At the beginning of June 1381, as John of Gaunt lay at Knaresborough, an army of yeomen and peasants was amassing in Kent and Essex, bent on the overthrow of a government that had imposed the cruelly oppressive poll tax and forced restrictive wage and price controls on labouring men whose services were in high demand after the depredations of the Black Death. The rebels had chosen for their leader — their 'idol', it was said — a man called Wat Tyler, and for their spokesmen one Jack Straw and an excommunicate priest, John Ball, who was going about the country preaching inflammatory and subversive sermons calling for the abolition of serfdom1 and posing the question:
When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?
On 10 June, the insurgents occupied Canterbury, then began their march on London, new recruits swelling their forces along the way, until they were at least fifty thousand strong. It was as well that the chief object of their venom, the Duke of Lancaster, was by then nearing Berwick, because it was he, above all, whom they were determined to destroy -for was he not the most powerful man in the realm, and therefore the man responsible for all the woes that had befallen it? Therefore, as soon as they reached the eastern approaches of the City of London, and set up their camp at Blackheath on 12 June, the rebel leaders sent a petition to Richard II demanding the heads of men they deemed traitors. John of Gaunt's name was at the top of the list.
We do not know where Katherine was at this time. If she had indeed travelled north with John, parted from him at Leicester around 20 May and then ridden home to Kettlethorpe, she would surely have heard by now of the march of the people, because there were associated risings in other parts of the country, including East Anglia. Katherine was no fool: she realised that her notorious relationship with the Duke made her especially vulnerable, and that her very life might be in danger - a fear that was to be proved justified in the coming days. So, the author of the Anonimalle Chronicle tells us, she 'went into hiding where no one knew where to find her for a long time', no doubt taking her children with her; given that she had with her a new baby, she probably felt especially vulnerable. Philippa of Lancaster may have gone with them, for there is no record of Philippa's wherabouts during the coming crisis, and Katherine was responsible for her.4
It is unlikely that Katherine went to Kettlethorpe or Lincoln, for she was too well-known in those places and could easily be found. Nor would it have been wise to go to any of the Duke's properties in the threatened areas, and she was almost certainly not at the Savoy. It is possible, but not probable, that she sought refuge at Wesenham Place, a house in King's Lynn that the Duke gave her at some unspecified date, for John Spanye, a cobbler of King's Lynn, was ranting round the area, inciting the people to slaughter the unpopular Flemish weavers who had for decades been settledin East Anglia. Of course, Katherine was a Hainaulter, not a Fleming, but an ignorant mob would not have made such a fine distinction; to them, she was a foreigner, the mistress of the most detested man in the land, and thus an object of hatred. It is feasible, of course, that Katherine sought refuge in a convent, the traditional place of safety for women, but — as will be seen - there is some reason to believe that she hid herself away in Pontefract Castle, that great Lancastrian stronghold in Yorkshire, and sent word to the Duke of her whereabouts.
Meanwhile, as the 'savage hordes approached the City like waves of sea', the young King's councillors had panicked and taken refuge with him in the Tower. When, on Thursday 13 June, Richard II failed to respond to their demands, the rebels lost patience and 'with cruel eagerness for the slaughter' surged across London Bridge into the City, where, reinforced by hundreds of sympathetic Londoners and hot-headed apprentices, they embarked on a frenzy of destruction and bloodletting. 'Burn! Kill!' was their chilling cry.8
They opened the prisons, torched houses and brothels, and broke into Lambeth Palace, which they fired, and the Temple, where they destroyed valuable documents. Flooding into the Strand in the afternoon, they saw before them the great edifice of the Savoy, white and beautiful against the summer sky. In that moment, the wondrous palace was doomed, for to the insurgents it represented all that was hateful to them: the power of the despised Duke of Lancaster, the authority of feudal lordship, and the wealth of the landed classes.
Into the Savoy surged the mob, thirty thousand strong, their righteous purpose to destroy rather than loot. 'They made proclamation that none, on pain to lose his head, should convert to his own use anything that there was, but that they should break such as was found.' They killed the guards at the gates, then poured into the cellars, where they smashed the great casks of fine wines, and watched in glee as the gold and ruby liquid spilled over the flagstones. 'We are not thieves and robbers, we are true commons, zealots for truth and justice!' the people cried. Then they raced upstairs to the Duke's treasury, whence they dragged a wealth of gold and silver plate. This they battered with axes, before hauling the lot out to the terrace and hurling it into the Thames. The jewels and precious stones they ground in mortars or underfoot, and their residue also went into the river.
Some were raiding the ducal wardrobe, pulling out elegant garments of cloth of gold, and armour; an expensive quilted jack (a protective garment worn under a breastplate) belonging to John of Gaunt was set up as a target for arrows, in the absence of its owner, and then hacked to pieces. 'We will have no king named John!' trumpeted 'the yokel band'. Others were ripping tapestries, cushions, napery, rich silk hangings and illuminated manuscripts, or chopping up fine furniture. All were carried to the great hall and heaped in a pile, which was then set alight. Soon the blaze had taken hold, and the palace was engulfed in flames. The conflagration was complete when three barrels of gunpowder stored in the cellars — and thought by the rebels to contain gold and silver — were hurled into the fire and exploded. One fool was cast alive into the inferno by his furious companions 'because he minded to have reserved one piece of plate for himself', and in the cellars below, thirty-two of his fellows, drunk and carousing on the Duke's wine, were trapped when the roof caved in, and slowly perished: their 'cries and lamentations' could be heard by curious citizens 'for seven days afterwards'.0 In the end, all that was left of the great Savoy was a pile of charred masonry, lead and ashes: all had been utterly destroyed.
Meanwhile, north of London, a yeoman band was ransacking Hertford Castle; elsewhere in the Lancastrian domains there were attacks on John of Gaunt's servants and property," and in Essex, one of his unfortunate squires was beheaded. At Leicester, the terrified keeper of the wardrobe loaded the Duke's clothes and treasures onto five carts and demanded that the Abbot of Leicester take them into safekeeping, but the Abbot, also 'in great fear', flatly refused, so the keeper was obliged to store his hoard in the churchyard of St Mary's Church in the Newarke. Men who wore
Lancastrian livery badges prudently tore them off and made themselves scarce. There can be no doubt that had the Duke himself fallen into the hands of the insurgents, he would have met with a violent end.
In the midst of the chaos, and with the sky red with the glow from the burning Savoy, the fourteen-year-old King's courage shone clear. He would meet with the rebels, he said, and parley with them. On 14 June, he rode forth to Mile End and fearlessly faced Wat Tyler, who petitioned the King for the abolition of serfdom and the right to deal with traitors — there was no mistaking whom he meant. Richard agreed to all his demands, but as this meeting was taking place, the mob was still running riot in London. This time, their target was the Flemish merchant community, resented as aliens, and for the commercial privileges they enjoyed and the wealth they had amassed. The rebels brutally dragged thirty-five of these unfortunate wretches out of St Martin's Church in Vintry and systematically beheaded them in the street;'3 over a hundred more were hunted down and lynched, and that, surely, would have been the fate of Katherine Swynford, had the malcontents found her in London; she also was a foreigner hailing from the Low Countries, and the rebels had far more cause to butcher her: if the head of John of Gaunt was among the foremost of their demands, that of his mistress would have been forfeit too.
Chaucer clearly perceived the danger that threatened his wife and her sister. Not only were they aliens, but they both were also closely connected with the Duke. Chaucer does not make many political references in his poems, but in 'The Nun's Priest's Tale', written perhaps a decade later, he reveals how personally affected he was by the Peasants' Revolt:
So hideous was the noise, a benedicite [bless us]! Certes he, Jack Straw, and all his meinie [retinue], Ne made never shouts half so shrill When that they would any Fleming kill.
It sounds as if Chaucer had heard those chilling yells himself.
The mob also breached the Tower's defences and ransacked the armoury. Some burst into the Princess Joan's chamber, where — as they tore her bed-hangings apart - one man made so bold as to snatch a kiss from her. The shock (whether of the attack or the kiss is uncertain) was so great that she fainted. Fourteen-year-old Henry of Derby, John of Gaunt's heir, was smuggled out of the Tower in the nick of time, but old Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not so lucky: he was seized whilst at prayer in St John's Chapel in the White Tower, dragged outside to Tower Hill and there horrifically decapitated, it needing eight blows to sever his head. Sir Robert Hales, the Lord Treasurer, and John of Gaunt's physician, Brother William Appleton, suffered a similar fate.
The next day, 15 June, Richard II again met with the rebels, this time at Smithfield, and again - 'saving only the legality of his crown' - agreed to all their demands, including one for a new version of Magna Carta. But while he was speaking with Wat Tyler, Sir William Walworth, the hardline Lord Mayor of London, appalled at the familiarity with which the peasant leader was treating the King - calling him 'brother' and staying in the saddle drinking ale when he should have been kneeling — tried to arrest Tyler. Tyler retaliated by drawing his dagger, whereupon Walworth fatally stabbed him. Seeing their leader cut down, Tyler's followers were ready to erupt in outrage, but the young King — with great presence of mind — stayed them, raising his hand and declaring, 'I will be your leader! You shall have no captain but me!' Promising them all parchments confirming that they would be made free men, he persuaded the rebels to disperse peacefully, which they did, believing that all they had asked for had been granted.
How wrong they were. Walworth immediately rode off to raise an army. The Council, scared out of its wits at the demonstrations that had just taken place, was determined to crush any moves to change the old order. There were to be no parchments, just summary justice and bloody reprisals — two hundred were hanged. 'Serfs ye are, and serfs ye will remain,' the young King now said, forgetting his promises. By the end of June, the 'great mischief, as Froissart called it, had been decisively crushed. The only good thing to come out of it, as far as John of Gaunt was concerned, was a degree of public sympathy and outrage ignited by the wanton destruction of his property.
By 19 June, news of the Peasants' Revolt and the destruction of the Savoy had reached John of Gaunt at Berwick. We can only imagine its immediate impact on him, although 'he heard the tidings with a cheerful countenance, as though he were unmoved by them, and kept them to himself'.'7But his actions during the days to come strongly suggest that he was profoundly shocked and had come rapidly to view his devastating losses, the violent hostility towards him, and the danger in which he still stood not just as the appalling consequences of national unrest, but also as clear proof of divine displeasure with his immoral ways. He considered, says Knighton, 'on every side the past events of his life, and everything that he had done, to see whether he had offended, either privately or publicly, the King or the realm, in such wise that he might deserve the fate that had fallenupon him. And weighing all justly in his mind, he fastened his mind upon God.' One thing above all 'turned in his mind ... He frequently had heard, both from churchmen [who no doubt included his Carmelite confessor, Walter Dyssel and from members of his own household, that his reputation was greatly tarnished in all parts of the realm. He had paid no attention to what was said to him, because he was blinded by desire, fearing neither God nor shame amongst men.' The object of that blind desire had, of course, been Katherine Swynford. Now, 'considering these things, and inspired by the grace of God, he turned about and, committing himself wholly to the divine mercy, and promising that he would reform his life, he vowed to God that he would, as soon as he was able, remove that lady from his household, so that there could be no further offence'. Walsingham says that, in making private confession of his sins, John 'blamed himself for the deaths of [those] who had been laid low by impious violence' during the Peasants' Revolt, and 'reproached himself for his liaison with Katherine Swynford, or rather renounced it'.
Practical considerations came first. Immediately, the Duke, displaying great presence of mind and no sign of fear, ordered the garrisoning of all his castles.l8That same day, 19 June, he agreed with the sympathetic Scots a renewal of the truce until February 1383.Then he left Berwick and rode south, but when he sought a lodging with his former ally, Henry Percy, Percy snubbed him. Fearing no doubt to be associated with the unpopular John of Gaunt, he told him he would not be welcome at any of his castles until he, Percy, had been assured by the King that the Duke could be trusted. Bitterly insulted, a despairing John decided to retreat to Edinburgh.
The shock and the strain he had suffered had had a profound effect on him. When dismissing his servants, who were not to be obliged to share his exile, he broke down and made an astonishing public announcement, declaring 'with tears and expressions of grief that 'he observed that God wished to chastise him for his misdeeds and the evil life that he had for long led, namely in the sin of lechery, in which he had particularly associated with Dame Katherine de Swynford, a she-devil and enchantress, and with many others in his wife's household, against the will of God and the laws of Holy Church'. Accordingly, he had decided to renounce Katherine (and presumably the others), and he assured those around him that he had promised the complete 'amendment of his way of life to God'. 'By these devices, so he believed, he placated the Lord's anger,' observed Walsingham.
Needless to say, the chroniclers were unanimous in applauding the Duke's belated realisation of his folly, and in their version of events, it is Katherine — the woman, the temptress — who emerges as the villain of the piece. Knighton felt the Duke had been lucky to be spared a worse fate, and imputed his being in the north when 'those wicked wretches' struck to the work of divine Providence. Wakingham, who was convinced that John's renunciation of Katherine 'turned away the wrath of God', was to write more kindly of him in the future. In fact, all the chroniclers viewed that renunciation as a crucial turning point in the Duke's life, and they are hardly likely to have continued to do so had they not been convinced that it was genuine. Moreover, they clearly believed that he saw it as a turning point too.
Was it John who used the words 'she-devil and enchantress', or was the description that of the anonymous chronicler of York? The passage reads as if the writer was reporting the Duke's actual speech, although he could not of course have been there to hear it in person. Perhaps he heard a garbled version of it, repeated by travellers. But these particular words could well be a monastic interpolation, born of moral outrage and the belief that women employed the snares of the devil to entice men to sin; we do not, from other sources, get a sense of the Duke feeling — as did many mediaeval men — that in some way he had been the victim of a woman's wiles, or lured by witchcraft to fall from grace. On the contrary, he made it repeatedly clear that he himself bore the responsibility for his sins: he did not try to blame Katherine. In this respect, Walsingham's hasty qualification in his account of John's renunciation of her is most revealing: the Duke, he says, 'abhorred, or rather abjured, the fellowship of that concubine of his' (author's italics).
In Edinburgh, John was made most welcome. Lodged at Holyrood Abbey, he gave further evidence of repenting his former sinful existence, again declaring his intention of expelling Katherine from his household. On 23 June, again in keeping with his new resolve to change his mode of life, he summoned the Duchess Constance to come north to him at once, and directed his receiver in Lancashire to entrust her with urgently needed funds. Six days later, having heard that Constance was at Knaresborough, and not knowing if she was safe, he made plans for a rescue attempt, summoning a force to meet him at Berwick on 13 July.
John stayed in Edinburgh until 10 July, awaiting Richard II's assurance that it would be safe for him to return to London, and — more to the point — that the King would welcome him there. When this was forthcoming, he rode speedily south via Berwick — where he was joined by his military escort — Bamburgh, Newcastle, Durham and Northallerton, which he reached on 19 July. Here he met his wife, who had left Knaresborough and was travelling north in response to his summons.
Constance had suffered a nightmare journey.Terrified in case she herself become a target of the rebels, she had fled north from Hertford and sought refuge in Pontefract Castle, only to find the gates barred to her by its faint-hearted - or perhaps over-cautious - constable, who said he did not dare to admit her. Hearing this, many of her frightened servants deserted her, so, 'smitten in her heart with great fear', and with only a small escort, she rode by lanternlight through the night and the forest, braving footpads and outlaws, to Knaresborough Castle, where to her relief the castellan afforded her a sympathetic welcome. This experience had left her thoroughly frightened and vulnerable, and she now looked 'to find safety under the wing of her lord'.
Seeing the Duke approaching, and with her retinue drawn up behind her, Constance went to meet him. There, on the road, she prostrated herself three times before him, as if she were the one in need of forgiveness — John may not have been the only one whom recent events had shocked into a fit of conscience. Quickly he dismounted, raised her up, took her by the hand and kissed her, then listened compassionately to her woeful tale, while she in turn expressed sorrow at the perils and misfortunes that had befallen him. At length, John asked her pardon for 'his misdeeds to her', and 'she forgave him willingly'. That evening, they repaired to the Bishop of Durham's strongly fortified and moated palace, a favourite stopping place of royalty that stood two hundred yards west of All Saints' Church, Northallerton, 'and there was great joy and celebration between them, and with their companions that day and night'.29
We can only imagine with what reluctance John of Gaunt returned to his wife. Severing his emotional and physical connections with Katherine must have been deeply painful, however strong his moral convictions. There can be little doubt that he genuinely felt he had to make amends for his sins, but there was probably more to it than that. Never a man to concern himself overly with public opinion, he must yet have been aware of the need to defuse the threatening situation in which he now found himself, and to make it clear that he was abandoning a way of life that had conceivably brought down divine vengeance upon him, and indeed upon the kingdom. To have persisted in it would have been to court further disaster.
His concern was not only for himself. Perry makes the pertinent point that the Duke's property had been destroyed, his physician and several officers murdered and his wife thoroughly frightened, while the mob had violently targeted the Flemings and demanded his own head. Only by disassociating himself from Katherine, therefore, could he hope to protect her and their children.
There were political considerations too. John now had much more realistic hopes of winning the throne of Castile, and would have realised that he stood a greater chance of success — with Parliament and the Castilians, as well as the Almighty - if he presented a united front with Constance. A convincing reconciliation was therefore imperative. In this, the Duke and Duchess would willingly collaborate, brought together by their shared ambitions and by his increasing reliance on her knowledge of her kingdom, her judgement and her advice.
Only compelling reasons such as these could have persuaded him that he must give up Katherine Swynford. Was he sincere? Did he truly mean to sever all illicit connections with her? At the time, almost certainly he did. There is no doubt that the Peasants' Revolt had been cataclysmic for him.
It might also be argued that, after nine years together and four children, John had tired of Katherine anyway, but the facts do not bear this out: the two of them were to keep in touch, mutually supportive of each other, for many yean to come, while John proved a good father to their children, continued to extend his patronage to Katherine's family, and eventually risked public censure by marrying her, while she clearly continued to play an important role in his life. All those things argue a deep-seated and long-cherished love between them — in which case, John's public renunciation of Katherine and all that they meant to each other must have cost him dear, and occasioned him deep private suffering. It is surely no coincidence that, on 23 July, just days after he announced his intention of separating from her, he granted land for the foundation of a chapel dedicated to her name-saint and the Virgin Mary — for whom he himself had a special devotion - at Roecliffe in Yorkshire; nor would it be too far-fetched to imagine that he was founding this chapel in the hope that the grateful saints would guard and watch over Katherine in the difficult days ahead. On the other hand, there is no evidence that the chapel was ever built, so perhaps the Duke came to a belated awareness that openly associating himself with a foundation dedicated to his repudiated mistress's name-saint was not the wisest of gestures.
Knighton, often well-informed, says that as soon as John returned to his estates in England, he 'at once took occasion to send [Katherine] away, that she should no longer dwell with him'. The wording of this passage suggests that she was already with him when he returned — which we know was not the case — or waiting for them to be reunited at a prearranged location. As to returning to his estates, John was at Pontefract Castle from 20 to 21 July, before meeting up with Constance, and at Leicester from 28 July to 4August. Constance's presence apart, the Mayor of Leicester had called out the militia at the height of the Peasants' Revolt, anticipating an attack on the castle, so it is hardly likely that Katherine had sought refuge there. But she might have been at Pontefract: the twelfth-century castle was strongly fortified and garrisoned, some good way north, and easily accessible from Lincolnshire - just the kind of place where the Duke would have sent his lady for safety, for he had ordered his household to go there when he went to Edinburgh, and had arranged for firewood and barrels of the best wine to be delivered to them.51 It was also, as the centre of the Lancastrian administration and one of the favoured northern residences of the Duke, who had expended a fortune on lavish improvements there, a fitting residence for Philippa of Lancaster, who — as has been noted - may have been with Katherine. And Katherine's presence there might have been one of the reasons why the Duchess Constance was refused admittance. Considering that the Duke's household was already lodging there, there were no grounds for the constable to bar the door to his Duchess.
Knighton implies that John imparted his fateful decision to Katherine in person before sending her away. We can only imagine that excruciatingly painful interview and the devastating impact his renunciation would have had on her. Not only had she lost her royal lover, but she was also to lose her position in the Lancastrian household. There was no question now that she could remain as governess or companion to Philippa of Lancaster—her name was too synonymous with scandal— and in February 1382 an entry in John of Gaunt's Register referring to her as 'recently governess of our daughters' confirms that she had ceased to occupy that office.34 We may assume that her duties came to an end at the same time as her affair with the Duke, when she delivered Philippa into his care.
What is likely is that, at the same time as he informed Katherine that their sexual relations must cease, John assured her that she would always have his friendship and that he would continue to look after the interests of their children - his actions in the years to come bear this out. The fact that their relations remained amicable — at the very least — confirms that he made the break as kindly as possible. Of course, they would have a legitimate reason — and need - for keeping in touch with each other: the young Beauforts.
Shocked and desolate as she must have been, Katherine may yet have shared John's qualms of conscience and fear of divine retribution - such was the mediaeval mindset. She may have been shocked to hear that he had had other women during the course of their nine-year relationship. But she was also, clearly, a survivor. Initially, she probably returned to Kettlethorpe, trying to recover her equilibrium and decide what she should do. Certainly she would never be in want: the Duke's generous provision for her had seen to that, while she had been a careful preserver of her son's inheritance. And there was to be further proof of John's care for her: on 7 September 1381, he substantially increased her annuity to 200 marks (£24,831) for life, in consideration of 'her good service to his daughters' - and possibly to reward Katherine for sheltering Philippa during the Peasants' Revolt. This grant has been seen as a pay-off," and it probably does mark the formal termination of Katherine's service as governess. Ten days later, the Duke ordered that moneys owing to her 'from the issues of land and tenements' that belonged to her ward, Eustacia de Savenby, be paid; and if the tenants did not pay their dues, the lieutenant ofTickhill was to 'distrain the lands and tenements of all goods and chattels'.
It was probably later in 1381 that Katherine (perhaps using her new funds) took a lease on the Chancery, a fine house in Minster Yard (the cathedral close) in Lincoln, which was to remain her town residence until at least 1393. The fact that she kept this house on for at least twelve years argues that it was at first a refuge for her, a place that had no connections with the Duke, and that in time she came to feel at home in it. The Cathedral Close must have held some happy memories for her: at least one of her children had been baptised (and perhaps born) there, and she was apparentlywell thought of by the clergy who resided in the neighbouring houses. Maybe she was grateful for their support, and the chance to withdraw into this closed and protective community, a world dominated by the regular pealing of the cathedral bells.
At the Chancery, as at Kettlethorpe, Katherine lived in some state. This important house had been the official residence of the cathedral chancellors since 1321, but was some years older than that, having been built before 1260, when it was leased by Canon Thomas Ashby; at that time, it had probably occupied the site of the brick range that now fronts Pottergate, the street that lies east of the cathedral; the vanished church of St Margaret, where Thomas Swynford was baptised, stood opposite on what is today a green situated beside by the Greestone Stairs to the city, while the Bishop's Palace lay a few yards to the west. When Chancellor Anthony Bek (later Bishop of Norwich) acquired the house in 1321, needing adequate space for study and recreation, he built a wing stretching north at right angles to the existing building, added a stately timber hall and extended the garden, creating a grand residence. For this, he was paying an annual rent of 10s. (£172) — a pittance for such a fine house. Fourteen new windows were inserted in the property by carpenters in 1343, at which time the Chancery boasted at least one stone privy.
The Chancellor was the senior clergyman responsible for overseeing the diocesan grammar schools and the cathedral library. The close, which was surrounded by a strong high wall, two turrets of which still stand in the garden of the Chancery, contained the Deanery and other spacious houses for the cathedral canons, some of which survive at least in part today. For much of the second half of the fourteenth century, thanks to the Black Death and poor endowments, chancellors were in short supply, and consequently the Chancery - the oldest of the clergy houses, and known by this name before Katherine's time — was sublet and rented out to various persons in succession, including a number of canons, the 'Lady of Withornwick' (who came from a knightly family in Holderness) in1379-81, and after her, Katherine Swynford.
By the end of the 1380-1 financial year, the Lady of Withornwick had vacated the house, then from 1381 to 1386, an unnamed female tenant paid the very reasonable annual rent of 40s. (£751), plus 10s. (£188) towards the cathedral's fabric fund. This must have been Katherine, because in1386-7 we find 'the Lady Katherine, renter of the house' doing repairs there. In 13 91-2, Katherine Swynford is again referred to in the Chapter accounts, when the new Chancellor, John Huntman (who had been appointed in 1390)received a remittance from the Chapter on account of the Chancery, because it was then occupied by her by 'an old grant of the Chapter' (which no longer exists), and was obliged to ask for another house in which to live. Katherine therefore appears to have taken out a long lease on the Chancery, for at least twelve — and possibly fifteen — years, because of which poor John Huntman was unable to take possession of his official residence until after 1396. It was in 1390-2 that John of Gaunt secured a settlement highly favourable to the close in a long-running dispute with the Bail, so the Chapter are hardly likely to have put pressure on Katherine to vacate the Chancery at that time.
In moving into this almost exclusively ecclesiastical male enclave, which was inhabited by nearly 130 men in holy orders in 1377, Katherine was isolating herself from the citizens of Lincoln - with whom she was clearly not popular, as will be seen — and surrounding herself by people who had shown themselves friendly, such as the canons who had served as sponsors at the font for her son, who were now among her neighbours.38 However, their willingness to accept such a notorious woman into their community may have stemmed not so much from their past esteem of her as from a desire to ensure that John of Gaunt continued to show favour to the-close, especially in its endemic conflicts with the Bail; as a member of its Confraternity, he had a great spiritual affinity with the cathedral, which must have predisposed him to partiality towards the close. The cathedral's sub-Dean, John of Belvoir, seems to have been instrumental in obtaining the tenancy for Katherine. In so doing, he and his brethren were acknowledging the continuing friendship that was perceived to be between her and the Duke after the ending of their love affair.
It may be too that, knowing Katherine as they had done since before she became the Duke's mistress, the canons realised that she was a woman of greater integrity than most people gave her credit for - and, of course, she was now no longer living in sin. One canon, John Dalton, left her a silver cup when he died in 1402; another made provision for prayers to be said for her soul and that of the Duke in the Chapel of Spital in Lincolnshire. Evidently she was held in some regard by her new neighbours.
The Chancery is still lived in by the Chancellor today, and a substantial amount of it survives from Katherine's time. Although the redbrick front facade with its gatehouse and great chamber dates only from the early Tudor period, the north gable of the street range, and the stone-and-timber wing projecting northwards at right angles from the street, which incorporates Katherine's solar and chapel and the screens passage from her great hall, are of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century respectively. The great hall itself does not survive, but once extended across what is now the garden, lying parallel with the gatehouse; in Katherine's day it had courtyards on either side, and the central hearth was possibly on the site of the present ornamental pond.We know the hall was timber-framed because the parliamentary surveyors who inspected the property for Oliver Cromwell in 1649 mistook the derelict structure for a 'large shed open to the roof; this last detail probably refers to a mediaeval louvre that allowed the smoke from the fire to escape. Fortunately, the commisioners recorded the measurements of this building: at 40' by 28', this was no shed, but a mediaeval hall of imposing proportions, with entrance doors on either side. Unfortunately for posterity, it was demolished in 1714.
The dais where Katherine would have presided at table over her household, and sometimes entertained John of Gaunt, has long disappeared therefore, but the surviving screens passage boasts three fine doorways, each adorned with corbel heads of a king and a bishop. The left one led to the buttery, which still has a fourteenth-century window, and the right gave access to the pantry and the kitchen beyond (which also had a louvre), while the middle door opened on to a straight flight of stairs leading up to the chapel, where Katherine would have worshipped and heard Mass. The small chapel has a fourteenth-century triple-lancet window, an aumbry for the Blessed Sacrament, and a piscina with a delicately sculpted ogee arch. The windows and floor date mainly from the late fifteenth century.
Katherine's solar, a private first-floor apartment built around 1300 and located between the Tudor frontage and the chapel anteroom, is unrecognisable today, having been divided into bedrooms and corridors. Like the adjacent chapel, it was open to the roof beams in her day. The solar was the chamber in which she had her bed (the most expensive item of furniture she would have owned), received visitors informally, sought refuge from the world, and perhaps bathed in a wooden tub lined with white cloth and filled with scented water.
The small anteroom to the chapel has a fourteenth-century squint, permitting the observation of Mass in private. Such squints were sometimes used to enable people excluded from services, such as lepers, to be present without infecting others, but they were also used to facilitate the sight of one altar from another, ensuring co-ordination in the administering of communion, so it could be that the chapel was too small to accommodate all Katherine's household at Mass, and that some people were obliged to worship in the anteroom. An alternative theory is that the anteroom, which was adjacent to her solar, may have served as Katherine's private oratory; we know that she had twice before received permission to have portable altars, so evidently she had a penchant for solitary devotion. Possibly she preferred to participate in services apart from her household.
Katherine's great chamber, the 'lord's chamber' of 1343, where she — and perhaps the Duke on occasion — formally received visitors, was long ago demolished to make way for the Tudor wing fronting the street. Above the pantry and kitchen to the north of the property, according to the 1649survey, were six lodging chambers with garrets above, now also long gone. Possibly these chambers had once provided accommodation for Katherine's children and guests, with the servants upstairs in the attics.
Below the fourteenth-century wing and the gatehouse were cellars for storage. We cannot be sure that the brew-house and wood-house that adjoined the kitchen in 1649 and had servants' quarters above were there in Katherine's time. The parliamentary survey also records a stableyard with stone stables incorporating three bays, a hayloft above and a tiled roof, but given Katherine's status and the likely size of her household, her stables were probably larger, for in 1391, we will find her keeping twelve horses in John of Gaunt's stable-block. In 1649, the three gardens (or 'courts') belonging to the Chancery contained fruit trees.
To assert, as Lucraft does, that there is 'much evidence' that John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford were 'very much still together' in the 1380s (a decade in which he was in fact abroad for over three years) is perhaps to overstate the case. In order to determine the nature of their relationship in the period from 1381 to 1396, we have to look for clues in just two dozen or so references to Katherine in records of this period (some of which have nothing to do with John of Gaunt). It is important to remember that these official records give us no more comprehensive a picture of relations between John and Katherine than do those that are extant for the period during which they are known to have been lovers. For these records are not complete — less so than before, in fact, for John of Gaunt's Register survives only up to 1383. It is circumstantial evidence that suggests that the Duke had less frequent dealings with Katherine than he had prior to 1381.
There can be no question, though, that Katherine continued to play a part - possibly an important one - in his life, nor that other people were aware of this. John continued to provide generously for her and their children, and sent her gifts, as before; moreover, it is clear that he was seen to be her protector. They obviously remained on good terms and mutually supportive, she lending him money when he needed it, and he showing marked favour to her family. Both the Dean and Chapter at Lincoln on the one part, in 1381, and Richard II on the other, in 1383, 1384, 1387, 1388 and1389, recognised that, if they wanted to please the Duke and retain his powerful support, they should show favour to Katherine Swynford. And Katherine herself continued to be a woman of influence and standing, which must be attributed to her connection with John of Gaunt.
Of course, this could all have stemmed from the fact that she was the mother of the Duke's children. Yet few royal mistresses had ever achieved such status, and the fact that Katherine did is surely evidence of his continuing esteem and love for her — as, of course, is the fact that he later married her, in an age when it was virtually unheard of for princes to wed the mothers of their bastards. But love can be expressed in many different ways, and it looks very much as if, until 1389 at least, John kept his word and refrained from her bed.
The soundest argument in favour of their relationship remaining platonic, at least for the present, is that Katherine is not known to have borne any more children. She was only in her thirties, and had conceived fairly frequently during her years with John and her marriage to Hugh; nor was there any effective contraception that might have facilitated the secret continuance of sexual relations.
Then there is the fact that no chronicler — and Walsingham in particular was quick to censure the Duke — even so much as hinted that the affair was still going on after the public renunciation; given its notoriety beforehand, we might expect people to have been on the lookout for signs that the erstwhile lovers had fallen from grace. But there was no further scandal. No, the picture we have, at least for the 1380s - as will become clear — is one of affection and mutual support, driven and cemented by the common bond of the couple's children.
From 1381 to 1386, John of Gaunt remained at the forefront of the English political scene. He dominated the Council and Parliament, and played a leading role in diplomacy. At the same time, he was pursuing his quest for the Castilian crown, vigorously promoting 'the way of Spain' as England's best chance of defeating the French. Knighton says that, after the perils he had endured, the honour in which he was now held was a great consolation to him; and he seems to have achieved some peace of mind and conscience too, for at length 'joy came to the Duke, and to those who were dear to him'. 'He drew such strength from his virtue that he sought no revenge, but patiently forgave the offences of anyone who sought forgiveness.' Only two men were brought to trial for having assisted in the destruction of the Savoy.
It was John who met the new Queen, Anne of Bohemia — 'so good, so fair, so debonair', according to Chaucer — as she disembarked at Dover, and John who escorted her through the streets of London prior to her wedding to Richard II in January 1382 at Westminster. (It was Anne who introduced the horned headdress, or 'moonytire', into England, a fashion that Katherine Swynford may well have worn.) At the end of that month, John asked Parliament for a loan to finance an expedition to Castile, but the response was generally unenthusiastic.
John of Gaunt never rebuilt the Savoy. Instead, he left the blackened ruin as it was, a stark reminder of the violence done to his property;43 the site would remain derelict until Henry VII built the Hospital of the Savoy on it over a century later. The Duke concentrated instead on making Kenilworth the Lancastrian showpiece, and when he was needed in London, he resided at Hertford Castle - its roof was restored in 1383 with lead from the Savoy— or in the Bishop of London's palace at Fulham, or at La Neyte (also known as the Neate), the country residence of the Abbot of Westminster, located by the River Tyburn in the area that is now Bayswater and Hyde Park.
Historians have long debated the implications of the quitclaim that John of Gaunt issued to Katherine Swynford on 14 February 1382 in London. Its text is as follows:
John, by the grace of God, King of Castile, etc., greetings.
Let it be known that we have remised [a legal term meaning relinquished or surrendered], released and entirely from ourselves and our heirs quitclaimed the Lady Katherine de Swynford, recently governess of our daughters, Philippa and Elizabeth of Lancaster, and all manner of actions concerning her that we have, have had, and could possibly have in the future, reckoned by an agreement of debt, transaction, or whatever other means from the beginning of this world up to the day of the completion of these presents. And so that neither ourselves, our heirs, nor our executors, nor anyone else through us, or in our name, may in the future by reason of some premise or other, demand or be able to vindicate any claim or right concerning the aforementioned Lady Katherine, her heirs or her executors; but from all actions let us be totally excluded by the witness of these presents. In testimony of which we affix our private seal to this, with the sign of our ring on the reverse.
Confusion has long reigned as to the purpose of this document: was it drawn up to protect John's interests or Katherine's? The answer lies in understanding what a quitclaim deed actually was. Since mediaeval times, it has been a document in which the granter relinquishes all rights and interests in a property to the grantee. The granter is the person who has sold or transferred a piece of property, or an interest in it, and the grantee is the person who has received it. Thus, in issuing a quitclaim, the granter 'quits' any claims to the property referenced in the deed. To quote a simplistic example, in the fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the knight, referring to a weapon, says: 'I quit claim to it. He shall keep it as his own.'
And that was exactly what John of Gaunt was doing when — on behalf of himself and his heirs — he quit all claims to the property and other assets he had granted Katherine Swynford. Which is a very far cry from asserting - as many writers have done - that he intended that neither she nor her children were ever again to have any claim on himself and his heirs. On the contrary, it was a most generous and loving gesture intended to protect the interests of Katherine and the Beauforts and ensure they were handsomely provided for.
I am indebted to Joan Potton for pointing out the significance of the document being issued on St Valentine's Day. In the late fourteenth century, it was believed that birds paired up and mated on that day; the custom of choosing a 'Valentine' did not emerge until the fifteenth century, but the connection of lovers with St Valentine may go as far back as the emergence of the cults of two Roman martyrs of that name, and the tradition probably became popular with the development of the mediaeval concept of courtly love. Thus there was a clear association between love and St Valentine's Day in 1382, when John of Gaunt issued the quitclaim deed, and the choice of this date — surely no accident — was perhaps to reassure Katherine that the Duke still secretly cherished deep feelings for her, even if they could not be lovers as before.
Other evidence shows that he was still very protective of her welfare and determined to be a good lord to her family. On 20 February 1382, he sent Katherine a gift of two tuns of Gascon wine, one from Bristol, the other from Rothwell.47 John of Gaunt's Registershows that by 1382, young Thomas Swynford was already a member of the Duke's retinue, serving as a soldier and shield-bearer, which suggests that John had taken him into his service as soon as he was old enough to be useful and promoted him quickly; Silva-Vigier credibly suggests that he had willingly assumed a fatherly role in the boy's life. Now, in 1382, he placed Thomas, aged fifteen, in the retinue of Henry of Derby, a youth of his own age, to whom Thomas seems to have acquired a lifelong attachment.
That same year, Katherine and her daughter Joan Beaufort, who was five, were briefly in attendance on Henry of Derby's young wife, Mary de Bohun, who was still living in the household of her mother, the Countess of Hereford, at Rochford Hall in Essex. As has been mooted, Joan Beaufort may have been born under the Countess's roof, and named after her; the Countess, if she had been her sponsor at the font, would have taken a special interest in her.
On 1 February 1382, John had paid the Countess money for the maintenance of his daughter-in-law, Mary de Bohun, up till her fourteenth birthday, which fell on 15 February that year. Officially, Mary and Henry of Derby were not supposed to start cohabiting until then, but they had breached this rule at least seven months earlier, and Mary was now pregnant. She bore a son, Edward, on 24 April, at Rochford Hall, but he only lived four days. A week later, the disappointed young father — who had raced to be with his wife and hastily appointed a nurse and governor for his son - was taking part in the May Day jousts at Hereford (jousting was his newly discovered passion, delightedly encouraged by his father), perhaps chafing under the Duke's prohibition of any resumption of marital relations with Mary for the time being: she would not bear another child for five years.
Katherine's arrival in the Countess's household may have been timed to coincide with the birth of Mary's baby. Katherine had had long experience of looking after infants, and she was good with children and young people. Her association with Mary de Bohun was to endure until death severed it, suggesting that Mary regarded her as a friend and mentor. There is evidence too to show that Henry of Derby thought highly of Katherine - his regard and affection for her would become clearly evident in the years to come. It has been asserted by several writers that Katherine became at this time a permanent fixture in Mary's chamber, and that this provided a cover for her continuing intimacy with the Duke, but there is no evidence for this, and it would be three years before a household was set up for the young Earl and Countess of Derby. The lack of any further references to Katherine being in attendance on Mary in the ensuing months and years suggests that she was with her for only a short time in 1382, hardly evidence of a permanent position.
If John of Gaunt visited his son's wife when Katherine was at Rochford Hall in 1382 (and there is no evidence that he did), he could have done so without incurring any scandal, for the Countess of Hereford, their mutual friend, was there to act as chaperone. We can only imagine how difficult John and Katherine found the first meetings after their parting, how long it was before they grew used to the fact that there could be no more between them than friendship, and how long before the pain ceased to be raw. Given that they probably resumed their affair some years on, we might surmise that their feelings for each other were never fully stifled, and that desire remained lively and had constantly to be suppressed.
On 6 May 1382, back in London, the Duke paid for gifts for his daughters, Mary de Bohun and Philippa Chaucer, who received another hanap.50 With Katherine busily dividing her time between Kettlethorpe, Lincoln and the Derby household — and the affair between her and the Duke officially ended — Philippa Chaucer may have felt more comfortable about resuming her duties in the Duchess's household, although she remained based in Lincolnshire, probably residing with her sister, until at least 1383, and most likely till 1386. John's favour was still extended also to Geoffrey Chaucer, who — thanks no doubt to his influence — was appointed Controller of the Petty Customs of London on 8 May 1382.
That July, John and Henry of Derby visited Lincoln to witness the public recanting of a Lollard heretic, the hermit William Swinderby -whom John himself had once maintained - before Bishop Buckingham in the Chapter House of the cathedral. This was another example of John's new orthodoxy, but he did successfully intervene to save Swinderby from 'the bitterness of death' at the stake. With Katherine's house hard by — supposing she was in Lincoln at that time — it is hard to believe that John passed up the opportunity to visit her and their children there. By the end of July, he had moved on to Leicester.
Richard II was to figure large in Katherine's life. While John of Gaunt was in Lincoln, the young King, now fifteen, began exercising a degree of personal authority over the government. Despite his youth, and a slight stammer, he was already able to influence government policy and personally exercise patronage. Unfortunately, he chose to extend it to a favoured clique of unworthy but flattering courtiers, amongst whom the arrogant and incompetent Robert de Vere (son of the Earl of Oxford) was the foremost.55 The early 1380s would witness the gradual emergence of this court faction, its struggle with the conservative John of Gaunt and the great nobles for supremacy, and the deterioration of John's relations with
Richard II. The same period also saw public enmity and resentment shifted from John of Gaunt, who was now beginning to be seen as a force for good in politics, to the profligate de Vere and his satellites.
Drip-fed vitriol by his favourites, the precocious and temperamental adolescent King came not only to resent his uncle's dominance, wealth and power, but also to chafe increasingly at being in tutelage to him. John had an inbred veneration for kingship, and was inclined to lecture his nephew on his duties and obligations, and to censure him for his profligate abuse of patronage. Naturally, this led to tension between them, with the teenaged Richard attempting to throw off the restraints with which the wiser and vastly more experienced Duke tried to control him, and John attempting to instil in his truculent and changeable nephew the principles of good government. Ignoring the ties of kinship and precedence, the King actively encouraged his favourites in their opposition to his uncle.They feared him, wrote a now-admiring Walsingham of the reformed John of Gaunt, 'because of his great power, his admirable judgement and his brilliant mind'. It was fortunate for Richard that his uncle had an unshakeable loyalty to the Crown.
Richard II grew up to be a true sybarite and aesthete, 'extravagantly splendid in his entertainments and dress, and too much devoted to luxury'.57 He loved good food - he was the first English king to employ French chefs and the first to have a cookery book (The Form of Cury) dedicated to him — and his hospitality was legendary. Tall (his skeleton, found in 1871, measured six foot), fair and handsome in a rather feminine way, he adorned himself in fine, elegant clothing, furs and jewels, on which he was to lavish a fortune, and is said to have invented the handkerchief. Artistically inclined, he was to commission two portraits of himself, the first surviving painted portraits of an English king: the most famous is the Wilton Diptych (now in the National Gallery, London), in which the young King, sumptuously gowned in cloth of gold, and with his patron saints standing protectively behind him, kneels before the Virgin and Child; on the reverse is a white hart, Richard's personal emblem; the other portrait is a full-length of the King enthroned in majesty against a gold background, which now hangs in Westminster Abbey. That these are true portraits and not just iconic representations of a king is proved by their facial similarities, which bear close comparison with the effigy on Richard's tomb.
The Monk of Evesham accuses Richard II of 'remaining sometimes till midnight and sometimes till morning in drinking and other excesses that are not to be named'. This could mean anything, but it may be that the writer did not wish to be too explicit. Walsingham charged Richard with being homosexual, but the King seems to have been attracted to both sexes: his devotion to his Queen, Anne of Bohemia, is dramatically well-attested, and even Walsingham admitted that the royal favourite, Robert de Vere, was a notorious womaniser, a 'Knight of Venus, more valiant in the bedchamber than on the field'; de Vere's torrid affair with Agnes Launcekron, one of the Queen's ladies, caused great scandal. But Richard's marriage produced no children, and he certainly was in thrall to, and influenced by, de Vere, who had proved himself assiduous in sycophantically cultivating his royal master. Their relationship, according to Walsingham, was 'not without signs' that 'obscene familiarity' was taking place, to which the disapproving chronicler attributed de Vere's rapid and undeserved promotion. It may be significant that in 1392, after de Vere had died abroad and was brought home for burial, Richard had his coffin opened so that he could look upon his face one last time and stroke his hands. Another contemporary chronicler, Adam of Usk, tells us that a charge of sodomy was later brought against Richard by his enemies, although this might have been mere politically desirable character assassination. It is possible that the effete Richard did indeed have latent homosexual tendencies, and that the charismatic and highly sexed de Vere was aware of this, exploited the King's devotion to the full, and was perhaps bisexual himself.
Richard's court - which Katherine would one day frequent - was to become one of the most celebrated in English history, for its chivalry, its art and culture, its literature, its strict protocol and elaborate ceremony, and its unprecedented splendour. In every respect it reflected the majesty of its monarch, a connoisseur and showman who set a new standard of luxury in his palaces, from the bathrooms with multicoloured floor tiles to the many beautiful objets d'art he acquired. It was Richard who employed Henry Yevele to modernise Westminster Hall by adding the magnificent hammerbeam roof that survives today. With his all-encompassing interests and discerning patronage, Richard II foreshadowed the multitalented princes of the Renaissance, for whom magnificence and courtesy were sacred maxims.
Froissart asserts that no English king before Richard had spent so much money on his court and household, and naturally there was much criticism of his extravagance. But female influence may account in part for that, for there is some evidence to indicate that there were far more women at court than in previous reigns — the closeness of the King's and Queen's households, the emphasis on love and chivalry, the number of women admitted to the fraternity of the Garter, and the proportion of ladies featuring in courtly scenes — and Katherine Swynford would come in time to be a part of that female community.
There was a dark side to Richard, though. He emerged from his experiences during the Peasants' Revolt with an unshakeable conviction in his own heroism and superiority, and an aversion to taking advice. He was emotional, insecure, suspicious, devious and untrustworthy. His violent outbursts of temper were legendary, and he could be ruthless and vindictive when provoked. To Katherine Swynford and her children - whom he clearly liked — he would, however, prove a good friend.
Widespread conjecture that John of Gaunt's invasion of Castile was imminent was well founded, for in October 1382, a French invasion of England seemed likely, prompting calls for an Anglo-Portuguese military expedition to crush France's ally, Juan I of Castile. This was to be a veritable crusade, supported by the Church, with the Pope himself promising pardons for the sins of all those who assisted and accompanied the Duke. That November, John began making preparations for the campaign he hoped would at last win him a crown, but by March of 1383, a short-sighted Parliament had made it clear that it would not vote the necessary funds to support what many believed were the Duke's personal ambitions. Instead, Bishop Despenser of Norwich was to lead a force to France.
By 1383, John of Gaunt had granted Thomas Swynford the very handsome annuity of £40 (£16,288) — further evidence of his continuing patronage of Katherine's family. And the Duke was to be more generous still — in March, despite his major political preoccupations, he yet found time to grant Thomas a second annuity of 100 marks (£13,573) on his marriage to Jane Crophill of Nottingham. Jane may have been related to the Crophills who were members of the Trinity Guild of St Mary in that city, to which John of Gaunt, the Duchess Constance and Katherine Swynford also belonged;6’ this important and wealthy guild had its chapel and altar in the north transept of St Mary's Church in High Pavement - the present chuch dates from c.1376, and the eighteenth-century Shire Hall now occupies the site of the House of the Trinity Guild, or Trinity House, as it later became known. Katherine's membership of this guild, like her properties in Boston and Grantham (see below), is perhaps indicative of the extent of her financial interests, or possibly of the willingness of corporate bodies to please John of Gaunt by showing favour to her. Apparently no one questioned the incongruity and dubious moral value of extending membership of the Guild to his wife and his former mistress.
The parentage of Thomas's bride is unknown, but there are clues. The name Crophill occurs several times in the fourteenth century in Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire. The family probably originated at Cropwell Bishop and Cropwell Butler, villages a mile apart, to the east of Nottingham, which in Domesday Book were both known as Crophill or Crophell. In the fourteenth century, three Crophills became mayors of Nottingham, and they were kinsmen of the royal House. Given her links with Nottingham, Katherine Swynford must have known the family, and it was probably she who arranged her son's marriage. Considering the Crophills' royal connections, and their status too, Katherine had done well for her son.
Jane must have been very young at the time of her marriage, or perhaps she failed to conceive for a long time or suffered a series of miscarriages and stillbirths, because the couple's only known son, named Thomas after his father, was not born until about 1406.There was probably a daughter, too, the Katherine Swynford who married Sir William Drury of Rougham, Suffolk, before 1428. The estimated date of their nuptials, and the fact that this Katherine died in 1478, suggests that she too was born late in the marriage, and that the elder Katherine Swynford never knew these grandchildren.
After his wedding, Thomas appears to have remained with Henry of Derby; he would be knighted before February 1386.
In April 1383, John of Gaunt acquiesced in the Council's decision to resolve the differences between England and Castile by peaceful means, and again he put his plans on hold, deferring his invasion until the following spring. Still suspicious of his motives, the Council secretly instructed the English envoys in Bayonne to prolong matters as long as possible, in order to delay the Duke's departure. As it happened, Juan I refused to abandon his alliance with France, so negotiations broke down.
John spent much of April at Kenilworth. Constance was with him to begin with, but left for Tutbury before he departed for the St George's festivities at Windsor: she evidently still preferred to hold herself aloof from the English court, and to remain in seclusion with her ladies. But the Duke had maintained great state while she was with him at Kenilworth, and his daily expenditure decreased significandy after she left. Clearly he was still treating her with great respect and deference, deliberately emphasising her status as the Queen of Castile.
John's diplomatic powers were again called into play when he was sent north that summer to negotiate a renewal of the truce with the Scots. On 1 August, as he rode back south, his natural daughter, Blanche Morieux, was successfully petitioning the King for the pardon of a murderer. This is the last mention of her in the historical record, and sadly we must conclude that she died not long afterwards.
That August, Bishop Despenser's crusade ended in ignominious failure and an appalling loss of life — for which the Bishop would be impeached and stripped of his temporalities. The Council now belatedly recognised that John of Gaunt was the only man with the resources and prestige to deal with the French, and accordingly he was appointed King's Lieutenant in France and asked to prepare for a foray across the Channel to negotiate a truce with the enemy and salvage something of England's honour.
Katherine Swynford, meanwhile, had herself been petitioning the King, for on 20 October 1383, Richard granted a royal licence empowering her to enclose and empark three hundred acres of land and woods within the manor of Kettlethorpe. Again, the influence - direct or indirect - of John of Gaunt may be perceived, for the Duke was the man of the moment, deferred to by the majority, and the King, although increasingly jealous and resentful of him, could hardly gainsay such a request. Nevertheless, the patronage Richard extended to Katherine and her kinsfolk suggests he continued to think highly of her. The enclosing of a deer park usually meant the dispossession of tenant farmers, and often led to ill feeling. To Katherine, however, it meant a further improvement to the manor and her son's inheritance. As with her failure to drain her stretch of the Fossdyke, self-interest came before the consideration of others. It was an attitude typical of many mediaeval landowners.
The Duke moved a crucial step closer to his Spanish goal in November 1383, when, following the death of the pro-Castilian King Ferdinand, which plunged Portugal into dynastic war, the Anglophile Joao I, brother of the late monarch, was elected by a rebel faction to its contested throne. Joao, needing English help to enforce his sovereignty against the claims of Juan I of Castile (who was married to Ferdinand's daughter, a lady of doubtful legitimacy), was only too willing to offer his support for John of Gaunt's claim to Castile.
John returned from a mission to Scotland at the end of April 1384, and arrived at Salisbury for what turned out to be a tumultuous session of Parliament, for Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, launched a fierce and entirely justified attack on the King and his favourites, provoking Richard publicly to insult him. John of Gaunt tried to pacify both of them, putting Arundel's concerns in more measured terms to the King, yet angering both Richard and the court party - never before had Richard's hostility to his uncle been so evident. It was at this juncture that a plot was hatched against the Duke, obviously with the intention of eliminating him entirely from the political scene.
The plot came to fight when, in de Vere's chamber, a Carmelite friar called John Latimer was said to have privately warned the King that John of Gaunt had organised a widespread conspiracy and was planning to have him assassinated. With suspicious alacrity, Richard accepted this at face value. He confronted his uncle, lost his temper, accused him of plotting treason, and was ready to have him summarily executed without any investigation of the matter, but the Duke, with dignified conviction, protested his innocence and accused the King himself of working against his own life. Richard responded with an astonishing about-turn, ordering that the friar be put to death summarily, but the lords in Parliament persuaded him to have the man questioned before proceeding further. It never happened: a band of knights led by the King's half-brother, the hot-headed Sir John Holland, seized Latimer as he was being hauled off to prison, and had him tortured to death. Someone, clearly, didn't want the wretch betraying the origins of the plot.
Parliament erupted in fury, so the King hastened to dissolve it. He then had to deal with his youngest uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, who, brandishing his sword, furiously threatened to kill anyone, Richard included, who dared to accuse his brother Lancaster of treason. Deprived of the only witness, the case against John collapsed.
It looks very much as if the King and his favourites, especially Robert de Vere, were behind this attempt to overthrow John of Gaunt. Vere bitterly resented the Duke's influence, and had been playing on the King's jealousy of his uncle's dominance, urging him to shake it off and rule autonomously. At bottom, of course, Richard needed his uncle. Good relations were soon restored, at least on the surface and for the time being, and in June, John was again made King's Lieutenant in France and sent there to negotiate a renewal of the truce.
Katherine Swynford — like most people — would soon have learned what had happened at Salisbury, and the knowledge that her erstwhile lover and generous patron, the father of her children, had come so close to an ignoble death must have distressed her greatly. But this was not the only unpleasant event to affect Katherine in 1384. On 17 August, at Reading, a commission of oyer and terminer was issued following a complaint by her against no less a person than Robert de Saltby, the Mayor of Lincoln, and other named men of that city, including its bailiffs, John Prentyss and John Shipman, for breaking into her close there, taking her goods and assaulting her servants. On 20 September, this time at Westminster, a similar commission was issued in respect of an attack on her close in Grantham by the same men and others.
Given the status of the attackers, this was no common assault by petty-minded people on a notorious woman of whose morals they disapproved: it was far more serious than that. And considering that Katherine had been living apart from John of Gaunt for more than three yean now, it is highly unlikely to have been an expression of public outrage at her private life. No, these crimes were more likely to have been born out of angry resentment at Katherine's siding with the clergy in the ongoing conflict between the Bail and the cathedral close over the close's demand to be placed beyond the jurisdiction of the town authorities, a dispute that had simmered in Lincoln for some years, and would not be resolved until John of Gaunt ruled in 1390 and 1392 that the close was to enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction and demands of the Mayor and citizens — for which the jubilant canons gave him a gold image of his patron saint, John the Baptist, from the cathedral treasury. Katherine's strong links with the close would have placed her firmly on that side of the divide. The citizens were also resentful of the Duke's perceived encroachment, as constable of thecastle, upon their liberties. And Katherine's failure to clear her stretch of the Fossdyke would have ruffled no few feathers amongst the burghers of the town; that same year of 1384, John of Gaunt presided over a commission that failed to address the problem effectively. Moreover, the Duke was known to be Katherine's patron still: it may have been that the canons had rented the Chancery to Katherine in a bid to win his support, and there were perhaps fears in the Bail that she influenced him unfairly in favour of the close and in respect of the Fossdyke. So these attacks, cunningly timed while he was abroad, were probably intended as a warning to Katherine not to involve herself — or try to prejudice her powerful protector - in the city's quarrels. Even so, they were an outrageous attack on her property, and a highly provocative intrusion in the cathedral close that did not help the cause of the citizens in the long run.
We do not know if Katherine was in Lincoln when the Chancery was raided; the presence of her servants might suggest that she was, but she may have left a skeleton staff there in her absence. There or not, the assaults must have shaken her to the core, for if the Mayor himself was involved, what support could she look for in Lincoln outside the precincts of the close? It cannot have been pleasant knowing herself so hated. There is no record, however, of what happened to the perpetrators, nor of any further assaults on her property.
The second commission relating to these offences contains the only known reference to Katherine having property in Grantham. A close then meant an enclosed piece of land, usually beside a cathedral or other important building, and containing staff housing or offices, such as the Chancery in Lincoln. Thus her close was probably near St Wulfram's, the most important church in the town, and the hub around which it had grown; its soaring 282-foot spire was a landmark for miles around. The house she owned here was almost certainly one of several ancient mansions that once stood in this area, and may have been of equal status to Grantham House in Castlegate, which survives today. Grantham House was originally a stone hall house built around 1380 in what was then a rural area near the church; it still stands in twenty-seven acres of gardens on the banks of the River Witham. Its mediaeval core is now hidden beneath sixteenth- and eighteenth-century additions and alterations. From the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth century, this house was known as Hall Place, after the wealthy family of merchants that lived there; prior to that, it was apparently owned by the Htzwilliarns. Both Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, and Cardinal Wolsey stayed here in the sixteenth century. The original Grantham House appears to have been of a similar type to the properties that Katherine Swynford leased in Lincoln, and probably exemplifies the kind of house she had in Grantham.
These were perilous times. In February 1385, Robert de Vere - with the connivance of the King — made a second attempt to bring down John of Gaunt, hatching yet another court plot to kill him at a tournament. On the 24th, an outraged John, accompanied by an armed escort and wearing a breastplate, confronted Richard II at Sheen, lecturing him 'with some harshness and severity' on the folly of relying on bad counsel. Early the next month the Princess Joan intervened to bring about a public reconciliation, while John's former adversary, William Courtenay, now Archbishop of Canterbury, censured the King for the way in which he had behaved towards the Duke, and condemned his evil advisers - at which Richard had to be restrained from running the Archbishop through with his sword and transforming him into a second Thomas a Becket. Both John of Gaunt and Courtenay had voiced the increasingly widespread concern about the King's favourites, and Richard's reaction shows how unwilling he was to listen to measured criticism. His resentment of his uncle had now reached boiling point. Yet these days John's priorities were focused not on maintaining political supremacy in England, but on Castile, as the prospect of a crown there became daily more viable. In April, an English force was finally dispatched overseas to the aid of Joao I, who that month — after prolonged resistance to the forces of Castile — was once more defiantly proclaimed King of Portugal.
John spent the summer accompanying Richard II on a lacklustre invasion of Scotland, having first lavishly entertained the King and Queen at Leicester Castle. During this campaign, John's brothers, Edmund and Thomas, were created Duke of York and Duke of Gloucester respectively. While they were all up north, tidings came of the death of the Princess Joan on 8 August at Wallingford. Her end was perhaps hastened by the news that her son the King intended to proceed against his half-brother, Sir John Holland, for the murder of the heir of the Earl of Stafford, but Walsingham tells us that the Princess, who had spent a life 'devoted to pleasure', was 'so fat from eating that she could scarcely walk'; it may be that her obesity, as well as stress, had predisposed her to a heart attack. Joan was buried beside her first husband, Sir Thomas Holland, in the church of the Grey Friars at Stamford, some five months after her passing, in the presence of the King; Chaucer was a mourner, having received black cloth for the occasion from the royal Wardrobe, while John of Gaunt must have sincerely mourned the loss of this dear sister-in-law who had been such a stalwart friend to him.
At the end of August 1385, as he returned to his estates in the Midlands, John received the most exciting and encouraging news: King Joao, his army boosted by English troops, had won a magnificent victory over his enemies at Aljubarrotta on 14 August, and was now the unchallenged sovereign of Portugal. The Duke was jubilant, for the way was at last clear for Joao to offer him the support he needed for his Castilian venture. Late in November 1385, John appealed to Parliament to vote the necessary funds for an invasion of Castile by means of 'the way of Portugal', and Parliament - in which his son Henry was sitting for the first time — at last responded favourably.
There is evidence that John of Gaunt was in contact with Katherine Swynford at this time, the first on record since he had sent her wine in 1382. During the November Parliament, the Duke petitioned for the removal of Sir John Stanley from the manors of Lathom and Knowsley in Lancashire. Sir John had recently married Isabel, the daughter of Sir Thomas Lathom; upon Lathom s death in 1370, those manors had passed to his heir, another Sir Thomas, who died underage in 1383. Because Thomas had been a minor, John of Gaunt, as his feudal lord, had taken him and his manors into wardship, and although Isabel was her brother's heiress, her husband had taken possession of Lathom and Knowsley on Thomas's death without first establishing his right to do so in the Duke's palatine chancery. There was, of course, more to this than met the eye: Sir John Stanley, who became Robert de Vere's deputy in Ireland the following year, appears to have been a client of the favourite, and almost certainly deVere was behind this slight to the Duke and upheld Stanley's possession of the manors in Parliament.
But the law was on the Duke's side. After John of Gaunt complained that Stanley had been in 'grave contempt' of his ducal rights, Parliament decreed that Stanley's entry into the manors had been illegal and ordered him to vacate them and to lodge his claim in the palatine chancery. In the end, John of Gaunt was just. He had vindicated his right to the manors, but he was aware that they should pass to Stanley in right of his wife. So he granted them to Katherine Swynford, who in turn, at his behest, sold them to Stanley. The Duke even returned to Stanley a substantial part of the price.Thus we have evidence that John and Katherine were in contact, indeed, in collaboration, at this time, and that she was willing to support him in such matters.
The King, eager to get rid of his troublesome uncle, now lent him money for his Castilian venture, and from January 1386, preparations for the great invasion went ahead.