Katherine Swynford
Katherine (or
Katharine or
Catherine) (c.
1350 –
1403) was the daughter of Payne (or Paen)
de Roet (or Rouet or Roelt) a
Flemish herald from
Hainault who was
knighted just before dying in the wars, leaving Katherine and her older sister
Philippa, as well as a brother, Walter, and eldest sister, Isabel (Elizabeth) de Roet, (who died chanoinness of the convent of St. Waudru's, Mons, c.
1366). About the year
1366, at the age of 16, Katherine married Hugh
Swynford or
Synford, an
English knight from the manor of Kettlethorpe in
Lincolnshire, and bore him at least two children (Blanch, Thomas, and likely the Margaret Swynford who was nominated a nun at the prestigious
Barking Abbey by the command of
Richard II in
1377) before he, too, died in the European wars. She then became attached to the household of
John of Gaunt,
Duke of Lancaster, ostensibly as governess to his two daughters (the sisters of the future
Henry IV of England) by his first wife Blanche, but eventually she became his official mistress. Katherine's sister Philippa married the poet
Geoffrey Chaucer, whose poem
The Book of the Duchess commemorated Blanche's death in
1369.
Long after the death of his second wife Constance (or Constanza) of
Castile, John and Katherine married on 13 January
1396 in
Lincoln Cathedral, three years before he died. The four children Katherine had borne John of Gaunt had been given the surname "Beaufort" and were already adults when they were legitimized (but barred from inheriting the throne by a clause inserted by half-brother Henry IV well into the latter's reign) in
1390:
*
John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset.
*
Henry Cardinal Beaufort.
*
Thomas Beaufort, 1st Duke of Exeter.
*
Joan Beaufort, Countess of
Westmorland.
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Katherine Swynford's tomb |
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1640 drawing of the tombs of Katherine Swynford and her daughter Joan Beaufort in Lincoln Cathedral before the tombs were despoiled in 1644 by the Roundheads. |
Her son John was the great-grandfather of
Henry VII of England and the grandfather of
James II of Scotland; her daughter
Joan Beaufort was the grandmother of
Edward IV of England and
Richard III of England, whom Henry VII defeated to take the throne. (Henry then married
Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, and their son became
Henry VIII of England). Her step-son became
Henry IV of England by deposing
Richard II of England (who was imprisoned and died shortly thereafter, in
Pontefract Castle, where Katherine's son Thomas Swynford was
constable, and he was said to have starved Richard to death for his step-brother); her step-daughter, John and Constance's daughter Catherine (or Catalina), was the great-grandmother of
Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of
Henry VIII of England and mother of
Mary I of England.
Katherine survived John by only four years, dying on
May 10,
1403. (Since she was then
dowager Duchess of Lancaster, there was a record of the exact day, as there was not for her birth, when she was of less rank.) Her tomb, and that of her daughter
Joan Beaufort, are under a carved-stone canopy in the sanctuary of
Lincoln Cathedral, but their remains are no longer in them, because the tombs were despoiled in
1644, during the
English Civil War, by the
Roundheads.
Katherine Swynford is the subject of
Anya Seton's novel
Katherine (first published in
1954).
*
The Katherine Swynford Society
