Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster - Hardcover

Weir, Alison

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345453239 ISBN 13: 9780345453235

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2009

Synopsis

Acclaimed author Alison Weir has been prolific with her books on English royalty covering everything from the Houses of York and Lancaster to the reigns of the Tudors and beyond. Now this remarkable historian brings to life the extraordinary tale of the woman who was ancestor to them all: Katherine Swynford, a royal mistress who was to become one of the most crucial figures in the history of the British royal dynasties.

Born in the mid-fourteenth century, Katherine de Roët was only twelve when she married Hugh Swynford, an impoverished knight. But her story had already begun when, at just ten years old, she was appointed to the household of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and fourth son of King Edward III, to help look after the Duke’s children. Widowed at twenty-one, Katherine, gifted with beauty and undeniable charms, was to become John of Gaunt’s mistress.

Their years together played out against a backdrop of court life at the height of the Age of Chivalry. Katherine experienced the Hundred Years’ War, the Black Death, and the Peasants’ Revolt. She survived heartbreak and adversity, and crossed paths with many eminent figures of the day, among them her brother-in-law, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Yet as intriguing as she was to many of her contemporaries, there were those who regarded her as scandalous and dangerous.

Throughout the years of their illicit union, John and Katherine were clearly devoted to each other, and in middle age, after many twists of fortune, they wed. The marriage caused far more scandal than the affair had, for it was unheard of for a royal prince to wed his mistress. Yet Katherine triumphed, and her children by John, the Beauforts, would become the direct forebears of the Royal Houses of York, Tudor, and Stuart, and of every British sovereign since 1461 (as well as four U.S. presidents).

Drawing on rare documentation, Alison Weir paints a vivid portrait of a passionate spirit who lived one of medieval England’s greatest love stories. Mistress of the Monarchy reveals a woman ahead of her time–making her own choices, flouting convention, and taking control of her destiny. Indeed, without Katherine Swynford the course of English history, perhaps even the world, would have been very different.

About this title

About the Author:

Alison Weir is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth, and several historical biographies, including Queen Isabella, Henry VIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Life of Elizabeth I, and The Six Wives of Henry VIII. She lives in Surrey, England with her husband and two children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One

Panetto's Daughter

Katherine Swynford, that famous adulteress,1 was set on the path to notoriety, fame, and a great love at the tender age of two or thereabouts, when she was placed in the household of Philippa of Hainault, wife to Edward III of England. This would have been around 1352, and Katherine's disposition with the popular and maternal Philippa was almost certainly due to her father, Sir Paon de Roët, having rendered years of faithful service to the Queen and the royal family of Hainault.

Like her benefactress, Katherine was a Hainaulter. She was born Katherine de Roët, her surname variously given as Rouet, Roëlt, or Ruet, and pronounced Roay. The Roëts were a prominent family in Hainault, then an independent principality located in the western reaches of the Holy Roman Empire, bordering on the kingdom of France and occupying much of what is now Belgium. This fertile and prosperous county stretched from Liège and Brussels in the north to Lille and Valenciennes in the south, and contained other thriving cloth cities: Mons, Charleroi, and Tournai; all of which provided a market for England's raw wool, her chief export. Formed at the time of the division of Charlemagne's empire in the ninth century, Hainault had been an imperial fief since 1071, and in the early fourteenth century it was ruled by the House of Avesnes, which had come to power in 1244.

Katherine possibly had noble or even royal connections through her mother, but claims that she was closely related through her father to the aristocratic lords of Roeulx cannot be substantiated. The Roeulx were a great and powerful Hainaulter family that could trace its descent from the ancient counts of Flanders and Hainault, who were themselves descended from the Emperor Charlemagne, and from England's famous King Alfred. William the Conqueror had married a princess of that house, Matilda of Flanders, and by her was the founder of the ruling dynasties of England, the Norman and Plantagenet kings. Since the twelfth century the lords of Roeulx had prospered mightily.2 Their landholdings centered mainly on the town of Le Roeulx, which lies eight miles northeast of Mons, but their name is also associated with Roux, forty miles east of Mons, and Fauroeulx, twenty miles to the south.

That Katherine shared a close kinship with the lords of Roeulx is doubtful on heraldic evidence alone—or the lack of it.3 Her family was relatively humble. The chronicler Jean Froissart, a native of Hainault, who appears to have been quite well informed on Katherine Swynford's background, states that Jean de Roët, who died in 1305 and was the son of one Huon de Roët, was her grandfather. Neither bore a title. Yet it is possible that there was some blood tie with the Roeulx. Paon de Roët, the father of Katherine Swynford, whose name appears in English sources as Payn or Payne,4 and is pronounced Pan,was almost certainly baptized Gilles, a name borne by several members of the senior line of the Roeulx, which is one reason some historians have linked him to this branch of the family.5 Of course, the similarity in surnames suggests a connection in that period, the spellings of Roeulx and Roët could be, and were, interchangeable as does the fact that both families are known to have had connections with the area around
Mons and Le Roeulx. But discrepancies in arms would appear to indicate that Paon was at best a member of a junior branch of the House of Roeulx; all the same, it is possible that the royal blood of Charlemagne and Alfred the Great did indeed run in Katherine's veins.

The arms of the town of Le Roeulx were a silver lion on a green field holding a wheel in its paw;6 this is a play on words, for wheel in French is roue, which is similar to, and symbolic of, Roeulx. It was a theme adopted by Paon's own family: His arms were three plain silver wheels on a field of red; they were not the spiked- gold Katherine wheels later used by his daughter.7 On the evidence of heraldic emblems on the vestments given by her to Lincoln Cathedral, Katherine Swynford used not only her familiar device of Katherine wheels, which she adopted after 1396, but also her father's device of three plain silver wheels.8

If Jean de Roët was his father, as seems likely, then Gilles alias Paon was born by 1305–06 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 colored, fashionable clothes, possibly in order to impress the ladies. However, in the form pion, it means usher,9 a term that may be descriptive of Paon's duties at court.10

John of Gaunt's epitaph states that Katherine came from a knightly family,and Paon's knighthood is attested to by several sources,11 although we do not know when he received the accolade. In 1349 he is even referred to as a lord, and his daughter Elizabeth as noble,12 which reflects his landed status and probably his links to aristocratic blood. This is also evident in his
ability to place his children with royalty,13 which suggestsin the case of his daughters, at leastthat there was the prospect of some inheritance that would ensure they made good marriages.14 We know Paon held land in Hainault, because in 1411 his grandson, Sir Thomas Swynford, Katherine's son, was to pursue his claim to lands he had inherited there from his mother.15 Paon is unlikely, however, to have owned a large estate and was probably not a wealthy man16 since he was to rely heavily on royal patronage to provide for his children's future.

Paon had first come to England in December 1327 in the train of Philippa of Hainault, who married the young King Edward III on January 24, 1328, in York Minster. Paon perhaps served as Philippa's usher, and may have been present in that capacity at the royal wedding, which took place in the as yet unroofed minster in the midst of a snowstorm.

After Philippa's nuptial celebrations had ended, nearly all her Hainaulter servants were sent home. Apart from a handful of ladies, only Paon de Roët and Walter de Mauney, her carving squire, are known to have been allowed to remain in her retinue,17 a mark of signal royal favor, 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 ca. 1335, and that his four known children,
who were born over a period of about fifteen years or more, may have been two sets of half siblings; in which case Katherine was the child of a second wife, whom he possibly married in the mid late 1340s. We know he maintained links with Hainault, probably through the good offices of Queen Philippa and other members of her house, so it may be that at least one of his wives was a Hainaulter.18

It is also possible that Katherine's mother herself was related to the ruling family of Hainault,19 and while this theory cannot be proved, it is credible in many respects. If Paon was linked by marriage, as well as by blood, to Queen Philippa, that would further explain his continuing links with the House of Avesnes and the trust in which he and his family were held by the ruling families of England and Hainault. It would explain too why all his children received royal patronage and why Queen Philippa took such an interest in them; and it was possibly one reason why John of Gaunt may have felt it was appropriate to ultimately marry one of them.

But there is unlikely to have been a close blood tie.20 If Paon' s wife was related to the House of Avesnes, it must have been through a junior branch or connection. Had the kinship been closer, we would expect Paon to have enjoyed more prominence in the courts of England and Hainault. There have, of course, been other unsubstantiated theories as to who Katherine's mother could have been,21 but this is the most convincing.

Whether Paon was related by marriage to Queen Philippa or not, he was evidently held in high regard by her, and he played his part in the early conflicts of the Hundred Years War, which broke out in 1340 after Edward III claimed the throne of France. For a time Paon served Queen Philippa as Master of the House,22 and in 1332 there is a record of her giving money to Panetto de Roët de Hanonia";23 this is the earliest surviving reference to him. His lost epitaph in Old St. Paul's Cathedral describes him as Guienne King of Arms,24 and it may have been through Philippa's influence that he was appointed to this office in ca. 1334,25 Guienne being part of the Duchy of Aquitaine and a fief of the English Crown.

By the mid- 1340s, Paon was back in Queen Philippa's service as one of the chevaliers of the noble and good Queen.26 In 1346 he fought at Crécy under Edward III. That same year, Sir Panetto de Roët" was present at the siege of Calais, and in August 1347 he was Marshal of the
Queen's Household, and one of two of her knights—the other was Sir Walter de Mauney assigned to conduct to her chamber the six burghers who had given themselves up as hostages after Calais fell to Edward III, and whose lives had been spared thanks to the Queen's intercession.27

Philippa, however, never courted criticism by indiscriminately promoting her compatriots, which may explain why Paon, although well thought of and loved by the Queen because he was her countryman,28 never came to g...

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0345453239
• ISBN 13: 9780345453235
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416