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 around1352, 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, Roelt 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 Liege 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 in1244.
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. 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. 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, 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; 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.
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', a term that may be descriptive of Paon's duties at court.
John of Gaunt's epitaph states that Katherine came from 'a knightly family', and Paon's knighthood is attested to by several sources, 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', 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, 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. 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. Paon is unlikely, however, to have owned a large estate and was probably not a wealthy man 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, 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.
It is also possible that Katherine's mother herself was related to the ruling family of Hainault, 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. 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, but this is the most convincing.
Whether Paon was related by marriage to Queen Philippa or not, he was evidendy 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, and in 1332, there is a record of her giving money to 'Panetto de Roët de Hanonia'; this is the earliest surviving reference to him. His lost epitaph in Old St Paul's Cathedral describes him as Guienne King of Arms and it may have been through Philippa's influence that he was appointed to this office in c.1334, 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'. In 1346, he fought at Crecy 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.
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 court 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), 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, and who, in 1355 was in the service, in turn, of the Countess Margaret and her son, Duke Albert, and Edward Ill's eldest son and heir, Edward of Woodstock, Prince ofWales, 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.
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." 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, 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 Weever 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 deRoët, 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. 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, so there was no Roëtconnection 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. 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. 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, 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, JohnWeever 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: Hie jacet Paganus Roët miles Guyenne RexArmorum 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 13 96-1403. 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, 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.
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 J ohn of Gaunt's Register to Katherine's nurse, Agnes Bonsergeant, who doubtless was appointed by the Queen to care for her.
Early in 1355, we find Walter de Roët in the service of the Countess Margaret at Mons; by May, he was in England, having been appointed a Yeoman of the Chamber to the Black Prince, Queen Philippa's eldest son. We might infer from this that Paon had died early in 1355, and that the Countess at once sent Walter to Queen Philippa, who was caring for his sisters and who quickly arranged for him to join her son's household. Had the girls' mother still been alive in 1352, they would probably have returned to Hainault with their father, in which case there would have been no reason for the Countess Margaret to send all three children to England; she had, after all, placed their elder sister Elizabeth in a convent in Mons, and could surely have made provision for the three younger siblings herself. Thus the evidence suggests that their mother was dead by 1352, and that Katherine and Philippa were placed with the Queen that year and were already in England in 1355, when their father probably died. Thus Katherine would hardly have known her father, still less her mother.
Katherine and Philippa were fortunate indeed to be taken into the care of the motherly Philippa of Hainault, a 'full noble and good woman'‘4 who had borne twelve children of her own — the youngest, Thomas of Woodstock, had been born as recently as January1355 — and had undertaken the upbringing of several other nobly or royally born children. The Queen was now about forty-four, a tall, plump, kindly lady who was wonderfully generous, wise, 'gladsome, humbly pious' and greatly loved and respected.45 She was interested in education, art and literature, and her charities were legion. At the same time, she was inordinately fond of rich adornment—'blessed be the memory of King Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, his Queen, who first invented clothes', observed one chronicler caustically - and she maintained a large and very costly household. As a result, her income did not meet the demands made on it, which resulted in complaints in Parliament about her frequently getting into debt, and ultimately obliged the King to amalgamate her establishment with his own. Yet Philippa made a great contribution to the stability and success of the monarchy," with her genius for fostering a degree of family unity and closeness that was unique in the history of the Plantagenet dynasty. Her large brood all adored her, as did her husband the King (whose pet name for her was 'mine biddiny') and those children who were fortunate enough to be fostered by her. Jean Froissart, Philippa's countryman, called her 'the good Queen, that so many good deeds had done in her time, and so many knights succoured', and ladies and damsels comforted'.
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, 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 in1359, 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;47 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, 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 knighdy 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.
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. 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'.5' In prosecuting his claim to the French throne, the King had inflicted resounding defeats on England's ancient enemy at Sluys in 1340, Crecy 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'52 with the charms of other ladies, and there was even an unsubstantiated tale that he took what he wanted by force. 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 tides 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.
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.
All this was to change, however, just before Katherine was born. In 1348—9, the Black Death, a particularly virulent form of bubonic plague, scythed its way across Europe killing between two fifths and three quarters of the population. In his Decameron (1358),Giovanni Boccaccio described the dreaded symptoms: 'It first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or arm-pits, some of which grew as large as an apple, after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh.' Both the tumours and the spots were 'infallible tokens of approaching death' that could overtake the victim within hours. Spread by rats, 'the fearful mortality rolled on, following the course of the sun into every part of the kingdom', wrote the English chronicler Henry Knighton. Few souls remained untouched by it.
The Black Death left the world a very different place. Its impact was felt in every walk of life. Because it was seen as the judgement of God on a sinful universe, religious hysteria and fanaticism flourished and people began to question the old certainties of the universal faith preached by the Roman Catholic Church. Yet while acts of sacrilege became more commonplace, mysticism - with its emphasis on man's striving to attain unity with God — began to thrive, as people sought to find some meaning to the horrific mortality and a deeper understanding of the mysteries of faith. When Margery Kempe — an English mystic who was once the guest of Katherine's daughter, Joan Beaufort — had a vision of the suffering Christ 'all rent and torn with scourges, rivers of blood flowing out plenteously from every limb, she fell down and cried, twisting and turning her body amazingly, and could not keep herself from crying because of the fire of love that burned so fervently in her soul with pure pity and compassion'.
This obsession with death and suffering revealed itself in literature, poetry, art, and particularly in sculpture, with the appearance of cadaver tombs with an effigy of the deceased in life above, and another depicting his or her rotting corpse below — a grisly reminder of the end of all flesh. This was the cultural atmosphere in which the young Katherine spent her growing years.
Decomposing bodies must have been a common sight during the plague years, for often there was no one left alive to bury the dead. According to the Rochester chronicler, William Dene,'the plague carried off" so vast a multitude of people that nobody could be found who would bear the corpses to the grave. Men and women carried their dead children and threw them into the common burial pits, the stench from which was so appalling that scarcely anyone dared to walk beside them.' Sometimes there was no one to perform the funerary rites, since so many priests had died. Whole villages succumbed to the pestilence, and their buildings were left to decay and disappear. Law enforcement collapsed, and there was a sharp decline in public morality, as many poor mortals — aware that death was stalking them - made the most of the time that was left to them, committing theft, murder and fornication unchecked by State or Church.
Never again would the social hierarchy be as stable. In the years following the Black Death, it became clear that feudalism was crumbling. A severe shortage of manpower on the manors and farms meant that the services of the remaining peasants were in high demand by the landed classes, and that they could demand good wages for those services. This sounded the death-knell of feudalism, for no man wanted to remain in bond to his lord when he could benefit from the free market the plague had created, and lords would find they had little choice but to release their serfs from villeinage and pay for their services, knowing they would otherwise just abscond and sell their labour elsewhere. In England, Parliament intervened to reverse this trend, passing in 1351 the Statute of Labourers, which tried to impose maximum wages and minimum prices. 'Many workmen and servants,' it complained, 'will not serve unless they receive excessive wages, and some are rather willing to beg in idleness than labour to get their living.' Hence every villein 'shall serve the master requiring him or her'. But it was too late: the tide of change had turned too far, and the law proved unenforceable. 'The world goeth from bad to worse,' grumbled the poet John Gower in 1375. 'Labour is now at so high a price that he who will order his business aright must pay five or six shillings now for what cost two in former times.' The late fourteenth century witnessed the emergence of the hired hand and the yeoman farmer who owned his own land. Of course, this process of change did not happen overnight, but it was prevalent throughout Katherine Swynford's lifetime and beyond.
As capitalism gradually replaced feudalism, trade expanded and the middle classes came to enjoy ever greater prosperity and influence. Katherine's own sister married into a rich merchant family, and that sister's son rose to great political and social prominence, while her granddaughter became a duchess. In Parliament, founded in the thirteenth century in the aftermath of the wars between Crown and barons, the Commons increasingly made their voices heard, much to the dismay of conservative lords like John of Gaunt, who were determined to resist the relentless changes brought about by the new social order.
Katherine lived in an England that was largely rural, with a population of perhaps three million souls and an economy based on farming, wool and overseas trade. It was not an industrial society — that came centuries later — and most people lived in tight communities in villages or on manors, in crude wattle-and-daub cottages. Katherine herself spent many years as a lady of the manor, responsible for a farming community. Commerce was centred upon the towns, which were far smaller than they are today: London housed around 23,000 inhabitants in 1377, although it boasted a hundred churches. Even York, the second most important city and the virtual capital of the North, had a population of only 7,500 at most. Towns were where prosperous burgesses lived, and guilds of craftsmen controlled trade, but they were often crowded and dirty, with buildings and people crammed into narrow streets with over-jutting upper storeys within walls that prevented expansion. In 1419, the City of London authorities ordered that each citizen 'shall make clean of filth the front of his house under penalty of half a mark' GC73) and that 'no one shall throw dung into the King's highway or before the house of his neighbour'. In an age of poor sanitation, in which people relied on horses as the fastest and most efficient form of travel, the nuisance of dung and human waste was an ever-recurring concern.
In the towns, one could find all kinds of commodities on sale in the shops. When the poet John Lydgate walked through London in the early fifteenth century, he was offered 'hot peascods [peas in the pod] and sheep's feet, strawberries ripe', spices, pepper, velvet, silk, lawn, mackerel, green rushes to strew on the floor, a hood,'ribs of beef and many a pie', pewter pots, harps, pipes and plenty of 'stolen goods'. It was hardly surprising that towns and cities needed to expand, and with the country largely at peace, suburbs were beginning to emerge, as people built houses beyond the safety of the walls, with gardens and orchards. Katherine Swynford had strong links with the important city of Lincoln — population 3,400 — and was fortunate enough to rent, at different times, two very imposing houses in its exclusive cathedral close.
Outside the towns and cities, the countryside was quiet and peaceful. The land was mostly fertile, but farming was still based on the three-field system, with crops being rotated and one field being left fallow each year. Farm animals were regularly slaughtered in the autumn, and their meat salted down or smoked for winter consumption. Any surplus farm produce was sold locally or taken to the markets held regularly, by royal charter, in the cities and towns.
'The riches of England,' wrote an Italian traveller in the fifteenth century, 'are greater than those of any other country in Europe. This is owing in the first place to the great fertility of the soil, which is such that, with the exception of wine, they import nothing from abroad for their subsistence.' Other foreigners waxed lyrical about the beauty of rural England, its lush green pastures, rolling hills and pretty stone or timbered dwellings, its towering castles and moated manor houses. The contents of a well-set-up knightly household — as listed in a will of 1410 — might comprise a canopied — or 'tester' — bed, covers, blankets, linens, coverlets, mattresses, painted cloths, rugs, napkins, towels, washbasins, candelabra of bronze, marble and silver-gilt, bronze pots and pans, twelve silver spoons, spits, poles, iron pots, vessels of silver-gilt and lead for beer, silver-gilt salt cellars, three iron braziers, trestles and boards for tables'. Furniture itself was sparse, and might also have included cupboards, buffets and stools. These are the kind of household goods that Katherine Swynford would have owned for much of her married life.
England was known as 'the ringing isle' because of the constant pealing of bells from numerous parish churches and abbeys. In the cities, the spires of the great cathedrals soared heavenwards, drawing the focus of humanity towards God, who was an ever-constant presence in people's lives.
The power and influence of the mediaeval Church was all-encompassing. Today, in our materialistic and secular society, it is hard for us to comprehend how large a part religion played in the lives of mediaeval men and women. Religion underpinned all aspects of political life. The sacraments of the Church marked every human rite of passage from birth to death. The rituals of the Mass and the divine offices set the timetable for daily life. Holidays were the holy days of the Church, the great feasts of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, and numerous saints' days or feast days. If people made long journeys — which was not always easy, as the roads were generally poor and often badly maintained — it was usually to go on pilgrimage to the many saints' shrines to be found in England, such as St Thomas of Canterbury or Our Lady ofWalsingham; a few even got as far as Rome, Compostela or Jerusalem. 'People long to go on pilgrimages, and palmers long to seek the stranger strands of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,' observed Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales.
A good Christian was expected to go to confession at least three times a year, and would regularly pray to the Virgin Mary or to his or her favourite saints to intercede on his behalf with a stern, loving but sometimes vengeful deity; people talked about the saints as familiarly as if they were members of their own circle. The Church was also the final arbiter of public morals, and contravening its doctrines or decrees could lead to charges of heresy, for heresy was interpreted as anything that deviated from, or challenged, the divinely appointed order of Christendom and the tenets of the Roman Church.
Mediaeval English churches were much more colourful places than they appear today, since much of their decoration, stained glass and statuary was destroyed during the Reformation of the sixteenth century. In Katherine's day, brilliant paintings adorned the walls, ceilings and pillars in churches, put there to instruct a largely illiterate populace in biblical stories or the lives of the saints; and such visual aids to spiritual understanding were often necessary, since all services were conducted in Latin, the language of the universal Church. Many churches had a doom painting, depicting Christ in majesty judging souls and sending the righteous to Heaven and the sinful to Hell, the latter being depicted in stark, gruesome detail in order to bring the wicked to repentance. Besides paintings, there were statues of the saints as aids to devotion, and invariably a rood, a large wooden carving of Christ on the Cross, which was hung high on a screen at the entrance to the chancel.
Many men and women, including Katherine's sister and daughter, devoted their lives to God. They entered the priesthood, or withdrew from the world into monasteries or convents, where they carried out the Opus Dei, the work of the Lord, through prayer, manual labour and the preservation of written knowledge and works of faith, history and literature in illuminated manuscripts.
The religious houses, of which there were nearly seven hundred in England, also provided practical services for the community at large: they ran schools, hospitals or infirmaries, and guest houses for travellers. They offered work for lay people. They succoured the aged, the infirm and the destitute, providing food and shelter for beggars and the homeless. Wealthy people with pious aspirations would endow abbeys and priories with money, annuities and gifts, or found chantries or colleges of priests, so that their souls could be prayed for after death, and their passage through Purgatory, that hellish preparation for Heaven in which venial sins were expurgated, could be eased. Katherine Swynford lies today in the chantry chapel that was founded for the salvation of her soul.
Of course, many of the Church's practices were open to abuse. The sale of indulgences for the forgiveness of sins, the worldly luxury of many clergy and religious houses, the perceived immorality of those in holy orders - all were commonplaces of fourteenth-century life, and the focus of increasing concern on the part of a growing number of radical freethinkers. The poet William Langland, in The Vision of Piers Plowman (c.1376) wrote of hermits on their way to Walsingham 'with their wenches following after', friars 'preaching to the people for what they could get, interpreting the Scriptures to suit themselves and their patrons', doctors of divinity 'dressing as handsomely as they please, now that Charity has gone into business', priests who sought to 'traffic in masses and chime their voices to the sweet jingling of silver', pardoners 'claiming to have power to absolve all the people from vows of every kind', and bishops who shut their ears to what was going on around them. Above all, the 'Babylonish captivity' of the Papacy from 1309 at 'the sinful city of Avignon', a papacy that was in thrall to the powerful kings of France, brought the Roman Catholic Church into disrepute throughout Christendom and weakened its moral authority. Not for nothing has John Wycliffe — a courageous and highly controversial priest who spoke out against the corruption in the Church and who enjoyed John of Gaunt's patronage — been called 'the morning star of the Reformation'.
Alongside the Church, the State, in the form of the King, the lords in council, Parliament and the administration, governed the lives of the population. The King, whose sovereignty had the almost supernatural authority of a crowned priest, was responsible for maintaining the peace of his realm, for defending it from invasion, and for administering justice to all in the form of good laws.
In the fourteenth century, England was ruled by the Plantagenets, a dynasty of generally vigorous and able monarchs who had kept a largely unbroken grip on their realm since 1154, when the dynamic Henry II had succeeded to the throne. The name Plantagenet derives from the nickname given to Henry II's father, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, who habitually wore a broom flower - planta genista — in his hat. The name was not actually used as a royal surname until the fifteenth century.
Henry II had married Eleanor of Aquitaine, the greatest heiress in Europe, and through her had acquired the rich Duchy of Aquitaine and the County of Poitou; he already held the Duchy of Normandy, which he had inherited from his great-grandfather, William the Conqueror, who had established his Norman dynasty in England in 1066; and he was Count of Anjou, which he had inherited from his father. Thus he was master of all the land from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees. But Henry's great empire did not long survive him. The ineptitude of his son, King John, and the aggressive determination of successive French monarchs to gain control of the Plantagenet dominions, resulted in the loss of Normandy and Anjou, and by the fourteenth century, England's territory in France consisted of a couple of northern towns and a much-reduced Duchy of Aquitaine that centred largely upon Bordeaux, Gascony and parts of the Dordogne region.
As we will see, it was Edward III, who succeeded to the throne in 1327 and to whose court Katherine came nearly thirty years later, who had the audacity to claim the throne of France itself, which he insisted was his in right of his mother, Isabella, the sister of the last surviving kings of the House of Capet. But the French had no desire to see an Englishman on their throne, for England and France had long been traditional enemies, and they chose a member of the royal House of Valois as their monarch. Thus began a war that famously was to last for a hundred years, a war that would have a profound effect, not only in western Europe, but also on the life of Katherine Swynford herself.
By May 1355, as has been noted, Katherine's brother, Walter de Roët, had joined the Black Prince's household as a yeoman of the Chamber. This was a brilliant opportunity for a young man, as the Prince enjoyed an international reputation as a chivalric hero and warrior that was second to none. He was 'the comfort of England', 'the flower of chivalry of all the world', and 'for as long as he lived and flourished, his good fortune in battle, like that of a second Hector, was feared by all races'. Already, at twenty-five, he was a legend.
Born in 1330, the sixteen-year-old Edward of Woodstock had won his spurs in 1346 at the Battle of Crecy, in which he 'magnificently performed' astounding feats of arms. He was 'fair, lusty and well-formed', brave, intelligent, charismatic and inspirational. His sixteenth-century nickname - it is not known to have been used earlier - probably derived from the black armour he is said to have worn, but it could equally well have described his vicious and much-feared temper. He could be — it has to be said - impatient, arrogant, and capable of great cruelty.
The Prince's household provided an environment in which any aspiring young man would have been gratified to be placed. He spent lavishly on his residences, notably his palace at Kennington in Surrey, and lived in great splendour and luxury. He loved tournaments, hunting, gambling and women, and fathered at least four bastards. His admiring contemporaries, whose priorities were those of the fourteenth century and not the twenty-first, regarded him as the epitome of knighthood.
Before 9 May 1355, the Black Prince arranged for two of his retainers, Walter de Roët and Sir Eustace d'Aubrecicourt, to deliver letters to his aunt, the Countess Margaret, in Hainault, and to one of her clerks, Stephen Maulyons, provost of the church of Mons. Maulyons owed the Prince £40,but Edward ordered him to divide it equally and pay it 'as a gift' to Walter and Sir Eustace; £10 was a munificent sum - today it would be worth ,£7,800 - so Walter was clearly highly regarded by his employer. The Prince gave Walter forty shillings (about £780) for his travelling expenses on10 May, so either a long trip was anticipated — you could never be sure how long a Channel crossing might take — or Walter was to travel in some comfort. By September, Walter had returned from his mission, for that month he accompanied the Black Prince, now King's Lieutenant in Aquitaine, on a military expedition to the Duchy, and he may well have fought under the Prince in 1356 when Edward won a great victory over the French at the Battle of Poitiers and captured John II, King of France himself, thus further enhancing his dazzling reputation. It is possible that Walter was killed at Poitiers, because no more is heard of him. In 1411, Katherine's son, Sir Thomas Swynford, laid claim to lands in Hainault that he had inherited from his mother on her death in 1403; had Walter de Roët been alive in 1403, those lands would have passed to him, not to the heirs of his sisters.
It is often claimed that Philippa de Roët was placed by the Queen in the household of her daughter-in-law, the Countess of Ulster, around August 1355. Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Ulster in her own right and a former ward of the Queen, was then twenty-three, and had been married to the King's second surviving son, the blond giant Lionel of Antwerp, since 1342, he taking the title Earl of Ulster in her right. There was indeed a girl called Philippa in the Countess's service at this time, and she had perhaps been engaged to help care for her mistress's first and only child, yet another Philippa, who was born on 16 August 1355 at Eltham Palace in Kent. This girl's name was Philippa Pan.
For a long while, historians did entertain doubts as to whether Philippa Pan was Philippa de Roët. These doubts arose from the use of the abbreviated name 'Philippa Pan.' in the fragmentary accounts that survive for the Countess's household. On 24 July 1356, a payment was made for the making of trimmings for the clothes of 'Philippa Pan.'; the following year, the Countess paid 2s.6d (£37) 'for the fashioning of one tunic' for her, and in December 1357, gave a serving boy 12d (£15) to escort Philippa Pan. from a place called 'Pullesdone' to Hatfield in Yorkshire, where Earl Lionel and his wife were to keep Christmas. In April 1358, the Countess Elizabeth presented Philippa Pan with a bodice and some furs to wear at the great feast given to mark St George's Day. This is the last mention of Philippa Pan in the accounts, which come to an abrupt end in November1359.
In recent years, several historians have subscribed to the theory that Pan. stands for 'Philippa, Paon de Roët's daughter', or 'Philippa, Panetto's daughter', Panetto being the name by which Paon de Roët was familiarly known at court; this theory seems rather far-fetched and contrived, especially since the Christian names of women in royal households were almost invariably accompanied by their surnames in accounts, registers and official documents. So the 'evidence' connecting Philippa Pan with the Roëts is slender indeed.
Who was she, then? It was at one time thought that Pan was short for panetaria, or Mistress of the Pantry, but it was virtually unheard of for such a post to be held by a woman, and there is no other instance of the word panetaria being thus abbreviated. Besides, a woman serving as Mistress of the Pantry would never be provided with fun by her mistress.
Pan. is probably an abbreviation for a surname, and the most convincing theory is that this Philippa was the daughter or kinswoman of a London mercer, William de la Panetrie (who died between 1349 and 1367), who lived in Soper Lane at the east end of Cheapside, in the parish of St Pancras.The Panetries were acquainted with the prosperous Chaucer family, who lived nearby in Thames Street in the Vintry Ward, and who had managed to place a son in the Countess Elizabeth's household; this son was a highly gifted youth who was not only to become famous in his own right, but would also play an important part in the lives of Philippa de Roët and Katherine Swynfbrd. His name was Geoffrey Chaucer, he had been born probably between 1339 and 1346, and he is renowned today as one of the greatest English poets who ever lived. Finding Philippa Pan in the same household as Geoffrey Chaucer lends weight to the theory that she was a Panetrie by birth, and that she had perhaps obtained her place by recommendation. As for her link with 'Pullesdone' — a place that cannot conclusively be identified — she could have been performing an official errand for her mistress, visiting relatives prior to Christmas, or accompanying a family member on business there; London merchants had far-flung interests.
Geoffrey Chaucer was the son of a rich and influential London vintner, and he is first recorded as a page in the household of the Countess Elizabeth on 4 April 1357, when she purchased shoes, black and red breeches and one of those short, revealing jackets called a 'paltock' (to which hose and sleeves could be attached) for 'Galfridus Chaucer' of London. The following month, she gave him two shillings (£30). He is last mentioned in these accounts in December, when he was present at the Christmas gathering at Hatfield and received a grant of 3s.6d (£52) for necessities.
From 1357 to 1359, Chaucer appears to have served Lionel of Antwerp, possibly as a page. In 1359, having received arms and become a squire — he was never knighted — he served in Edward Ill's army against the French, and was captured at the siege of Rheims.The King himself paid his considerable ransom of £16 (£5,489) — which must demonstrate the high regard in which he was already held by the royal family — and he was freed by October 1360, when he brought a letter to England from Lionel of Antwerp, who was at that time in Calais. Chaucer then disappears from the historical record for six years. There has been much learned speculation about what happened to him during this period: that he was perhaps studying at Oxford (as his son Lewis later did) or Cambridge, or at the Inner Temple, a theory suggested by his signing himself 'attorney' in the 1390s— his writings reveal that he had a good knowledge of the law. Chaucer may have transferred to John of Gaunt's household, although there is no record of this, yet he was certainly on familiar terms with John of Gaunt by 1368, and John did later award him a life annuity. What is likeliest is that when Lionel of Antwerp went to Ireland to serve as the King's Lieutenant there in September 1361, taking his wife and daughter with him, Geoffrey Chaucer went with them. Lionel was created Duke of Clarence in 1362. Tragically, Elizabeth de Burgh died in Dublin on 10 December1363.
Geoffrey Chaucer possibly returned to England in 1364, perhaps as a member of the party who were escorting little Philippa of Clarence to her grandmother's household, where she would be brought up. It may have been on his return that he entered upon a period of study at university or the Inns of Court. It is possible too that he was sponsored by a member of the royal family, possibly John of Gaunt, who is known to have maintained several students at Oxford.67
So if Philippa de Roët was not the Philippa Pan recorded in the Countess of Ulster's household in 1356-8, where was she? The likeliest place was the Queen's own household, and the probability is that she was brought up there with her sister; by 1366, she had been appointed a damoiselle of the Queen's Chamber, where her duties would increasingly have involved nursing her ailing mistress: after a riding accident in 1360, in which she possibly suffered internal injuries that were never treated, Queen Philippa's health declined, and her enforced immobility caused her legs to swell, which her contemporaries diagnosed as 'dropsy'.
By 1366, Katherine de Roët had left the Queen's household; it may have been as early as 1360 that she was placed by Philippa in the chamber of the latter's daughter-in-law, Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, Katherine's former playmate, now the wife of John of Gaunt. And within two to three years of joining the Duchess's establishment, Katherine was probably married to Sir Hugh Swynford, one of John of Gaunt's knights.