Katherine Swynford Part 3

Meanwhile, Pedro and his three daughters by Maria de Padilla Beatrice, thirteen, Constance, twelve, and Isabella, ten had taken refuge at Bordeaux in Aquitaine, where they were accorded every courtesy by the Black Prince, and accommodated in the Abbey of St Andrew. Pedro showed himself exceedingly grateful, and solemnly promised the Prince, on oath, that once he was restored to his throne, he would reimburse him for the entire costs of the venture; he would leave his daughters at Bordeaux as surety for this.76 In November 1366, Sir Hugh Swynford received letters of protection commanding him to join the Duke of Lancaster in Guienne.77 In September, John of Gaunt had arrived at Bayonne in Gascony with a thousand archers and men-at-arms, and in November he travelled through Aquitaine to rendezvous with his brother the Black Prince. Soon afterwards, Hugh must have taken s.h.i.+p from England to Gascony and caught up with the Duke's army.

Both the d.u.c.h.ess Blanche and Katherine Swynford were pregnant when their husbands rode off to war. They would not see their lords again for more than a year. By Christmas 1366, Blanche had established herself at Bolingbroke Castle, four miles west of Spilsby and twenty-six miles east of Lincoln, where the King joined her for the Yuletide festivities. The twelfth-century castle lay in the hilly Lincolns.h.i.+re wolds, in what is now the village of Old Bolingbroke, and Katherine would almost certainly have visited it at some time as part of the Lancastrian entourage. At seven months pregnant, with her lord overseas and her home not far away, she may well have been in attendance on the d.u.c.h.ess at Bolingbroke on this occasion. The castle had become part of the Lancastrian patrimony in 1311; it was a strong square fortress, with round towers at each corner, a moat fed by springs, a 'very stately' entrance 'over a fair drawbridge', and an imposing Norman church nearby, the south aisle of which had been built by John of Gaunt in 1363. The d.u.c.h.ess and her retinue would have been accommodated in the comfortable timber-framed domestic range of buildings in the courtyard.78 Katherine had moved to Lincoln by the middle of February 1367. It was in a house there that she bore Hugh a son and heir, who arrived on 24 February 1367, the feast of St Matthias the Apostle, and was baptised Thomas after his grandfather and one of his sponsors, Thomas de Sutton, a cathedral canon, who was doubtless a relative of the powerful John de Sutton; the other male sponsor was John de Worksop, also a canon of Lincoln.79 Hugh's Inquisition Post Mortem of June 1372 states that his son Thomas was then four, so it is often claimed that his birth took place in February 1368, but Hugh probably did not return to England until October 1367, so that is hardly possible. As has been demonstrated, dates of birth recorded in Inquisitions Post Mortem are often inaccurate.80 This is manifest in the Inquisition taken to establish Thomas Swynford's age between 22 June 1394 and 22 June 1395.81 No fewer than twelve witnesses came forward to declare that he had been born in 1373, fifteen months after his father's death and a year after he had been described as four years old in Sir Hugh's Inquisition Post Mortem. All had apparently been present at young Thomas's baptism, which took place on 25 February 1367, the day after his birth, at the Church of St Margaret in the cathedral close. This is the first record of an a.s.sociation between Katherine Swynford and Lincoln Cathedral and its close, with which she was often to be linked in the future, and the choice of two members of the Cathedral Chapter as sponsors suggests that she was already well known to, and highly regarded by, that body.

The eleventh-century church of St Margaret no longer survives, having been pulled down around 1780. It stood on a green in the precinct of the Bishop's Palace, between Pottergate and the cathedral, opposite the house in the close in which Katherine would one day reside. The church was surmounted by a squat Norman tower and had an Early English window at its east end.82 The witnesses at the baptism included John Liminour of Lincoln, who may have been a limner (a painter of miniatures in illuminated ma.n.u.scripts) for he recalled bringing a missal and another book to the church and selling them there to John de Worksop; John Plaint and John Balden, servants to Thomas de Sutton; Roger Fynden, chamberlain to John de Worksop; John Sumnour, Nicholas Bolton and Richard Colville, all of Lincoln, the last of whom had been charged by Katherine's steward to bring home twenty-four bows for distribution to members of her household, doubtless for archery practice, skilful strategic use of the longbow being one of England's great strengths in the war with France; Henry Taverner, who recalled the occasion well because his first son was baptised on the same day; and Gilbert de Beseby, Katherine's chamberlain. The testimony of these people provides interesting details about a mediaeval baptism: we see Thomas Boterwyk, the parish clerk, reverently conveying the holy oil, or chrism, from the altar to the stone font; John Plaint carrying a flame to light the candle; two men holding basins of water and towels so that the G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmother (her ident.i.ty remains unknown) could wash their hands after the ceremony; William Hammond, a servant of John de Sereby of Lincoln (who would sell land to Katherine in 1387), falling and breaking one of the two jars of red wine he was carrying into the church, and being beaten for it by his master; and Katherine's chamberlain bearing cloths of silk and cloth of gold in which to wrap the baby after his christening. Such fabrics were extremely costly, and their appearance at this ceremony perhaps suggests that they had been generously provided by the d.u.c.h.ess Blanche; certainly an impecunious knight such as Hugh Swynford could not have afforded them.

There may be another explanation, though. This information was all provided in 13945, about twenty-eight years after Thomas's birth, and the witnesses were to a man inaccurate in one important detail, for it has been demonstrated that Thomas could not have been born in 1373.We should consider, however, that in 13945 most of these witnesses were in their fifties, sixties and even seventies old by mediaeval standards and some may have been forgetful, or followed the testimony of the rest, or which may be significant even confused Thomas's baptism with another that did take place in 1373, in the same church. And that later baptism may have been of John Beaufort, the eldest of Katherine Swynford's children by John of Gaunt, for which rich cloths would undoubtedly have been provided. Certainly, as Cole points out, none of these witnesses intended that their testimony should in any way impugn Thomas Swynford's legitimacy. Their main purpose was to demonstrate that he was now over twenty-one and able to take up his inheritance as his father's heir. There were plenty of Swynford relatives to challenge his t.i.tle, should any question of b.a.s.t.a.r.dy have arisen, but there is no evidence that any ever did.83 The birth of a Swynford heir must have been a great triumph for Katherine, especially after bearing two or perhaps three daughters; it meant that if the baby survived, Hugh's family name would be carried on and his lands inherited by his son.

Meanwhile, John of Gaunt had joined the Black Prince and his army at Dax on 13 January, having paused briefly in Bordeaux to pay his affectionate respects to his sister-in-law, the Princess Joan, and to greet her new son, Richard, to whom she had given birth there on 6 January, the Feast of the Epiphany.84 Richard of Bordeaux was the second son of the Prince and Princess, the elder, Edward of Angouleme, having been born on 27 January 1365; Edward, of course, was the next heir to England after his ill.u.s.trious father.

In February, in bitter cold and heavy snow, the two armies made the hazardous crossing of the Pyrenees into Castile, where on 3 April 1367, they won a spectacular victory over Enrique of Trastamara at the Battle of Najera, near Burgos, during which John of Gaunt, in command of the vanguard, acquitted himself very courageously; according to Chandos Herald, 'the n.o.ble Duke of Lancaster, full of virtue, fought so n.o.bly that everyone marvelled at beholding his great powers and at how, in his high daring, he exposed his person to danger'. Earlier, he had earned stout praise for his alacrity in repelling a surprise attack by the French in the Pyrenees. After Najera, when sixteen thousand men lay dead in the field, the Black Prince wrote to his wife: 'Be a.s.sured, dearest companion, that we, our brother of Lancaster, and all the great men of our army are, thank G.o.d, in good form.'85 Doubtless the d.u.c.h.ess Blanche also would have been relieved to receive this news. On the very same day as the victory, she bore John of Gaunt a healthy son at Bolingbroke, who was named Henry in honour of her ill.u.s.trious father. The choice of name suggests that his elder brother John was still alive.86 It is unlikely, given that her own baby was less than two months old, that Katherine Swynford attended the d.u.c.h.ess in her confinement, and she was probably then at Kettlethorpe or still in Lincoln. The house in Lincoln in which she gave birth has not been identified; given that she later occupied two properties in the cathedral close, and that her son was baptised in the church in the close, it was probably in that area, and she was perhaps staying there as the guest of one of the cathedral canons.

On 2 May, the Black Prince and the Duke of Lancaster entered Burgos, the chief city of Castile, in triumph. Pedro was formally restored to his throne, and the English princes and their troops settled down to wait for payment of the money he had sworn to pay them. They waited in vain, for Pedro repeatedly refused to keep his promise, much to the Black Prince's fury; all that was handed over in reimburs.e.m.e.nt was a large, uncut ruby.87 The delay was ultimately to prove disastrous, for in the burning heat of that summer, there was a fearful outbreak of amoebic dysentery in the English encampment, with the Prince himself being fatefully struck down, and four fifths of his men peris.h.i.+ng. By the autumn he was no better, and also suffering from dropsy, while his surviving soldiers were thoroughly demoralised. To add to his troubles, Enrique was busily laying waste to Gascony, so the Prince and John of Gaunt had no choice but to return there. John arrived back in England at the beginning of October,88 and with him, we may presume, was Hugh Swynford. Both men must have been pleased to be reunited with their wives and delighted to make the acquaintance of the sons that had been born in their absence.

Around 13678, Philippa Chaucer also bore a son, another Thomas,89 whose paternity has been the subject of much debate. In the late sixteenth century, Thomas Speght reported that 'some hold opinion (but I know not upon what grounds) that Thomas Chaucer was not the son of Geoffrey Chaucer, but rather some kinsman of his whom he brought up'. This is unfortunately too vague to const.i.tute convincing evidence of Philippa's infidelity, but in recent years, it has been suggested that she, as well as her sister Katherine, was John of Gaunt's mistress, and that he was the father not only of Thomas Chaucer, but also of Elizabeth Chaucer.90 The grounds for this are threefold. First, only the arms of Philippa de Roet feature in the twenty s.h.i.+elds that adorn Thomas Chaucer's tomb at Ewelme in Oxfords.h.i.+re; those of Geoffrey Chaucer are nowhere to be seen, and the Roet arms are quartered with those of Thomas Chaucer's wife, Maud Burghersh.

Second, in 1381, John of Gaunt paid a very handsome dowry to the prestigious Barking Abbey to cover the expenses of admitting Elizabeth Chaucer. As with Blanche Swynford, some writers have concluded that the Duke was making generous provision for the future of his b.a.s.t.a.r.d child.91 Barking Abbey was a most exclusive house; its abbess was foremost among all the abbesses in the realm, and enjoyed the status of a baron but for her s.e.x, she could have sat in the House of Lords. Places in the novitiate at Barking were therefore much sought after for the daughters of n.o.ble families, but admittance usually depended on large sums changing hands and a royal recommendation. For the daughter of a mere civil servant, who could hardly have afforded the required dowry, to be accepted was a rare achievement, hence the interest it has attracted among historians.92 Third, there is the matter of John of Gaunt's generous gifts to Philippa Chaucer. On three recorded occasions, each at New Year when gifts were customarily exchanged in 1380, 1381 and 1382, he presented her with beautiful silver cups.

Advocates of the theory that John of Gaunt was the father of Philippa Chaucer's children would have us believe that he took first one of the Roet sisters, Philippa, as his mistress, presumably around the period 13647 or thereabouts, and later the other, Katherine. If so, Philippa would have been very young at the time the liaison began, probably no more than twelve or thirteen, hardly old enough to be of much interest to the twenty-four-year-old Duke. It has also been suggested that she was married off to a complacent Geoffrey Chaucer to give her a veneer of respectability and that Chaucer was willing to play the father to the Duke's b.a.s.t.a.r.ds; this would explain why his marriage to Philippa was not overtly happy. It would also mean that John was persistently unfaithful to Blanche over a period of perhaps four years, which is at variance with what we know of their marriage, for not a breath of scandal touched it at the time, and there is no evidence of any infidelity on his part. Nor did he ever acknowledge any of Philippa's children as his own, although he did recognise Katherine's b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and Marie de St Hilaire's daughter. And he was not in the habit of marrying off his mistresses so that he could conceal his paternity of their children.

Most pertinently, any s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p with Philippa Chaucer would have placed John even more firmly within the forbidden degrees of affinity to Katherine Swynford, rendering his relations.h.i.+p with her scandalously incestuous, in an age in which incest was a criminal act for which some offenders were burned at the stake.93 If such a relations.h.i.+p had existed, it is astonis.h.i.+ng that no disapproving chronicler made political capital out of it, or even mentioned it, for there were those who were continually to castigate the Duke for his immorality, and who would have pounced gleefully on any scandal involving him. Furthermore, the only canonical impediment that John asked the Pope to dispense with in 1396 was the compaternity created by his being G.o.dfather to Katherine's child. Again, it is unlikely that he would have imperilled his immortal soul, and Katherine's, by courting automatic excommunication. He also risked nullifying the dispensation he was seeking by not declaring to the Pope such a serious impediment as incest; John, a man of the world, would have known that divine law prohibited him from marrying his mistress's sister. No dispensation had ever been granted in a case like this, so there was no question that such a marriage would have been incestuous and invalid.94 Hence we must conclude that John was not the father of Philippa Chaucer's children, that he had never had s.e.xual intercourse with her, and that Thomas Chaucer and his sister Elizabeth were Geoffrey's children.

Interestingly, of those twenty s.h.i.+elds on Thomas Chaucer's tomb, the only male ones are those of the Beauforts, the sons of John of Gaunt by Katherine Swynford. The other seventeen are those of female relatives from some of the greatest families in the land. We can conclude, therefore, that Thomas Chaucer, and no doubt his daughter Alice (the wife of William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk), who was responsible for the building of his tomb, preferred to stress their royal and n.o.ble connections rather than the mercantile ones, and since Thomas's mother had been the sister of the d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster, it was natural that he should place the d.u.c.h.ess's arms on the tomb, and omit those of his father, who, for all his literary reputation, had no claim to n.o.bility.95 The dowering of Elizabeth Chaucer should be seen as an act of generosity on the part of John of Gaunt to his mistress's niece, who was also the daughter of two people who had given excellent service to his family. Such liberality was a mark of the Duke's character. Clearly he thought highly of Philippa Chaucer, who had served his mother so devotedly and would later render the same good service to his wife, and his philanthropic gesture to Philippa's daughter should therefore be viewed with no more suspicion than the Countess Margaret's dowering of Elizabeth de Roet.

With regard to John's gifts to Philippa, these were probably innocent tokens of appreciation of the good service rendered to his mother and his d.u.c.h.ess by a lady who was not only the wife of a man he liked and admired, but also the sister of his beloved mistress, whose other relatives also enjoyed his favour. Katherine seems to have been fond of her sister Philippa was to live in her house in later years and John's favour to Philippa may have been prompted by her. Other ladies of his wife's household, and members of his own, received similar gifts from the Duke, so there is nothing particularly special or significant about his gifts to Philippa. And while John of Gaunt was extremely generous to his acknowledged b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, he was far less munificent to Thomas Chaucer, which would have been strange had Thomas really been his son.96 Thus there are no credible grounds to substantiate the theory that John of Gaunt committed the sin of incest: that when he took Katherine Swynford as his mistress, he had already enjoyed a s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p with her sister.

4.

'Mistress of the Duke'

Death stalked Katherine's world in the years 136871. Firstly, around 24 July 1368, her older sister, Elizabeth de Roet, died in her convent at Mons.1 Unless Katherine was in touch with unrecorded relatives in Hainault, she might not for some time have learned of, or been too greatly affected by, the pa.s.sing of this sister with whom she can barely if at all have been acquainted. But the death of Blanche of Lancaster on 12 September 1368 at Tutbury Castle in Staffords.h.i.+re2 would have had far more impact, and would surely have brought her much grief and distress, for Blanche had held her in 'great affection', and Katherine in return had given her 'good and agreeable service', for which she would in time to come be handsomely rewarded.3 It also seems to have brought to an end her service in the Lancastrian household.

It was possibly around August 1368 when Blanche bore her last child, a third daughter, baptised Isabella, who shortly afterwards was 'swiftly summoned out of this world to the seat of the angels'.4 Blanche was then twenty-six, and had borne seven children in nine years of marriage. The fact that she died the month after this latest birth suggests that she had suffered complications in labour, or contracted puerperal fever, a major cause of maternal deaths and a common occurrence in an era when the transmission of infection from a midwife's dirty hands, or other unhygienic practices, was not understood. John of Gaunt was with his wife at the end, and that same day he wrote from Tutbury to his 'faithful friend' and neighbour Thomas Appleby, Bishop of Carlisle, bidding him order ma.s.ses for the salvation of the soul of Blanche, 'who has died'.5 'Put a tomb over my heart, for when I remember, I am so melancholy,' mourned Froissart. 'She died young and lovely.'6 He wrote this the following year, and because of this historians believed until recently that Blanche perished of the plague on 12 September 1369 at Bolingbroke Castle. But the date that is clearly stated on the Duke's letter in Bishop Appleby's register makes it clear that Blanche died in 1368.7 John of Gaunt was apparently devastated by the loss of his wife. Their love had been enduring, and throughout their nine-year marriage there had been no hint of discord or infidelity, while the frequency of Blanche's pregnancies argues a healthy s.e.x life. Blanche's memory was clearly cherished by John, for he was solemnly to observe the anniversary of her death for the rest of his life, and more than thirty years later would direct in his will that he be buried beside her the wife who brought him his great inheritance, the mother of his heir, and his first love.

We do not know if Katherine was in attendance at Tutbury when Blanche died, but with the rest of the d.u.c.h.ess's household, she would have been issued with black mourning garments and been summoned to accompany the funeral cortege, which was escorted south by a thousand hors.e.m.e.n. Beside the coffin was carried a seated effigy of the deceased in her robes of state, probably made of wood, and apparently looking very lifelike. Katherine perhaps witnessed the unseemly row between the Abbot of St Albans and the Bishop of Lincoln over who should take precedence in St Albans Abbey in Hertfords.h.i.+re, where the d.u.c.h.ess was to lie in state for a requiem ma.s.s,8 just as she would witness a similar row on another tragic occasion just over twenty years later. She may also have been present when her late mistress's body was interred 'on the north side of the quire',9 near the high altar, in St Paul's Cathedral in London.

Old St Paul's, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, was the largest building in mediaeval England. It had been completed in 1220, on the site of an earlier church founded around 607 by King Ethelbert of Kent, which was burned down in 1087. The new stone cathedral in the Romanesque style was truly awe-inspring: 'the height of the steeple was 520 foot, and the spire was 260 foot. The length of the whole church is 720 foot. The breadth thereof is 130 foot, and the height of the body of that church is 150 foot.' Thus the building was longer than the present St Paul's Cathedral, and its spire higher than that of Salisbury Cathedral, the highest in England today.10 Blanche's was the first royal burial in St Paul's since that of the Saxon King Ethelred II in 1016; in Katherine's day, his ma.s.sive stone sarcophagus could still be seen in the north quire aisle. The cathedral also housed the magnificent shrine of St Erkenwald, a seventh-century Bishop of London, which stood behind the high altar.

When a royal lady died, her household was usually disbanded, for it was not considered fitting for her female attendants to remain in a widower's establishment. Yet there was a pressing need for someone to take care of the three young children left motherless by Blanche's death, and it has been suggested by several writers that Katherine, who was clearly good with children and highly regarded in the Lancastrian household, stayed on in the nursery. If so, she cannot have been there in any exalted capacity, for it is clear that other ladies were looking after the ducal offspring. In 1369, the Duke appointed his and Blanche's cousin, Alice FitzAlan, Lady Wake,11 to look after Henry, Philippa and Elizabeth; Lady Wake, who was paid 66.13s.4d (18,795) in 1369 just for looking after Henry and his household, was still in charge of them, and acting as their governess, in November 1371. Furthermore, in 1370, John of Gaunt rewarded Alyne, the wife of his squire, Edward Gerberge, with a handsome pension of 100 (24,779) per annum for 'the painful diligence and good service she has rendered to our very dear daughter Philippa during the death of our beloved companion'.12 We can infer from this that eight-year-old Philippa was perhaps with Blanche at the end, that her mother's death affected her very badly, and that Alyne Gerberge played a far more important role in comforting her than Katherine Swynford did, which suggests that Katherine was not at Tutbury when Blanche died. The size of the annuity paid to Alyne is commensurate with her having been appointed to look after Philippa after Blanche's death. Clearly she was a trusted servant, for 'our well-loved damoiselle' Alyne was later appointed by John of Gaunt to serve his second d.u.c.h.ess.13 We do know, however, that Katherine's daughter Blanche remained in the ducal household as a damoiselle to Philippa and Elizabeth of Lancaster until at least September 1369,14 which seems appropriate in regard to a girl who was the probable G.o.dchild of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess. But as none of John of Gaunt's registers survives for the period 136972, we have no way of knowing how long Blanche Swynford remained with the ducal princesses after 1369.

It might be more realistic to suppose that, rather than remaining with the Duke's children, Katherine, who had a growing family of her own, returned to Kettlethorpe to bring them up and attend to her duties as chatelaine and custodian. Her long-term reputation as the Lady of Kettlethorpe would surely not have been so well established had she spent long periods absent from the manor.

Geoffrey Chaucer had been sent to France and Italy on diplomatic business on 17 July 1368, so was not in England when the d.u.c.h.ess died. On his return, before 31 October,15 he evidently found John of Gaunt paralysed by grief, which spurred him to write his celebrated elegiac memorial for Blanche, The Boke of the d.u.c.h.esse, as much to comfort her widower and bring him to an acceptance of her death as to commemorate her beauty and virtue and perhaps to console himself.

In this, his first major poem, Chaucer conjures up a dream sequence of an allegorical royal 'hunting of the hart' the pun was intentional in which he, the narrator, becomes separated from the hunting party and wanders into a forest, where he espies a tragic sight: I suddenly saw a man in black Reclining, seated with his back Against an oak, a giant tree.

'Oh Lord,' I thought, 'who can that be?' . . .

It was and Chaucer's readers would have recognised him at once the grieving Duke of Lancaster; we have already seen how, scattered through the poem, are punning allusions to 'John', 'Lancaster', 'Richmond' and 'Lady White'(for Blanche). Chaucer borrowed his theme from Guillaume de Machaut, but his subject was poignantly close to home.

The young knight, who 'was wholly clad in black' and displayed 'a complexion green and pale', was hanging his head and sighing, 'and with a deathly mourning cried a rhyme of verse in lamentation to himself, more pitiful and charged with woe than I had ever heard. It seemed remarkable that Nature could suffer any living creature to bear such grief and not be dead.' Seeing him 'in state so grim', the narrator greets him, which prompts an outpouring of woe. The knight wonders why 'his misery had not made him die'; his sorrows were so manifold and sharp, he says, they 'lay upon his heart ice-cold . . . He'd almost lost his sanity.' Then, realising he is talking to a total stranger, he pulls himself together and greets him courteously.

Encouraged by the curious narrator, and thanking his 'gentle friend' for his 'kind intent', the knight opens his heart. Speaking kindly and frankly, 'without false style or sense of rank', and seeming approachable, wise and reasonable, he says he wishes he had not been born, that he weeps when he is alone, and that his days and nights are detestable, 'for I am sorrow, and sorrow is I'.

'My bliss is gone, my joy is lost for evermore,' he cries, 'and there exists no happiness.' Without revealing what tragedy has overtaken him, he tells the stranger how he had won the love of his lady, despite being rebuffed several times. He says he had fallen in love at a tender age, and that that love is with him still. He describes, in minute detail, his lady's beauty and virtues. 'I seem to see her evermore,' he declares. 'She was my hap, my heal and all my bliss . . . While I live, I'll evermore remember her.' Eventually, the narrator asks, 'Where is she now?'

'She is dead!' comes the bitter reply.

There is no more to be said; 'all was done', and the hunters can be heard approaching. A bell strikes, and the narrator awakens to find it was all a dream. But the outpouring of memories of the cherished one who had gone and the love she shared with the man in black would have been cathartic in itself for John of Gaunt, and hopefully helped him come to terms with his grief, which was surely Chaucer's intention.

The voice in which Chaucer narrates the poem is unusually emotional; clearly the death of the young d.u.c.h.ess had hit him hard too, occasioning genuine sympathy for the bereft widower. The social gulf between the griever, the King's son, and the comforter, the King's esquire, is apparent in the formal, deferential and tentative manner in which the narrator approaches the man in black, but their easy discourse suggests an established rapport between two men who already knew, liked and respected each other. Some commentators have claimed that The Boke of the d.u.c.h.esse is purely a poem in the French poetic tradition, and does not bear much relation to real events, but that is perhaps too narrow a view, for why should Chaucer have used all those allusions and puns to make it very clear to his readers that 'the man in black' was in fact the grief-stricken Duke of Lancaster?16 Furthermore, in the prologue to a later work of Chaucer's, The Legend of Good Women, reference is made to his having written a poem originally ent.i.tled The Death of Blanche the d.u.c.h.ess.17 What could be clearer than that?

There may have been another reason for the emotional tone of the poem. In it, Chaucer intriguingly and very obliquely reveals that for eight years he has suffered a secret and unrequited desire for an unnamed lady. Only she can cure him of his 'malady', but 'that hope is gone'. Therefore he knows, from personal experience, what loss is. 'It must be endured,' he says.

Historians have endlessly speculated who this lady was, some even claiming it was Blanche herself, which was certainly possible in those days when the conventions of courtly love permitted esquires to conceive pa.s.sions for high-born ladies far above them and beyond their reach; and the reference to his hope being gone might refer to the death of his revered lady. If so, Chaucer had first fallen for her charms around 1360, soon after her marriage to John of Gaunt. Such a theory would account for Chaucer's obscure wording of this pa.s.sage, since he could never have dared publicly to confess such a love. And it would explain the emotional tone and empathy of the poem. Never again would Chaucer refer to himself in the guise of a lover.

Grief-stricken he might be, but political advantage dictated that John of Gaunt could not be allowed to remain a widower for long. He was too great a prize in the matrimonial market, and Blanche had not been in her grave two months before Edward III and Queen Philippa opened negotiations for a second marriage for their son. In November, John was proposed as a husband for Margaret, heiress to Louis III, Count of Flanders, a match that would have brought him a princ.i.p.ality and provided England with a buffer state against the hostility of France. It was an irresistible prospect, and one on which John, however tragic his grief, could not have turned his back. But the Count rejected the offer, preferring to court the French, and in 1369 Margaret was married to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, brother of the French King Charles V.18 It has been credibly suggested that Chaucer probably wrote the 1,334 lines of The Boke of the d.u.c.h.esse before these negotiations were opened, rapidly polis.h.i.+ng off his masterpiece in the short weeks between his return from France and an approach being made to Flanders.19 The intense immediacy and poignancy of the poem, and its consolatory aspects, suggest that it was indeed composed in the desolate aftermath of Blanche's death. John Stow claims perhaps basing his information on sources that are now lost to us that it was written at John of Gaunt's request, which is possible; however, there is no contemporary evidence for this, or any record of the poem being dedicated or presented to the Duke. Claims that it was written for recital at one of the annual memorial services for Blanche may be a little far-fetched, considering its length and the fact that no one ever remarked upon this unusual addition to the ceremonies.

We may, however, be almost certain that the poem was intended for private circulation within the Lancastrian household and even in the court itself, for three copies have survived, which suggests there were more made; furthermore, the reference to the poem in the prologue to The Legend of Good Women indicates that it had attained some fame. It would certainly have been known to the members of Chaucer's own family, and it was possibly thanks to Chaucer's kins.h.i.+p to Katherine Swynford, as much as to his links to the court, that he learned of the magnitude of John's grief. Who else but Katherine would have been so well placed to tell him about it? Unless, of course, it was the Duke himself and the poem is based on a real-life conversation that Chaucer set within a dream sequence to comply with contemporary literary conventions. Chaucer, as Pearsall points out, was a mere esquire at this time; he would surely not have presumed to write this intimate poem dealing with such private matters without some indication that it would be well received by the mighty Duke of Lancster. The interaction between the two characters in the poem suggests that, whether the Duke commissioned it or not, there was a rapport between him and Chaucer, and an element of patronage involved on his part. Yet whatever the circ.u.mstances in which the poem was composed, it does convincingly convey the deep and anguished grief that John of Gaunt undoubtedly suffered for Blanche of Lancaster.

In 1369, there was a third outbreak of the Black Death. It began in March, the same month that Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile, was ambushed and murdered by Enrique of Trastamara at Montiel. Instead of being decently chested and buried, the body was decapitated and left unburied, which outraged Castilian sensibilities; it was several days before the head was sent to Seville for public exhibition and the body interred. Immediately afterwards, Enrique II usurped the throne, ignoring the legitimate rights of Pedro's two surviving daughters Beatrice had taken the veil and died in 1368. Constance, the eldest, now succeeded her father as de jure Queen of Castile, but she and her sister Isabella were still in exile at Bayonne in Gascony as hostages of the Black Prince, and there seemed little prospect of her ever enforcing her claim to the Castilian throne and the crown Pedro had bequeathed to her.

Only a week after Pedro's murder, Charles V of France, having rejected the Treaty of Bretigny, declared war on England. Late in May, the French clawed back all the land held by the English in Ponthieu, and began ama.s.sing a great invasion force. In retaliation, in Parliament, an incensed Edward III again a.s.sumed the t.i.tle King of France. This fresh outbreak of hostilities was to impact hugely on the lives of Katherine, Hugh and John of Gaunt. On 12 June at a time when the plague had hit London and the court had taken refuge at Windsor the Duke was appointed King's Captain and Lieutenant in Calais, Guisnes and the surrounding country. This was his first independent command, and on 26 July, he arrived in Calais with an army in which Geoffrey Chaucer and probably Hugh Swynford were serving, and spent August and September campaigning in France.

When John sailed from England, he left his mother, Queen Philippa, 'dangerously sick' with what was described as a dropsy;20 she seems to have been seriously ill for some time before then, since her tomb effigy had been ordered prior to January 1368.21 Among those in attendance on her at Windsor was Philippa Chaucer.22 On 10 March 1369, along with fifteen other damoiselles, Philippa had received furs and cloth for a new gown, but there was little chance to appear in public richly clad, for by July the Queen was bedridden and needing the constant ministrations of her women. She died on 14 August, 'to the infinite misfortune of King Edward, his children and the whole kingdom'.23 'I wring my hands, I clap my palms!' wrote an anguished Froissart, recalling also the death of Blanche of Lancaster a year earlier. 'I have lost too many in these two ladies.'24 On 1 September, Edward III commanded Henry de Snaith, guardian of 'our Great Wardrobe', to provide mourning garments for his family and the late Queen's servants. Among these were twelve ells of black cloth and some furs for little Blanche Swynford, who is described as a damoiselle of the daughters of the Duke of Lancaster; she received the same cloth and furs as were allocated to her young mistresses and other high-ranking ladies, which suggests that Queen Philippa had retained an affection for the family of Katherine de Roet, her young compatriot, whom she had brought up and seen well placed and honourably married, and that the King too was fond of Katherine, for Philippa Chaucer, who had been in the Queen's service for some years, received only six ells of cloth, while Chaucer got just three.25 As for Katherine, still perhaps sorrowing over the death of the d.u.c.h.ess Blanche, the loss of her kindly and inspirational guardian, who had acted as a mother to her, must have left her feeling bereft.

The news of the Queen's death hit John of Gaunt hard too, for he loved and honoured both his parents, and would still have been grieving for his late wife. Froissart tells us that 'information of this heavy loss was carried to the English army at Tournehem, which greatly afflicted everyone, more especially her son, John of Gaunt'. Until his death, John cherished 'a gold brooch in the old fas.h.i.+on, with the name of G.o.d inscribed on each part of it, which my most honourable lady mother, whom G.o.d preserve, gave to me, commanding me to guard it with her blessing'.26 On 12 September, the first obit (a service marking the anniversary of a death) for the d.u.c.h.ess Blanche was solemnly observed at St Paul's, in the Duke's absence. Her anniversary would be celebrated every year for the rest of John's lifetime and beyond, further evidence of his love for her and his grief at her loss. Whenever he was unable to attend, the great officers of his household stood proxy for him. By September 1371, a chantry chapel had been established above Blanche's burial place in St Paul's, and soon afterwards an altar was built and two salaried chaplains appointed to celebrate daily ma.s.ses for the repose of her soul.27 In October, thanks to dwindling supplies, plague and the arrival of wintry weather, John of Gaunt was forced to abandon his French offensive. By the end of November, he was back at the Savoy, and Sir Hugh Swynford was probably riding north to Lincolns.h.i.+re to attend to his estates and be reunited with his family.

John of Gaunt kept the Christmas of 1369 at Langley in Hertfords.h.i.+re with his father the King; it must have been a sad time for the bereft royal family, with the late Queen still unburied. Philippa of Hainault's magnificent state funeral took place on 29 January 1370, six months after her death such things took time to arrange. Philippa and Geoffrey Chaucer would certainly have been there, and it may not be too fanciful to wonder if Katherine Swynford herself was among the mourners, for she had been brought up by the Queen, and was her countrywoman. After being drawn in procession through streets that had been specially cleared of mud and filth, Philippa's body was interred near the shrine of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, in earth brought to England from the Holy Land; a fine tomb was later built to her memory, with her lifelike effigy by a Netherlandish sculptor, Hennequin of Liege, resting upon it.

After the obsequies were completed, Katherine perhaps returned to Kettlethorpe. As Chaucer remained in service at court, her sister may have gone to live in his family house in London, with their growing family, for there was no place for her in the royal household now that the Queen was dead.

The political events of 1370 were to have a profound effect on Katherine's future, so it is worth leaving her at Kettlethorpe for the time being, and looking at what was happening in the wider world.

After Queen Philippa's death, things went badly for the ageing Edward III. In 1370, Aquitaine came under threat from Charles V, who had allied himself with Enrique II of Castile. The harsh rule of the Black Prince had driven his Gascon subjects to appeal to the French King for aid, and as the Prince's overlord, Charles V had summoned him to Paris to account for his cruelties, but he was too ill to comply. In retaliation, the French closed in on the Duchy.

Again John of Gaunt raised an army, this time to a.s.sist his brother in repelling the invader, and once more Sir Hugh Swynford was summoned to attend his lord. Did Katherine have a presentiment, as she saw him off on his way to join the Duke at Plymouth, that she would never see her husband again? She had perhaps often entertained fears of this kind, for war was a dangerous business, and those who escaped death at the hands of the enemy often perished as a result of the dysentery and disease that could decimate armies.

John of Gaunt's fleet sailed at the end of June, and once again, Geoffrey Chaucer was with it, in company with his brother-in-law, Hugh Swynford.

John would have been shocked at the change in his once-magnificent brother, who was waiting for him at Cognac. The Black Prince was virtually bedridden, suffering from what Froissart calls 'an incurable illness', the malady that had laid him low for three years now, since he had contracted amoebic dysentery in Castile. He could no longer ride a horse, and it was reported to Charles V that he had a dropsy from which he could never recover.28 Modern medical opinion holds that this was symptomatic of nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys that causes swollen legs, ankles, eyes and genitals, due to a build-up of fluid.29 The Prince's condition, and the humiliation and frustration engendered by weakness and helplessness, had turned him into an embittered man.

On 24 August, the city of Limoges voluntarily and treasonably surrendered to the French. The Black Prince's fury was lethal, his retribution savage. He laid siege to the city, and when the walls were breached on 18 September, ordered it to be sacked, directing that neither man, woman nor child be spared. The carnage went on relentlessly for two days, as the invalid Prince watched from a horse-litter, urging his men to ever-worse atrocities. Soon the ruined streets were piled high with hundreds of corpses and running with blood.30 Never again would Edward of Woodstock's glorious reputation s.h.i.+ne as fair.

John of Gaunt was present at the fall of Limoges, in command of the English forces during the siege, and it was as a result of his brave efforts that the city capitulated. Froissart implies that John supported his brother in inflicting the atrocities that were committed after the siege: 'I do not understand how they [author's italics] could have failed to take pity on people who were too unimportant to have committed treason,' he opined, 'yet they paid for it, and paid more dearly than the leaders who had committed it.' But Froissart may not be correct he certainly exaggerated by tenfold the number slaughtered for afterwards, it was thanks to John's intervention that the bishop who had surrendered Limoges to the French was able to escape the Black Prince's vengeance.

After Limoges, the Prince realised he no longer had the strength to govern his princ.i.p.ality, and reluctantly decided to relinquish his command to his brother. On 8 October, referring to 'the very great affection and love' he cherished for John, he created him Lord of Bergerac and Roche-sur-Yon,31 and three days later, surrendered to him the lieutenancy of Aquitaine. His burden laid down, he retired to Bordeaux.

In January 1371, the Prince's physicians urged him to return to his native air of England without delay, if he wished to preserve his life. His misery was compounded, that same month, by the death of his five-year-old heir, Edward of Angouleme, at Bordeaux. Yet so ill was the Prince that the bereaved parents dared not let even their terrible grief delay their departure. Leaving John of Gaunt to arrange their child's burial,32 the Prince and Princess returned to England with their surviving son Richard at the end of January. When they made land in Devon, they were obliged to rest for five weeks before the Prince could face the journey to Berkhamsted Castle, and when they arrived there, he took to his bed. From that time, he was a broken man.

For the next six months, John of Gaunt ruled Aquitaine, holding it successfully against the French. Then, in July, in accordance with the terms of his office, he relinquished his command and handed over his authority to Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch.33 The Duke now had his sights on a richer prize than Aquitaine. The daughters of Pedro the Cruel, Queen Constance and her sister Isabella, had remained in exile under the protection of first the Black Prince and then John of Gaunt, consigned to a humble existence in a village near Bayonne. Their position was an invidious one, for although royal, they were outcasts from their homeland, dependent on the charity of the English, whom their father had betrayed, and surrounded only by a few of their own people. 'The girls had suffered considerably, on account of which they were the objects of great pity.'34 Now all that was to change.

On 10 August, John of Gaunt took up residence at Bordeaux, the capital of the Duchy. English princes sojourning in Bordeaux resided in the ancient Ombriere Palace, in which the royal apartments were located beyond the Porte Cailhau in a tall keep known as 'the Crossbowman', which was surrounded by courtyards with tiled fountains and beautiful semi-tropical gardens.35 Once settled in this beautiful place, John gave some thought as to what should become of Constance and Isabella, with whom he must have had a pa.s.sing acquaintance over the years. He was well aware that Constance had been willed the throne of Castile by her father, King Pedro, and was regarded as its legitimate queen by his followers. All she lacked was someone to take up her cause, and John knew that for the man who could successfully do so, there would be rich prizes indeed.

Some time during that sun-drenched summer of 1371, Guichard d'Angle, Marshal of Aquitaine and a trusted friend, diplomat and member of the Duke's council, who had been held prisoner by Enrique of Trastamara for two years, made the suggestion that John of Gaunt himself marry Constance and claim the crown of Castile in her right,36 a suggestion he would surely not have made without knowing that the idea was already in John's mind, and perhaps in Edward III's too. The Gascon barons backed the proposal. Such a union made good political sense: not only would it bring John a throne and a kingdom, which he had perhaps long desired, but it would also break the alliance between Castile and France, an alliance that was posing a very real threat to England and her chances of winning the war. The proposal 'pleased [the Duke] so well that he sent without delay four of his knights for the young ladies'.37 For Constance, regaining her throne and laying King Pedro's bones properly to rest in his native earth appear to have been sacred duties, for she cherished the memory of her father. Her strong loyalty is perhaps reflected in Chaucer's generous portrayal of Pedro in 'The Monk's Tale', and we may suppose that the poet was used to hearing all about the murdered king's virtues and death from his wife Philippa, who in turn must have heard it again and again from Constance, whom she was to serve for years. Thus, ignoring the more brutal realities of Pedro's rule and character, Chaucer could write: O n.o.ble, O worthy Pedro, glory of Spain, Whom Fortune held so high in majesty, Well ought men thy piteous death complain!

Mindful that her father had long desired his daughters to be married to sons of Edward III, Constance accepted the Duke of Lancaster's proposal with alacrity, confident that such a great prince would be successful in helping her achieve her cherished aims. Realistically, though, that was a remote prospect, for with the backing of France, Enrique of Trastamara had become even more entrenched in Castile.

Constance was in every way an ideal choice of royal bride: she was young, beautiful and devout, and she brought to the marriage the promise of a kingdom. Her tragic plight appealed to John's sense of chivalry: Guichard d'Angle had played on that when he pointed out that marrying her 'would offer comfort and aid to these girls, daughters of a King, who are forced by circ.u.mstances to live in their present state'. It was these words that had 'softened the heart of the Duke'.38 Yet Constance was no stereotypical maiden in distress: for all her youth she was seventeen she had her father's pride, his singularity of purpose and tenacity, and the pa.s.sionate, grieving love that only an exile can feel for his or her native land.39 We have only two surviving ma.n.u.script pictures of Constance: one is in a late-fifteenth-century ma.n.u.script in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, and shows her with John of Gaunt at the surrender of Compostela in 1386. The other appears in a genealogy executed between 1493 and 1519 showing the descent of the royal House of Portugal, which includes members of the family of John of Gaunt:40 Constance wears a red velvet gown with a full skirt and blue kirtle typical of Castilian dress of that later period, and an anachronistic horned headdress. Her hair is black, parted and looped either side of the face in the style that would be favoured by Queen Isabella of Castile, and her features are florid, with a long nose. This ill.u.s.tration may have been based on one in an older ma.n.u.script that has been lost, for the headdress is partly of the fourteenth century.

Constance and John were married on 21 September 1371 at Roquefort-sur-Soulzon,41 a small town nestling on terraces on the side of a rocky outcrop near Mont-de-Marsan in the Aveyron, just south of Bordeaux; since the first century BC, the distinctive Roquefort cheese had been produced there and matured in the local caves. John's wedding gift to Constance was a gold cup 'fas.h.i.+oned in the manner of a double rose with a pedestal and lid, with a white dove on the lid',42 while Constance gave him the finest gold cup he ever possessed.43 It would be no exaggeration to say that from the day of their marriage, the conquest of Castile would be the major preoccupation of John's life.

On 25 September, after some brief celebrations in Bordeaux,44 the Duke and his new d.u.c.h.ess arrived at the port of La Roch.e.l.le, and there requisitioned a salt s.h.i.+p bound for England, obliging the master to offload his cargo to make room for their retinue and chattels.45 John was attended by a train of Castilian knights wearing the Lancastrian livery, and Constance by a bevy of Castilian ladies. They docked at Fowey, near Plymouth, on 4 November, and rested at Plympton Priory from 10 to 14 November.46 Two days later, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess had moved on to Exeter, where they offered 20s. (335) in the cathedral.47 John then left Constance and rode to London to make ready for her arrival; he was in residence at the Savoy, and reunited with his three children, by the end of the month,48 when he went 'to report to the King'.49 Then in December, after paying his respects at Blanche's tomb in St Paul's, he travelled down to Kingston Lacy in Dorset, where he and his bride kept Christmas, feasting on venison and rabbits.50 John was back at the Savoy by 22 January, having arranged for Constance to journey up to London at her leisure. Her long sojourn in the West Country had perhaps been necessitated by her suffering the discomforts and sickness of early pregnancy.

Hugh Swynford had not accompanied his lord back to England. He died 'beyond seas' in Aquitaine, 'on the Thursday after St Martin', 13 November 1371.51 The fact that he did not follow the Duke north in September argues that he was already too ill to do so. The news of his death would have taken some weeks to reach Katherine, but probably arrived in time for her to spend a dismal Christmas facing up to early widowhood and the prospect of bringing up her children alone on a pittance, for Hugh's finances and affairs had been left in little better shape than they had been when she married him.

The mediaeval church at Kettlethorpe has long since largely disappeared, and with it any fourteenth-century tombs and memorials, so there is no way of knowing whether Hugh's body was brought back to England and interred there, but given his parlous financial state, he may well have been buried in Aquitaine.52 Whether he was laid to rest in Kettlethorpe Church or not, a requiem ma.s.s would surely have been held there for him, with Katherine in attendance.

Katherine was only about twenty-one when she was widowed, yet custom required her to put on nun-like mourning garments consisting of a black gown and cloak and a white wimple; the constricting barbe that covered the chin and spread like a cape across the shoulders mercifully had not yet come into fas.h.i.+on. She would wear these weeds until the expiration of her first year of widowhood, after which she might remarry with propriety.53 It would appear that John of Gaunt came to her rescue, and that, learning of her plight, and doubtless recalling her good service to Blanche, he invited her to serve his second d.u.c.h.ess in a similar capacity. Philippa Chaucer, likewise redundant because of the death of a royal mistress, was also appointed to serve Constance as one of her many married damoiselles; on 30 August 1372, at Sandwich, John of Gaunt awarded her an annuity of 10 (3,347) 'by our especial grace for the good and agreeable service that our well-beloved damoiselle Philippa Chaucer has done, and will do in the future, for our very dear and well-loved companion the Queen'.54 There is no record of Katherine being in Constance's household until March 1373, but given the fact that the King and John of Gaunt were helping her financially in the spring of 1372, and her being in attendance when Constance bore a child probably in the summer of that year, it is likely that she was engaged with her sister when the d.u.c.h.ess's establishment was set up between January and April. Katherine's former experience as a long-term, much-loved member of the d.u.c.h.ess Blanche's household would have left her uniquely qualified to serve the young Constance, and the fact that she was chosen to convey news of the birth of Constance's child to the King suggests that her position was of some prominence.

Philippa Chaucer's appointment to the Lancastrian menage while her husband remained in royal service, and the fact that she was now to be often resident at Hertford Castle or Tutbury Castle, and would remain with the d.u.c.h.ess for some years to come, meant that henceforth she and Geoffrey would see much less of each other. This may be a further indication that their marriage was unhappy and also that Philippa had done with child-bearing. Having spent most of her life at court, she probably preferred the social cachet conferred on her by her return to royal service to living in obscurity as the wife of a royal esquire; she had perhaps not liked living in London, where foreigners were regarded with suspicion and even hostility. Chaucer himself may have welcomed this new arrangement with amicable resignation, seeing his wife when their duties permitted and agreeing to pool their financial resources; from 1374, he went in person to collect Philippa's pension from the Exchequer.55 On 30 January, Edward III's council formally recognised John of Gaunt as King of Castile and Leon; from henceforth, John would be known as 'Monseigneur d'Espaigne' rather than 'Monseigneur de Lancaster'; he would sign his letters in regal Castilian style as Nos el Roy ('We, the King') and his seal would bear the royal arms of Castile and Leon impaling those of England. John would now be deferred to as if he were a reigning sovereign, and the etiquette observed at his court would have reflected this.

John's zeal for winning a foreign kingdom for himself was to cost him much trust and popularity in England, where people suspected him of disloyalty to the Crown and speculated that his ambitions might not be satisfied with the throne of Castile. Unlike him, many lacked the foresight to see that with an English king reigning in a friendly Castile, France would lose a valuable ally, Castilian naval raids would cease, and England's chances of achieving some success in the war would be vastly improved. Furthermore, for many years to come, John was to subordinate his dynastic ambitions in order to give priority to prosecuting the war with France on England's behalf, and not only because there was no money to pay for an offensive against Castile. Only time would prove that his loyalty to the English Crown was never in doubt, but to many of the xenophobic and increasingly nationalistic commons, to whom all foreigners were 'strangers' and therefore suspect, he was at best pursuing personal aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, and at worst a traitor.

This would not have mattered so much had not John become the chief influence over the King. Because of Edward III's escalating physical and mental decline, the Black Prince's infirmity and the death of Lionel of Antwerp in 1368, John was now the most important and powerful man in the realm. It was to him that men looked for political leaders.h.i.+p, at a time when England's great victories against the French were long past and the war was going disastrously. There were frequent enemy raids on the south coast and consequently disruptions to trade, while a population ravaged by plague was increasingly burdened with the crippling taxes that were needed to pay for the war. At the same time, Edward III's once-brilliant court was degenerating into corruption. It would not be long before both lords and commons looked about them for a scapegoat and pointed a finger at John of Gaunt. Hence he would become widely hated throughout the kingdom, and that would ultimately have repercussions for Katherine herself.

John's unpopularity was unfairly linked in the public mind to that of the King's mistress, Alice Perrers, the married daughter of a Hertfords.h.i.+re knight, who was now queening it over the court. Edward had first taken her to his bed perhaps as early as 1364, when she was one of Queen Philippa's damoiselles and soon, despite her not being beautiful and lacking a good figure,56 'Alice had been preferred in the King's love before the Queen'. Since Philippa's death, Alice had gained ascendancy over her royal lover, who was now descending into a child-like dotage and was rarely seen in public; claims that his decline resulted from the gonorrhoea with which she had infected him have never been substantiated. She bore her royal lover a son and two daughters, and over the years wheedled out of him jewellery worth at least 375 (105,723), an annuity of 100 (28,193), twenty-two manors, land in seventeen counties and a London townhouse.57 It is not surprising therefore that she has been seen as the model for the acquisitive and corrupt Lady Meed in William Langland's poem, The Vision of Piers Plowman: I . . . was ware of a woman, wonderfully clad, Her robe fur-edged, the finest on Earth, Crowned with a crown, the King hath no better, Fairly her fingers were fretted with rings, And in the rings red rubies, as red as a furnace, And diamonds of dearest price, and double sapphires, Sapphires and beryls, poison to destroy.

Her rich robe of scarlet dye, Her ribbons set with gold, red gold, rare stones; Her array ravished me: such riches saw I never.

By 1372, Alice's reputation was notorious; she was shameless, rapacious and ruthless, and exploited to the full her dominance over the senile King. She persuaded him to let her wear the queen consort's jewels, presided with him over a tournament in Smithfield, decked out as the 'Lady of the Sun', controlled the flow of royal patronage to the benefit of her favourites, and caused outrage by overseeing the proceedings at the Court of King's Bench in Westminster Hall from the sovereign's marble throne, intervening to secure favourable judgements for her friends. 'This Lady Alice de Perrers had such power and eminence that no one dared prosecute a claim against her.' The public were scandalised, and some accused Alice of using witchcraft to achieve her aims, as they were one day to accuse Katherine Swynford. 'It is not fitting or safe that all the keys should hang from the belt of one woman,' fulminated Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester, while Thomas Walsingham castigated Alice as 'a shameless doxy', 'an infamous wh.o.r.e' and 'a thoroughly bad influence'. Alice's career ill.u.s.trates just how influential and ruinous to a prince's reputation a royal mistress could be, a salutary lesson from which Katherine Swynford's conduct when she herself came to be a royal mistress suggests she had learned much.

Before Alice Perrers, the mistresses of English kings had made only fleeting appearances in history. Their names are more often than not the stuff of legend or pa.s.sing references in official doc.u.ments, and none was particularly influential. Even fair Rosamund de Clifford, for whom Henry II planned to divorce Eleanor of Aquitaine in the twelfth century, played a pa.s.sive role. Prior to the fourteenth century, such women lived obscure lives, enjoying brief liaisons with monarchs, bearing royal b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and occasionally meriting a mention in a chronicle.

But Alice Perrers broke the mould. With Edward III's blessing and the backing of her allies, William, Lord Latimer, John, Lord Neville of Raby and the powerful London financier, Richard Lyons, she controlled not only access to the King, but also the flow of royal patronage, and thus secured for herself a position of the greatest influence. John of Gaunt may not have liked her, but along with many other eminent figures of the day, including the Pope himself, he respected her abilities and tolerated her for his father's sake indeed, he was later to protest that he was powerless in the face of her hold over the King and in May 1373 we find her serving the d.u.c.h.ess Constance alongside Philippa Chaucer at the Savoy, and receiving gifts from the Duke.58 On 10 February 1372, Constance made her state entry into London and was formally welcomed as Queen of Castile by the Black Prince, who had risen from his sickbed and struggled onto a horse for the occasion. He was accompanied by 'several lords and knights, the Mayor of London and a great number of the commons, well-dressed and n.o.bly mounted', who conducted the new d.u.c.h.ess 'through London in a great and solemn procession. In Cheapside were a.s.sembled many gentlemen with their wives and daughters to look at the beauty of the young lady.' This statement suggests that Constance's physical charms were already renowned.59 'The procession pa.s.sed in good order along to the Savoy', where John of Gaunt was waiting to greet his wife.60 The Black Prince's welcome gift to his sister-in-law was a golden brooch or pendant depicting St George, adorned with sapphires, diamonds and pearls, while the King presented her with a golden crown set with diamonds and pearls.61 Soon afterwards, Constance took up residence at Hertford Castle, where her three Lancastrian stepchildren were sent to join her; in 1372, they shared a common chamber, or household, for which their father allocated 300 marks (33,471) annually to cover their expenditure. Henceforth, they would be attended and attired as befitted the children of a king.62 The appointment of Alyne Gerberge as a damoiselle to Constance63 suggests that she was still looking after Philippa of Lancaster. By now, Katherine Swynford and Philippa Chaucer were probably also part of the d.u.c.h.ess's household, and both are likely to have had their children with them. Once again, Katherine's duties probably involved helping to care for the ducal children, who must have known her well, and had perhaps welcomed her back warmly.

In March and April 1372, John of Gaunt made a generous settlement on his wife, a.s.signing her 1