’
6 ‘His unspeakable concubine’
7 ‘Turning away the wrath of God’
8 ‘The Lady of Kettlethorpe’
9 ‘My dearest lady Katherine’
10 ‘The King’s mother’
Picture Section
Author’s Notes
Notes and References
Acknowledgements
Appendix: Anya Seton’s Katherine
Genealogical Tables
Select Bibliography
Index
Copyright
BRITAIN’S ROYAL FAMILIES:
The Complete Genealogy
THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII
RICHARD III AND THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER
LANCASTER AND YORK:
The Wars of the Roses
CHILDREN OF ENGLAND:
The Heirs of King Henry VIII 1547–1558
ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE
ELIZABETH THE QUEEN
HENRY VIII:
King and Court
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
AND THE MURDER OF LORD DARNLEY
ISABELLA:
She-Wolf of France, Queen of England
THE LADY IN THE TOWER:
The Fall of Anne Boleyn
MARY BOLEYN:
‘The Great and Infamous Whore’
ELIZABETH OF YORK:
The First Tudor Queen
THE LOST TUDOR PRINCESS:
A Life of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox
THE RING AND THE CROWN:
A History of Royal Weddings, 1066–2011
INNOCENT TRAITOR
THE LADY ELIZABETH
THE CAPTIVE QUEEN
A DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
THE MARRIAGE GAME
SIX TUDOR QUEENS:
Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen
TRAITORS OF THE TOWER
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Copyright © Alison Weir 2007
Alison Weir has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Vintage in 2008
First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 2007
www.penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This book is dedicated to
Bruce and Sandy,
Peter and Karen
and
John and Joanna
to mark their marriages.
1 Troilus Frontispiece, Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 61. fol. LV. Chaucer reading his works to the court of Richard II © Corpus Christi College, Cambridge/The Bridgeman Art Library
2 Edward III and the Black Prince, British Library Cotton MS. Nero VI, f.31 © Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library
3 Philippa of Hainault, tomb effigy in Westminster Abbey © Dean and Chapter of Westminster
4 Joan of Kent, roof boss in the Black Prince’s Chantry at Canterbury Cathedral © Angelo Hornak
5 John of Gaunt, portrait ascribed to Luca Cornelli; collection of the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton © Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library
6 Blanche of Lancaster, carving from Edington Priory © Edifice/Philippa Lewis
7 The marriage of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, painting by H. Boardman Wright, Reading Museum © Reading Museum Service (Reading Borough Council). All rights reserved.
8 The Savoy Palace, detail from the Agas map, Guildhall Library, City of London
9 Geoffrey Chaucer, miniature from Thomas Hoccleve’s The Regimen of Princes, early 15th century, British Library Harleian MS. 4866, fol.88 © British Library, London/© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/The Bridgeman Art Library
10 Leicester Castle ruins: the Turret Gateway courtesy of Chris Wardle
11 Leicester Castle: reconstruction of the Great Hall, drawing by Charlotte Isherwood, © Charlotte Isherwood
12 Kettlethorpe Hall and Gatehouse: The Katherine Swynford Society (photo: Roger Joy)
13 Lincoln Cathedral, aerial view: Phil Crow/Alamy
14 St Margaret’s Church, Pottergate, Lincoln, drawing of c1780, Lincoln Cathedral Library, portfolio B, no. 7a: Lincoln Cathedral Library
15 Kenilworth Castle, John of Gaunt’s Great Hall: English Heritage Photo Library, photograph: Paul Highnam
16 Constance of Castile, from the illustrated genealogy of the Infante Dom Fernando of Portugal (the detail is from the family tree of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster) by Simon Bening. British Library Additional MS. 12 531, fol.10, xxxi, detached leaf: akg-images/British Library
17 John Wycliffe reading his translation of the Bible to John of Gaunt, painting by Ford Madox Brown, Bradford Art Galleries and Museums © Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, West Yorkshire/The Bridgeman Art Library
18 Philippa of Lancaster, tomb effigy, Batalha Abbey, Portugal. From Historia de Portugal, vol 3 by Damiao Peres and Eleuterio Cerdeira (1928-1935)
19 Elizabeth of Lancaster, tomb effigy, Burford Church, Shropshire: The Katherine Swynford Society (photo: Roger Joy)
20 Henry of Derby, later Henry IV, tomb effigy, Canterbury Cathedral: National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 397)
21 Richard II, detail from the Wilton Diptych, The National Gallery © National Gallery, London/The Bridgeman Art Library
22 Plan of the Chancery, Lincoln, from Stanley R. Jones: Four Minster Houses (The Friends of Lincoln Cathedral, 1974; Lincoln Civic Trust): Lincoln Cathedral Library
23 The Chancery, from Stanley R. Jones, Kathleen Major and Joan Varley: The Survey of Ancient Houses in Lincoln, I: Priorygate to Pottergate (Lincoln Civic Trust, 1984; illustrations by Stanley Jones): Lincoln Cathedral Library
24 Tomb at Old (East) Worldham Church, Hampshire, reputed to be Philippa Chaucer’s © John Crook
25 Mary de Bohun: The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS Auct. D.4.4.fol.181v
26 Katherine’s arms as Duchess of Lancaster: www.english.upenn.edu
27 Pontefract Castle, painting of c1630, Pontefract Museum © Wakefield Museums and Galleries, West Yorkshire/The Bridgeman Art Library
28 Ely Place in the 16th century, model in the crypt of St Etheldreda’s, Ely Place, London. Photo © Jarrold Publishing, by Peter Smith of Newbery Smith Photography
29 St Etheldreda’s Church, Ely Place © John Crook
30 Richard II receives his child bride, Isabella of Valois, 1396, British Library Harleian MS. 4380, f.89: The British Library (MS. Harley 4380, f.89)
31 John Beaufort’s arms: www.geocities.com
32 Cardinal Henry Beaufort’s arms: Southwark Diocesan Communications Department
33 Thomas Beaufort’s arms: www.geocities.com
34 Joan Beaufort’s seal, British Library: The British Library (Seal XLVII.64)
35 John Beaufort and Margaret Holland, from The Beaufort Hours, British Library Royal MS. 2 A.XVIII, f.23v: akg-images/British Library
36 John Beaufort, tomb effigy in Canterbury Cathedral © Angelo Hornak
37 Cardinal Beaufort, tomb effigy in Winchester Cathedral © John Crook
38 Possibly Cardinal Henry Beaufort, oil portrait called ‘Cardinal Albergati’ by Jan Van Eyck, c1430-35, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: akg-images/Erich Lessing
39 Joan Beaufort, tomb effigy beside that of her husband, Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmoreland, and his first wife, Staindrop Church, Co. Durham: The Katherine Swynford Society
40 Joan Beaufort, drawing of the Staindrop effigy, from R. Gough: Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain, London, 1786-96: The British Library (HLL393.1)
41 Joan Beaufort and her daughters, from The Neville Book of Hours, c1427, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris – MS Latin 1158 f.34v: Bibliothèque nationale de France (MS Latin 1158, f.34v)
42 Thomas Chaucer and Maud Burghersh, brass in Ewelme Church, Oxon. © John Crook
43 John of Gaunt in later life, miniature from The Golden Book of St Albans, British Library Cotton MS. Nero D. vii, f.66-7 © British Library, London/© British Library Board. All rights reserved/The Bridgeman Art Library
44 John of Gaunt at prayer, from the St Cuthbert Window, York Minster: National Monuments Record
45 The Death of John of Gaunt, painting by James Northcote, 1793, Palace of Westminster. On loan to the Palace of Westminster from the Lewis Family Estate
46 Katherine Swynford in widow’s weeds, line drawing of her lost tomb brass: The British Library (Additional MS 71474 f.107)
47 The Priory and its vanished gatehouse, Four Minster Houses: Lincoln Cathedral Library
48 The dresser in the Priory, The Survey of Ancient Houses in Lincoln: Lincoln Cathedral Library
49 The Priory today, Four Minster Houses: Lincoln Cathedral Library
50 Tomb of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster in Old St Paul’s Cathedral, drawing by William Sedgewick c1640-1, in William Dugdale’s History of St Paul’s, ed. H. Ellis, London, 1818: The British Library (74/749f.2)
51 The tomb chests of Katherine Swynford and Joan Beaufort in Lincoln Cathedral before they were moved, drawing of c1640, British Library, Dugdale’s Book of Monuments, Additional MS. 71474, f.107: The British Library (Additional MS 71474 f.107)
52 The tombs of Katherine Swynford and Joan Beaufort as they appear today: Lincoln Cathedral Library
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders but the author and publishers will be pleased to hear from any who have not been traced.
I should like to express my warmest gratitude to various people who have helped with this book. To Anthony Goodman, our finest late-mediaeval historian, for his assistance with references and original documents; I am also indebted to him for his two booklets, Katherine Swynford and Honourable Lady or She-Devil?, and his magnificent collection of essays on John of Gaunt, which have all proved profoundly useful. To Dr Nicholas Bennett, Librarian of Lincoln Cathedral Library, and his wife Carol for their kindness in welcoming me to the library, making available various sources, and arranging a visit to the Priory, where Katherine Swynford lived towards the end of her life. To Roger Joy, founder of the Katherine Swynford Society and a walking authority on Katherine, for generously sharing his knowledge with me, and for sending me his unpublished articles. To Patricia McLeod and the staff of Sutton Library for their efforts in tracking down numerous books and articles. To Abigail Bennett of the University of York, for translating into English numerous texts in mediaeval Latin. To Andrew Barr and his team at The National Trust East Midlands Regional Office. To the staff at Lincoln Central Library for their assistance in locating books.
I am indebted also to the many people who have published information about Katherine on the internet, foremost amongst whom is Judy Perry, who has been researching her subject for over twenty-five years.
My gratitude to my editors for commissioning this book is acknowledged separately, in the Introduction, but I should also like to express it here on account of their unflagging enthusiasm, their sensitive insights and their illuminating input. I wish also to thank my inspirational and ever-supportive agent, Julian Alexander, and all the people at Random House who have helped to create this book.
Lastly, I wish to thank my family and friends, who have all cheerfully put up with me while the book was being written. And to Rankin, my husband – thanks for all the wonderful meals, and just for being there.
I HAVE USED the form ‘Katherine’ (rather than ‘Catherine’) throughout, as Katherine’s name is usually spelt with a K in contemporary sources.
The correct mediaeval form of her name is ‘Katherine de Swynford’, but I have chosen to refer to her as ‘Katherine Swynford’, as she is traditionally and popularly known.
It is worth noting that in John of Gaunt’s Register, Katherine’s name is given as either ‘Katherine’ or ‘Kateryn(e)’. The language of the court and the aristocracy at this time was Norman French, and these spellings indicate that John – and others – probably pronounced her name in the French way as ‘Katrine’.
The modern equivalent of fourteenth-century monetary values has been given in brackets throughout the book. For currency conversion, I have used an invaluable internet website, MeasuringWorth.com, produced by Lawrence H. Officer, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Samuel H. Williams, Professor of Economics, Emeritus, of Miami University.
THIS IS A love story, one of the greatest and most remarkable love stories of mediaeval England. It is the extraordinary tale of an exceptional woman, Katherine Swynford, who became first the mistress, and later the wife, of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, one of the outstanding princes of the high Middle Ages.
Katherine Swynford’s story first captured my imagination four decades ago, when I read Anya Seton’s famous novel about her, Katherine. This epic novel made a tremendous impact on me as an adolescent, and still has the power to move me today. And I am not alone, because it has hardly been out of print since its first publication in 1954, and came ninety-fifth in the top hundred favourite books voted for by the public in BBC TV’s The Big Read in 2003. (Interested readers will find more about this novel in the Appendix.)
It would not be an exaggeration to say that I have wanted to write this book for forty years. But even when I became a published author in the late eighties, no publisher would have contemplated commissioning a biography of this relatively obscure woman. And that remained the situation for many years, until the recent explosion of interest in all things historical, which inspired me to seize the chance to make my long-standing, secret dream come true. I am truly indebted to my editors, Will Sulkin, Anthony Whittome and Susanna Porter, for their support and enthusiasm for this project, and to Elisabeth Dyssegaard, who suggested that I write about Katherine as well as John of Gaunt, the subject I originally proposed.
Katherine Swynford deserves a biography for many reasons. First and foremost, she was romantically linked to John of Gaunt, one of the most charismatic figures of the fourteenth century, and their passionate and ultimately poignant love affair is both astonishing and moving. Katherine was clearly beautiful and desirable, not to say enigmatic and intriguing, and some of her contemporaries regarded her as dangerous also. Her existence was played out against a vivid backdrop of court life at the height of the age of chivalry, and she knew most of the great figures of the epoch. The renowned poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, was her brother-in-law. She lived through the Hundred Years War, the Black Death and the Peasants’ Revolt, knew passion, loss, adversity and heartbreak, and survived them all triumphantly. Her story gives us unique insights into the life of a mediaeval woman.
Yet Katherine was unusual in that she did not conform to many of the conventional norms expected of women in that age, and in several respects her story has relevance for us today. Feminist scholars are now beginning to see her from a new perspective, as a woman who was an important personage in her own right, a woman who – in a male-dominated age – had remarkable opportunities, made her own choices, flouted convention and took control of her own destiny. Katherine was intelligent, poised and talented, and fortunate enough to move in circles where these qualities were valued and encouraged in women. Among the choices she faced were ones that would be familiar to women today, although her modern counterparts would not have to endure the moral backlash that at one time rebounded on Katherine and probably wrecked her life. Yet they would identify with her as a woman who coped brilliantly with the sweeping, and sometimes devastating, changes of fortune that befell her.
Above all, Katherine Swynford occupies an unprecedented position in the history of the English monarchy; dynastically, she is an important figure. She was the mother of the Beauforts, and through them the ancestress of the Yorkist kings, the Tudors, the Stuarts and every other British sovereign since – a prodigious legacy for any woman. Without her, the course of English history would have been very different.
Writing a biography of Katherine Swynford poses its own particular problems, however, for her voice has been silenced forever: no letter survives, no utterance of hers is recorded. None of her movable goods are extant, and we have barely any details of the clothes she wore, so we cannot determine her tastes in art, literature or dress. Her will is lost, and with it any insights it might give us into her feelings for John of Gaunt, her moral outlook, her family relationships or her charities. She is one of the most important women in late-fourteenth-century England, and yet so much about her is a mystery to us. She is famous but, paradoxically, she is little known.
Furthermore, the contemporary sources to support a biography of Katherine Swynford are meagre and fragmentary at best. She rates barely a mention in the chronicles of the period, and such references as there are usually reflect monastic prejudice against a woman who was regarded as ‘a she-devil and enchantress’. The best evidence for her life lies mainly in the dry entries in John of Gaunt’s Register, the Calendar of Patent Rolls, the Duchy of Lancaster Records in the National Archives, and the civic and clerical records of Lincoln, Leicester and other places. The rest is largely inference. Yet there is a wealth of evidence on which to base those inferences, as will be seen. There is monetary evidence, and archaeological evidence. Much remains of the many castles and manor houses owned by John of Gaunt, in which Katherine would often have resided, not the least of which is his magnificent range and great hall at Kenilworth, which she would have known well. Houses in which she herself lived for long periods – Kettlethorpe Hall in Lincolnshire, and the Chancery and the Priory in the close of Lincoln Cathedral – also survive in part. There is, in addition, much surviving documentation on John of Gaunt’s fabulous but long-lost Savoy Palace, so it is possible to place Katherine and her prince in the context of vividly recreated authentic settings.
So although there is a great deal that is not known about Katherine Swynford, and the tantalising glimpses of her that appear in the sources often raise more questions than they answer, there is enough to justify a long-overdue biography. This book therefore represents a quest to discover the truth about this most intriguing of royal ladies. It has led to the most fascinating historical investigation I have ever undertaken, affording unique opportunities for original research, which has encompassed delving into numerous contemporary sources (and in some cases having them retranslated), following up significant clues, sometimes into unexplored territory, examining the remains of the houses in which Katherine lived, interpreting intriguing allusions in stained glass and ancient manuscripts, and studying a wealth of pictorial evidence.
In drawing up a detailed chronological framework for Katherine’s life, then piecing together the myriad pieces of information I had gathered, and analysing them within the context of that framework, I have been surprised by the interesting revelations that have emerged, some of which challenge the received wisdom about my subject, or lend weight to existing theories. Time and again, I have been surprised at what I have been able to infer from my research. It is, above all, my hope that what will unfold in the pages that follow is a convincing and challenging portrayal of a most fascinating – but elusive – woman.
Alison Weir
Carshalton, Surrey
April 2007
IN MARCH 1378, putting aside ‘all shame of man and fear of God’, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the mightiest subject in the realm of England, was to be seen riding around his estates in Leicestershire ‘with his unspeakable concubine, a certain Katherine Swynford’. Not only was the Duke brazenly parading his beautiful mistress for everyone to see, but he was ‘holding her bridle in public’, a gesture that proclaimed to all his possession of her, for it implied that the rider thus led was a captive, in this case one who had surrendered her body, if not her heart. And as if this were not shocking enough, the fact that the Duke was flaunting his mistress ‘in the presence of his own wife’ created a scandal that would soon spread throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom and beyond. Even today, echoes of that furore still reverberate in the pages of history books.
John of Gaunt’s conduct in that long-distant spring led disapproving contemporaries to conclude that he had ‘made himself abominable in the eyes of God’, and that Katherine Swynford was ‘a witch and a whore’. Thus was born the legend of the ‘famous adulteress’, who occupies a unique place in English history. There can be no doubt that in her own lifetime, she was the subject of great scandal and notoriety, for she was closely linked to John of Gaunt for a quarter of a century before they married, and she had already known him for many years before he wed the desirable young wife who was so openly insulted on that tour of Leicestershire in 1378. Years later, after John’s wife had died and he married Katherine, controversy and criticism surrounded their union, for she was far below him in status, morally unacceptable and considered highly unsuitable in many respects. But she confounded her critics and gradually came to be tolerated and even respected.
Indeed, all the evidence suggests that Katherine Swynford was no lightly principled whore, which is what hostile chroniclers would have us believe; on the contrary, she was one of the most important female figures of the late fourteenth century, and more likely to have been a woman deserving of our admiration and esteem. Her partner in adultery – later her husband – was the son of King Edward III of England, and one of the epoch’s most famous and celebrated paragons. From her is descended every English monarch since 1461, and no fewer than five American presidents.
The truth about Katherine Swynford has been obscured by people down the centuries accepting at face value the calumnies that were written about her by a few disapproving contemporaries; and, too, by nearly every aspect of her story being shrouded in mystery, exaggerated by debate or simply obliterated by time. Nearly everything about her is controversial. When and where was she born? What did she look like? How many children did she bear? When did she become John of Gaunt’s mistress? What influence did she have? And what was the nature of their relationship over the years? Above all, did she really deserve all the moral opprobrium heaped upon her after her lover paraded her in public on that fateful spring day?
We will never know the whole truth about Katherine and John, for only echoes of their voices and their deeds have come down to us, but one thing is certain, and it shines forth from nearly every source: these two were lovers, and their love endured through prosperity and adversity, war and endless separations, time and distance. Love and destiny brought them together, sealing their fate and changing the course of English history itself. So this is, essentially, a love story.
KATHERINE SWYNFORD, THAT ‘famous adulteress’,1 was set on the path to notoriety, fame and a great love at the tender age of two or thereabouts, when she was placed in the household of Philippa of Hainault, wife to Edward III of England. This would have been around 1352, and Katherine’s disposition with the popular and maternal Philippa was almost certainly due to her father, Sir Paon de Roët, having rendered years of faithful service to the Queen and the royal family of Hainault.
Like her benefactress, Katherine was a Hainaulter. She was born Katherine de Roët, her surname being variously given as Rouet, Roëlt or Ruet, and pronounced ‘Roay’. The Roëts were a prominent family in Hainault, then an independent principality located in the western reaches of the Holy Roman Empire, bordering on the kingdom of France and occupying much of what is now Belgium. This fertile and prosperous county stretched from Liège and Brussels in the north to Lille and Valenciennes in the south, and contained other thriving cloth cities: Mons, Charleroi and Tournai; all provided a market for England’s raw wool, her chief export. Formed at the time of the division of Charlemagne’s empire in the ninth century, Hainault had been an imperial fief since 1071, and in the early fourteenth century it was ruled by the House of Avesnes, which had come to power in 1244.
Katherine possibly had noble or even royal connections through her mother, but claims that she was closely related through her father to the aristocratic lords of Roeulx cannot be substantiated. The Roeulx were a great and powerful Hainaulter family that could trace its descent from the ancient counts of Flanders and Hainault, who were themselves descended from the Emperor Charlemagne, and from England’s famous King Alfred. William the Conqueror had married a princess of that House, Matilda of Flanders, and by her was the founder of the ruling dynasties of England, the Norman and Plantagenet kings. Since the twelfth century, the lords of Roeulx had prospered mightily.2 Their landholdings centred mainly on the town of Le Roeulx, which lies eight miles north-east of Mons, but their name is also associated with Roux, forty miles east of Mons, and Fauroeulx, twenty miles to the south.
That Katherine shared a close kinship with the lords of Roeulx is doubtful on heraldic evidence alone – or the lack of it.3 Her family was relatively humble. The chronicler Jean Froissart, a native of Hainault, who appears to have been quite well informed on Katherine Swynford’s background, states that Jean de Roët, who died in 1305 and was the son of one Huon de Roët, was her grandfather. Neither bore a title. Yet it is possible that there was some blood tie with the Roeulx. Paon de Roët, the father of Katherine Swynford, whose name appears in English sources as Payn or Payne,4 and is pronounced ‘Pan’, was almost certainly baptised Gilles, a name borne by several members of the senior line of the Roeulx, which is one reason why some historians have linked him to this branch of the family.5 Of course, the similarity in surnames suggests a connection (in that period, the spellings of Roeulx and Roët could be, and were, interchangeable), as does the fact that both families are known to have had connections with the area around Mons and Le Roeulx. But discrepancies in arms would appear to indicate that Paon was at best a member of a junior branch of the House of Roeulx; all the same, it is possible that the royal blood of Charlemagne and Alfred the Great did indeed run in Katherine’s veins.
The arms of the town of Le Roeulx were a silver lion on a green field holding a wheel in its paw;6 this is a play on words, for ‘wheel’ in French is roue, which is similar to, and symbolic of, Roeulx. It was a theme adopted by Paon’s own family: his arms were three plain silver wheels on a field of red; they were not the spiked gold Katherine wheels later used by his daughter.7 On the evidence of heraldic emblems on the vestments given by her to Lincoln Cathedral, Katherine Swynford used not only her familiar device of Katherine wheels, which she adopted after 1396, but also her father’s device of three plain silver wheels.8
If Jean de Roët was his father, as seems likely, then Gilles alias Paon was born by 1305–6 at the very latest. Thus he did not marry and father children until comparatively late in life. The references in the Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut to ‘Gilles de Roët called Paon or Paonnet’ imply that the name Paon was almost certainly a nickname, although it was the name by which Gilles became customarily known, and it even appeared on his tomb memorial. In French, paon means ‘peacock’, which suggests that Paon was a vain man who liked dressing in brightly coloured, fashionable clothes, possibly in order to impress the ladies. However, in the form pion, it means ‘usher’,9 a term that may be descriptive of Paon’s duties at court.10
John of Gaunt’s epitaph states that Katherine came from ‘a knightly family’, and Paon’s knighthood is attested to by several sources,11 although we do not know when he received the accolade. In 1349, he is even referred to as a lord, and his daughter Elizabeth as ‘noble’,12 which reflects his landed status and probably his links to aristocratic blood. This is also evident in his ability to place his children with royalty,13 which suggests – in the case of his daughters at least – that there was the prospect of some inheritance that would ensure they made good marriages.14 We know Paon held land in Hainault, because in 1411, his grandson, Sir Thomas Swynford, Katherine’s son, was to pursue his claim to lands he had inherited there from his mother.15 Paon is unlikely, however, to have owned a large estate and was probably not a wealthy man16 since he was to rely heavily on royal patronage to provide for his children’s future.
Paon had first come to England in December 1327 in the train of Philippa of Hainault, who married the young King Edward III on 24 January 1328 in York Minster. Paon perhaps served as Philippa’s usher, and may have been present in that capacity at the royal wedding, which took place in the as yet unroofed minster in the midst of a snowstorm.
After Philippa’s nuptial celebrations had ended, nearly all her Hainaulter servants were sent home. Apart from a handful of ladies, only Paon de Roët and Walter de Mauney, her carving squire, are known to have been allowed to remain in her retinue,17 a mark of signal royal favour, which suggests that Paon was highly regarded by both the young King and Queen, and was perhaps a kinsman of Philippa, possibly through their shared ancestry.
That kinship may also have been established, or reinforced, through marriage. No one has as yet successfully identified Katherine’s mother, for the name of Paon’s wife is not recorded in contemporary documents. The slender evidence we have suggests he perhaps married more than once, that his first marriage took place before c.1335, and that his four known children, who were born over a period of about fifteen years or more, may have been two sets of half-siblings; in which case, Katherine was the child of a second wife, whom he possibly married in the mid–late 1340s. We know he maintained links with Hainault, probably through the good offices of Queen Philippa and other members of her House, so it may be that at least one of his wives was a Hainaulter.18
It is also possible that Katherine’s mother herself was related to the ruling family of Hainault,19 and while this theory cannot be proved, it is credible in many respects. If Paon was linked by marriage, as well as by blood, to Queen Philippa, that would further explain his continuing links with the House of Avesnes and the trust in which he and his family were held by the ruling families of England and Hainault. It would explain too why all his children received royal patronage and why Queen Philippa took such an interest in them; and it was possibly one reason why John of Gaunt may have felt it was appropriate to ultimately marry one of them.
But there is unlikely to have been a close blood tie.20 If Paon’s wife was related to the House of Avesnes, it must have been through a junior branch or connection. Had the kinship been closer, we would expect Paon to have enjoyed more prominence in the courts of England and Hainault. There have, of course, been other unsubstantiated theories as to who Katherine’s mother could have been,21 but this is the most convincing.
Whether Paon was related by marriage to Queen Philippa or not, he was evidently held in high regard by her, and he played his part in the early conflicts of the Hundred Years War, which broke out in 1340 after Edward III claimed the throne of France. For a time, Paon served Queen Philippa as Master of the House,22 and in 1332, there is a record of her giving money to ‘Panetto de Roët de Hanonia’;23 this is the earliest surviving reference to him. His lost epitaph in Old St Paul’s Cathedral describes him as Guienne King of Arms24 and it may have been through Philippa’s influence that he was appointed to this office in c.1334,25 Guienne being part of the Duchy of Aquitaine and a fief of the English Crown.
By the mid-1340s, Paon was back in Queen Philippa’s service as ‘one of the chevaliers of the noble and good Queen’.26 In 1346, he fought at Crécy under Edward III. That same year, ‘Sir Panetto de Roët’ was present at the siege of Calais, and in August 1347, he was Marshal of the Queen’s Household, and one of two of her knights – the other was Sir Walter de Mauney – who were assigned to conduct to her chamber the six burghers who had given themselves up as hostages after Calais fell to Edward III, and whose lives had been spared thanks to the Queen’s intercession.27
Philippa, however, never courted criticism by indiscriminately promoting her compatriots, and this may explain why Paon, although well thought of and loved by the Queen because he was her countryman,28 never came to greater prominence at the English court29 and why he eventually sought preferment elsewhere.
By 1349, the year the Black Death was decimating the population of England and much of Europe, Paon had apparently returned to Hainault. From that year onwards, there are several references to him in the contemporary Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut, the official record of service of the counts of Hainault.30 The first reference concerns a ‘noble adolescent, Elizabeth de Roët, daughter of my lord Gilles, called Paonnet, de Roët’, who, some time after 27 July 1349, was nominated as a prebendary, or honorary canoness (chanoinness),31 of the chapter of the Abbey of St Waudru in Mons by Queen Philippa’s elder sister, Margaret, sovereign Countess of Hainault and Empress of Germany. The choice of a convent in Mons, so close to the former Roeulx estates, reinforces the theory that Paon was connected to that family and that his lands were located in this area.
Girls were not normally accepted into the novitiate before the age of thirteen, so Elizabeth de Roët, who was described as being ‘adolescent’ at the time of her placement, was probably born around 1335–6 at the latest. St Waudru’s was a prestigious and influential abbey, and it was an honour for a girl to be so placed by the Countess Margaret; it further demonstrates the close ties between the Roëts and the ruling family of Hainault, and suggests yet again a familial link between them. It was unusual for the eldest girl of a gentle family to enter the cloister, but given the fact that Paon’s daughters were both to offer their own daughters as nuns, we might conclude that giving a female child to God was a Roët family custom.
Payn also had a son, Walter de Roët, who was possibly named after Sir Walter de Mauney,32 and who, in 1355–6, was in the service, in turn, of the Countess Margaret and her son, Duke Albert, and Edward III’s eldest son and heir, Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, popularly known to history as ‘the Black Prince’. As Walter was a Yeoman of the Chamber to the Prince in 1355, and probably fought under his command at Poitiers in 1356, he is likely to have been born around 1338–40 at the latest.
Between 1350 and 1352, there are seven references to Paon in the Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut. For example, on 11 May 1350, he is recorded as preparing to accompany the Countess Margaret’s sons, Duke Albert, Duke William and Duke Otto, on a pilgrimage to the church of St Martin at Sebourg near Valenciennes to make their devotions at the shrine of the twelfth-century hermit, St Druon. It was probably in that year that Paon’s famous daughter was born.
It was C. L. Kingsford, in his article on Katherine Swynford in the Dictionary of National Biography, who suggested that she was born in 1350. There is no contemporary record of her date of birth, but given that the minimum canonical age at which a girl could be married and have marital intercourse was twelve, and that Katherine probably married around 1362–3 and had her first child in c.1363–4, then a date of 1350 is feasible, although of course she could have been born a little earlier. The twenty-fifth of November is the feast day of St Katherine, so it is possible that Paon’s second daughter was named for the patron saint on whose anniversary she was born, and for whom she was to express great devotion and reverence.
In the Middle Ages, St Katherine of Alexandria was one of the most popular of female saints. Edward III and Philippa of Hainault had a special devotion to her; their accounts show that Katherine wheels, the symbol of her martydom, adorned counterpanes on the royal beds, jousting apparel and other garments. Like other English mediaeval queens, Philippa was patroness of the royal hospital of St Katherine-by-the-Tower in London, which had recently been rebuilt under her auspices, and with which Katherine Swynford herself would one day be associated.33
St Katherine had probably never even existed. There is no record of her in antiquity, and her cult did not emerge until the ninth century. She was said to have been of patrician or even royal birth, beautiful, rich, respected and learned. Her studies led her to convert to Christianity at a time when Christians were being persecuted in the Roman Empire, and she dared to publicly protest to the Emperor Maxentius (reigned ad 306–12) against the worship of pagan idols and the persecution itself. Maxentius was greatly impressed by her beauty and her courage in adhering to her convictions, and sent fifty of his sages and philosophers to reason with her. When they failed to demolish her arguments, he was so infuriated that he had them all burned alive. He then demanded that Katherine abjure her Christian faith and marry him, but she refused on the grounds that she was a bride of Christ. At this, the Emperor’s patience with her gave out, and she was beaten, imprisoned and sentenced to be broken on a spiked wheel that had its two halves rotating in different directions. But just as her agony was about to begin, an angel appeared and smote the wheel with a sword, breaking it in pieces. This miraculous intervention is said to have inspired the mass conversion of two thousand Roman soldiers, whereupon an even more enraged Maxentius had Katherine beheaded. Afterwards, other angels appeared and miraculously carried her remains to Mount Sinai, where a Greek Orthodox monastery was built to house her shrine. It should be noted that there are many variations on this fantastical tale.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the cult of St Katherine gained momentum. She was revered for her staunch faith, her courage and her blessed virginity, and was believed to have under her special protection young maidens, churchmen, philosophers, students, craftsmen, nurses and the dying. Numerous churches and bells were dedicated to her, and miracle plays were written about her. Her story, and her symbol of a wheel, appeared widely in art, mural paintings, manuscripts, ivory panels, stained glass, embroideries, vestments and heraldry.34 And many little girls were named in her honour, in the hope that they would emulate her manifold virtues.
That Katherine was Paon de Roët’s daughter is not in doubt. The chronicler Jean Froissart, himself a native of Hainault and a servant of Queen Philippa, may well have met Katherine – he certainly took an interest in her – and he states that she was ‘the daughter of a knight of Hainault called Sir Paon de Roët, in his day one of the knights of good Queen Philippa of England’.
Paon’s fourth child, Philippa,35 was probably so called in honour of the Queen, who may have been her godmother. It is often claimed that Philippa de Roët was placed in royal service in the household of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, by 1356, in which case she would have been born in the early 1340s at the latest. However, as will be proposed below, this claim is probably unfounded.
In 1631, John Weever36 asserted that Katherine was the oldest of Paon’s daughters, but this can hardly be the case, as that would make her at least twenty-eight when she married, middle-aged by mediaeval standards; but perhaps Weever knew nothing of Elizabeth de Roët, and had Katherine’s other sister Philippa in mind, in which case he was probably correct in saying that Katherine was the elder.
Philippa de Roët was certainly in the Queen’s service on 12 September 1366, and was married by then; she was therefore likely to have been born in the early 1350s, and was probably Katherine’s younger sister, as Weever implies, rather than the elder of the two, as is usually assumed.37 Thus Paon appears to have had two older children, Elizabeth and Walter, born between c.1335 and c.1340 at the latest, and two younger daughters, Katherine and Philippa, born around 1350 or later. The long gap between the births of Walter and Katherine suggests that Paon married twice and that each marriage produced two surviving children.
It is sometimes erroneously stated that Katherine Swynford was born in Picardy, France; this error has arisen from some historians confusing Philippa de Roët with a waiting woman of the Queen called Philippa Picard, but they were in fact two different people,38 so there was no Roët connection with Picardy. Froissart refers to Katherine as a Hainaulter, and in England she was regarded, by virtue of her birth and descent, as a stranger or alien, the chronicler Henry Knighton calling her ‘a certain foreign woman’. We may therefore conclude that she was born in Hainault, probably on her father’s lands near Mons. This being the case, the earliest possible date for her birth is 1349.
Katherine was born into a troubled world, and would not long remain in the country of her birth. In 1351, Paon was in the service of the Countess Margaret as the Knight Master of her household, in which capacity he seems to have been responsible for enforcing the observance of protocol.39 But Margaret’s position was by no means secure: in 1350, she had renounced her claims to Holland, Zeeland and Friesland in favour of her second son, William, in the hope of retaining Hainault for herself, but in the spring of 1351, William seized control of it. Several attempts at negotiation failed, and all four counties became embroiled in the conflict. When Margaret was forced to flee from Zeeland and take refuge in Hainault, her followers were exiled, their castles destroyed and their property and offices redistributed. Paon must have been caught up in this political maelstrom, and may temporarily have found himself faced with ruin.
In December 1351, hoping to enlist the support of Edward III, Margaret fled to England with her household, taking Paon with her.40 Given the uncertainty of any future in Hainault, he is likely to have brought with him his children, Walter, Katherine and possibly Philippa, and indeed his wife, if she was still alive. Elizabeth, of course, was left behind in her convent; it is doubtful if Katherine ever knew her elder sister.
A settlement was quickly reached between Margaret and her son, whereby Margaret was to keep Hainault, and early in 1352, William came to England to be married to King Edward’s cousin, Matilda (or Maud) of Lancaster. In March, when the Hainault royals returned home, Paon was with them,41 but after August 1352, he disappears from contemporary sources entirely. His date of death is nowhere recorded, and we know only that he was buried in Old St Paul’s Cathedral in London, where a memorial inscription to him was put in place after 1396. In 1631, in his Ancient Funerary Monuments, John Weever described Paon’s sepulchre, which was ‘in this cathedral church, and near unto Sir John Beauchamp’s tomb, upon a fair marble stone, inlaid all over with brass (of which nothing but the heads of a few brazen nails are at this day visible) and engraven with the representation and coat [of] arms of the party defunct. Thus much of a mangled funeral inscription was of late time perspicuous to be read, as followeth: Hic jacet Paganus Roët miles Guyenne Rex Armorum Pater Catherine Ducisse Lancastriae (‘Here lies Paon Roët, soldier, Guienne King of Arms, father of Catherine, Duchess of Lancaster’).
The likelihood is that Katherine herself commissioned this tomb and memorial for her father. Weever’s description suggests that the tomb was of great antiquity in 1631, and the use of Katherine’s title without anything to qualify it (such as ‘late Duchess’) implies that it was executed in her lifetime, which would date the tomb to the period 1396–1403. The question is, did Paon survive until then? It is just possible, but not at all probable in those days, that he lived well into his nineties, and witnessed Katherine’s ultimate triumph. What makes his survival improbable, though, is the complete absence of references to him in contemporary records after 1352, although of course he may have continued to serve the Countess Margaret until her death in 1356 and then retired to his modest holdings in Hainault. No Inquisition Post Mortem has been found for him,42 which suggests that he did not die in England. The most likely conclusion is that he died long before 1396, possibly even as early as 1352, but more probably in 1355, as is suggested below, that he was buried either in St Paul’s – which in itself would underline his importance and the honour and esteem in which he had been held by the royal families of England and Hainault – or elsewhere, and that after 1396, Katherine or John of Gaunt perhaps had his remains translated to St Paul’s, or simply placed a new memorial over his resting place, wanting his memory to be invested with her own greatness.43
When Paon left England in 1352, he probably took his teenaged son Walter back to Hainault with him and left his tiny daughters in the care of the kindly Queen Philippa. It was then customary for gently born children to be placed in noble households with patrons who could provide an appropriate education and advance their prospects of preferment and an advantageous marriage, but these little girls were mere infants at this time, both too small to serve the Queen in any way. Paon’s placing them with her so young suggests that they were already motherless, their mother perhaps having died in childbirth. The likelihood is that Philippa offered or agreed to make them her wards, educate them and find them husbands, and that a relieved Paon left them with her, secure in the knowledge that the Queen’s patronage would be to his daughters’ lasting benefit.
This early placement of Katherine de Roët in the Queen’s household is corroborated by Froissart’s statement that she was continuously brought up from her youth in princely courts, and by a reference in John of Gaunt’s Register to Katherine’s nurse, Agnes Bonsergeant, who doubtless was appointed by the Queen to care for her.