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Katherine Swynford

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Katherine Swynford
Duchess of Lancaster
Katherine's tomb[1]
SpouseHugh Swynford
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster
IssueThomas Swynford
Blanche Swynford
Margaret Swynford
John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset
Henry Beaufort, Cardinal
Thomas Beaufort, 1st Duke of Exeter
Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland
HouseHouse of Lancaster (by marriage)
FatherPayne de Roet

Katherine Swynford (also spelled Synford), née (de) Roet (also spelled (de) Rouet, (de) Roët, or (de) Roelt) (probably 25 November 1350 – 10 May 1403), was the daughter of Sir Payne (or Paen/Pain/Paon) (de) Roet (also spelled (de) Rouet, (de) Roët or (de) Roelt), a Flemish herald from Hainault.

Katherine became the third wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and their descendants were the Beaufort family, which played a major role in the Wars of the Roses. Henry VII, who became King of England in 1485, derived his claim to the throne from his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort, who was a great-granddaughter of Katherine Swynford.

Family

The children of Paganus Ruet (argued by modern-day genealogist Lindsay Brook and followed by author Weir[2] as "probably christened as Gilles") included Katherine, her sister Philippa, a son, Walter, and the eldest sister, Isabel (also called Elizabeth) de Roet (Canoness of the convent of St. Waudru's, Mons, c. 1366). Katherine is generally held to have been his youngest child. Weir[2] argues, based upon her review of limited fragmentary evidence, that Philippa was the junior and that both were children of a second marriage.

Paon de Ruet is found early, in a legal document, in the form Paganus de Rodio — referring to Rodium, the mediaeval Latin form corresponding to the Roeulx, or Le Rœulx, the name of a town of 3000 inhabitants, 8 miles north-east of Mons,on the highway leading from Mons to Nivelle. Paon de Ruet may have been impelled to seek his fortune in England by the recital of the exploits of Fastre de Ruet, who accompanied John of Beaumont in 1326, when, with three hundred followers, he went to assist the English against the Scots. Fastre was the younger brother of the last lord of Roeulx descended from the Counts of Hainault. He and his brother Eustace fell into pecuniary straits, and were obliged to alienate their landed possessions. Fastre died in 1331, and was buried in the abbey church of Roeulx, while his brother Eustace survived till 1336. Paon was, like Fastre, a younger brother — possibly of a collateral line.

As the king was in the North, a number of the Flemings returned home without proceeding further than London, but Paon de Ruet was one of those who remained in England in the retinue of Philippa of Hainault, accompanying the young queen in her departure from Valenciennes to join her youthful husband Edward III in England at the close of 1327. His name does not appear in the list of knights who accompanied the queen from Hainault, however, described by Froissart to be among additional knights referred to as 'pluissier jone esquier'. Speght (1598)[3] prefixed to his history a genealogical tree which began: 'Paganus de Rouet Hannoniensis, aliter dictus Guien Rex Armorum' describing de Ruet as Guienne King of Arms. Upon the coronation of Henry the Fifth (1413), Sir William Bruges held the same title in the fifth year of the King's reign (Edmondson 1. 104) and the same monarch was accompanied to France before Agincourt by a herald bearing that name (Wylie, Reign of Henry the Fifth 1. 493).

In 1347, Ruet was sent to the siege of Calais, and was one of two knights deputed by Queen Philippa to conduct out of town the citizens whom she had saved.

[Froissart, 5.215 : "Et au matin elle fist donner a casqun sys nobles [say, $150], et Ies fist conduire hors de l'oost par messire Sanse d'Aubrecicourt et messire Paon de Ruet, si avent que il vorrent, et que il fu avis as deus chevaliers que il estoient hors dou peril, et au departir il les commanderent a Dieu, et retournerent li chevalier en l'oost."] He had returned to the lands of Hainault, probably by 1349, and Katherine was born the following year.

Life

Katherine's birth date in 1350 is assumed to be 25 November, as that is the feast day of her patron, St. Catherine of Alexandria. The family returned to England in 1351, and it is likely that Katherine stayed there during her father's continued travels.

Katherine married in St Clement Danes Church, Strand, London in abt. 1366 to "Hugh" Ottes Swynford, a knight from the manor of Kettlethorpe in Lincolnshire, son of Thomas Swynford and Nicole Druel. Katherine was known to have borne the following children by him: Thomas (21 September 1368 – 1432), Blanche (born 1 May 1367), and possibly Margaret Swynford (born c. 1369), who was a nun nominated at the prestigious Barking Abbey by command of Richard II.

Katherine became attached to the household of John of Gaunt as governess to his daughters Philippa of Lancaster and Elizabeth of Lancaster. The ailing duchess Blanche had Katherine's daughter Blanche (her namesake) placed within her own daughters' chambers and afforded the same luxuries as her daughters; additionally, John of Gaunt stood as godfather to the child. Katherine's sister, Philippa, attached to Queen Philippa's household, married the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, whose poem The Book of the Duchess commemorated Blanche's death by plague in 1369. Speght (1598)[3] said of Philippa's marriage:'He [Chaucer] matched in marriage with a Knight's daughter of Henault, called Paon de Ruet, king of Armes,as by this draught appeareth,taken out of the office of the Heraldes.' M Speght's authority Stow (1592)[4] recorded: 'He [Chaucer] had to wife the daughter of Paine Roete alias Gwine [ed. 1631, Guian] king at armes, by whom he had issue Tho. Chaucer.'

Sometime after Blanche's 1369 death, but before the Duke's second marriage, Katherine and John of Gaunt consummated a romantic affair which would entail 4 children being born out of wedlock to the couple - but also long endure as a lifelong relationship. Two years after the death of the Duke's second wife, Infanta Constance of Castile, Katherine and John of Gaunt married on 13 January 1396 in Lincoln Cathedral. Records of their marriage in the Tower and elsewhere list: 'John of Ghaunt, Duke of Lancaster, married Katharine daughter of Guyon King of Armes in the time of K. Edward the 3, and Geffrey Chaucer her sister'. John and Katherine's four children had been given the surname "Beaufort" and were legitimized as adults by their parents' marriage with approval by King Richard and the Pope. Although legitimized, the Beauforts were barred from inheriting the throne by a clause in the legitimation act inserted by their half-brother, Henry IV, although modern scholarship has disputed the authority of a monarch to alter an existing parliamentary statute. This was later revoked by the later monarch Edward VI, placing Katherine's descendants back within the legitimate line of inheritance, although, in fact, the Tudor dynasty were direct descendants of John and Katherine's eldest child, John Beaufort.

Katherine Swynford's tomb in 1809

Katherine survived John by four years, dying on 10 May 1403. She was then dowager Duchess of Lancaster. Her tomb, and that of her daughter, Joan Beaufort, are under a carved-stone canopy in the sanctuary of Lincoln Cathedral. Joan's is the smaller of the two tombs; both were decorated with brass plates — full-length representations of them on the tops, and small shields bearing coats of arms around the sides and on the top — but those were damaged or destroyed in 1644 during the English Civil War. A hurried drawing by Dugdale records their appearance.

Also defaced in 1644, and removed of any precious or semi-precious metals, was the tomb of her father Paon de Ruet / Roet in St. Paul's, near Sir John Beauchamp's tomb (commonly called Duke Humphrey's). It was recorded that "Once a fair marble stone inlaid all over with brass, nothing but the heads of a few brazen nails are at this day visible, previously engraven with the representation and coat of arms of the party defunct, thus much of a mangled funeral inscription was of late times perspicuous to be read". It, along with the tombs of many others, including John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster's, were completely destroyed in the Great Fire of London. The former inscription regarding Paganus Roet (styled as 'Guinne','Guyenne', or 'Gwinne'the king at arms or master of arms, often shortened simply to the frank reference to 'armes' as 'Guiles'or 'Giles') was as follows: " Hic Jacet Paganus Roet Miles Guyenne Rex Armorum Pater Catherine Ducisse Lancastrie." By 1658, viewed without its brass plaquard and effigies, described by Dugdale as : "In australi ala, navi Ecclesue opposita (prope tumulum D. Johannis de Bellocampo), sub lapide marmoreo, jacet Paganus Roet, Rex Armorum tempore Regis Edwardi tertii".

Children and descendants

By Hugh Swynford:

  • Blanche Swynford (born 1 May 1363), named for the Duchess of Lancaster, and also a godchild of John of Gaunt.
  • Margaret Swynford (born c. 1364), became a nun at the prestigious Barking Abbey in 1377 with help from her future stepfather John of Gaunt, where she lived the religious life with her cousin Elizabeth Chaucer, daughter of the famous Geoffrey Chaucer and Katherine's sister Philippa de Roet.
  • ?Dorothy Swynford (born c. 1366). -- It should be noted that there are no contemporary references to any person so named at that time.
  • Thomas Swynford (24 February 1367–1432), born in Lincoln while his father Sir Hugh Swynford was away on a campaign with John of Gaunt in Castile fighting for Peter of Castile.

By John of Gaunt:

Coat of arms designed for Katherine Swynford: three gold Catherine wheels ("roet" means "little wheel" in Old French) on a red background.

The descendants of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt are significant in British history. Their son, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, was great-grandfather of Henry VII, who established the Tudor dynasty and based his claim to the throne on his mother's lineage to John of Gaunt's father, Edward III. John Beaufort also had a daughter named Joan Beaufort, who married King James I of Scotland and thus was an ancestress of the House of Stuart.[5] John and Katherine's daughter, Joan Beaufort, was grandmother of the English kings Edward IV and Richard III, whom Henry VII defeated at the Battle of Bosworth; Henry's claim was strengthened by marrying Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV. It was also through Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmoreland that the sixth queen of Henry VIII descended; Catherine Parr.[6] John of Gaunt's son — Katherine's stepson — became Henry IV after deposing Richard II (who was imprisoned and died in Pontefract Castle, where Katherine's son, Thomas Swynford, was constable and is said to have starved Richard to death for his stepbrother). John of Gaunt's daughter by his first marriage to Blanche of Lancaster, Philippa of Lancaster, was great-great-grandmother to Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII and mother of Mary I of England. Coincidentally, John of Gaunt's child by his second wife Constance, Catherine (or Catalina), was great-grandmother of Catherine of Aragon as well.

In literature

Katherine Swynford is the subject of Anya Seton's novel Katherine (published in 1954) and of Alison Weir's biography Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and his Scandalous Duchess (ISBN 0224063219). Swynford is also the subject of Jeannette Lucraft's historical biography Katherine Swynford: The History of a Medieval Mistress. This book seeks to establish Swynford as a powerful figure in the politics of fourteenth-century England and an example of a woman's ability to manipulate contemporary social mores for her own interests.

References and further reading

  1. ^ 1640 drawing of the tombs of Katherine Swynford and her daughter Joan Beaufort in Lincoln Cathedral before the tombs were despoiled in 1644 by the Roundheads
  2. ^ a b Weir, Alison (2007). Katherine Swynford: The story of John of Gaunt and his Scandalous Duchess. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0224063219.
  3. ^ a b Speght,M (1598). The life of Chaucer.
  4. ^ Stow (1592). Annales of England.
  5. ^ "About Katherine Swynford In Brief". Katherine Swynford Society. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
  6. ^ James, Susan. 'Catherine Parr: Henry VIII's Last Love.' 2009. pg 15.

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