Mistress of the Monarchy (41 page)

In the spring of 1390, seventeen-year-old John Beaufort — ‘a great favourite with his father’
⁹²
— was among the thirty English knights who distinguished themselves tilting against the champions of France at the famous international jousts of St Inglevert near Calais; his father had put his name forward for this the previous November. His half-brother Thomas Swynford also took part, and the Duke may have nominated him too. They were in company with that passionate jouster Henry of Derby, John Holland and Henry Percy’s heir and namesake, who bore the nickname Hotspur. The English contingent, lauded as ‘the bravest of all the foreigners’, returned home in early May,
⁹³
but only days later, Henry of Derby and Thomas Swynford departed for Calais, hell-bent on going to fight the Turks in Tunisia in what was known as the Barbary Crusade. John of Gaunt was in Calais to see them off,
⁹⁴
but being refused a safe-conduct through France, they decided instead to respond to a call for aid from the Teutonic Knights, who were fighting their own crusade against the heathen of Eastern Europe, and raced back to England to take up what they plainly regarded as a worthier cause.

Katherine, like many mediaeval mothers, was quickly having to accustom herself to her sons going off to fight in foreign parts, for John Beaufort, meanwhile — partly financed by his father
⁹⁵
—
had
been permitted to travel through France with four knights towards Genoa to join the Barbary Crusade, in which he was to serve under the French Duke of Bourbon; in designating Beaufort leader of the English contingent, Bourbon tacitly acknowledged his high status.
⁹⁶
In December, after the Christian forces failed to take Al-Mahdiya, near Tunis, young John returned to England to be reunited with his family.

With John of Gaunt in such favour, the fortunes of Geoffrey Chaucer too were in the ascendant. In July 1389, when Richard was urging the Duke to return to England, Chaucer had been appointed Clerk of the King’s Works, an important post that gave him overall responsibility for improvements to royal property and the building of new royal residences. By 1390, he was supervising a large workforce employed on
the restoration of the royal chapel at Windsor Castle; it was probably in that year that his precocious son Lewis was sent up to Oxford, where he may have kept company with his cousin, Henry Beaufort.

By September 1391, Chaucer had been replaced — for reasons we don’t know — as Clerk of the King’s Works, for at that time we find him serving as deputy forester in the royal park at North Petherton in Somerset (where in 1394–5 his son Thomas was joint petitioner in a lawsuit with his new wife, Maud Burghersh), and probably writing his most famous work,
The Canterbury Tales
, which was almost certainly inspired by the
Decameron
of Boccaccio (from which some of the tales were lifted) and a pilgrimage Chaucer had made to St Thomas à Becket’s shrine at Canterbury in 1388. He had evidently been in financial difficulties for some time, but in 1394, the King granted him a life pension of £20 (£8,750), which eased matters a little, although he was to apply for advances on his income several times until 1399, which suggests he continued to struggle to make ends meet. Chaucer remained in his post at North Petherton until at least 1398, and living so far away, he is hardly likely to have had much contact with Katherine Swynford, but in the years to come, John of Gaunt and Henry of Derby were to show favour to him and his son, which may have owed more than a little to her influence.

John of Gaunt accompanied Henry of Derby and Thomas Swynford back to England, and said his farewells to them at Hertford Castle. With Mary de Bohun — again pregnant — now of the company, Henry and his companions rode north to Lincolnshire, where they made offerings in Lincoln Cathedral for the success of their holy venture. It would be surprising if, while in Lincoln, they had not visited — or even lodged with — Katherine Swynford, and taken their leave of her. Around 19 July 1390, hugely backed by the Duke to the tune of £4,000 (£1,607,802), Henry, with Thomas Swynford and a large company of knights, esquires and servants, took ship from Boston for Prussia and Lithuania.
⁹⁷
Some weeks later, Mary de Bohun gave birth to her fourth son, Humphrey, naming him after her father.

As his son sailed away, John of Gaunt was lavishly entertaining King Richard and Queen Anne to a great hunting party at Leicester Castle, where he strove to bring about a reconciliation between the King and the former Lords Appellant. There is no mention of Katherine or the Beauforts among the many bishops, lords and ladies described by Knighton as being present, and Christmas that year saw John at Eltham Palace, where the King returned his hospitality.
⁹⁸

The following year, however, evidence emerges to suggest that Katherine and John had rekindled their relationship. The Duke’s household check-rolls for the year 1391–2 fortunately survive,
⁹⁹
and they show that all four
Beauforts were now intermittently in attendance on him and based in his household; John Beaufort was stabling six horses there. The rolls also reveal that Katherine Swynford was stabling twelve horses at the ducal residences at this time, which not only proves that she and John had renewed their acquaintance, but also strongly suggests that she was again occupying a substantially important place in his life. It shows too that she was well attended whenever she came to visit the Duke, as became a lady of high standing. 12d (£13.82) per day was allocated to her while she was lodging in his household, compared with 6d (£6.91) each for the Beauforts and 4d (£4.61) for Henry of Derby. This is unlikely to have been for their own keep, but for that of their horses.

But she was not residing with John permanently at this time — she rented the Chancery until at least 1393
¹⁰⁰
— and her intermittent presence in his establishment must have been in part due to her desire to see her children. There was no question that it was greatly to their benefit to live in the household of so great a lord — Katherine would have recognised that. She had clearly brought them up well, and it had perhaps been decided long before that the Beauforts would come to their father on his return from his Castilian venture.

Considering that John and Constance were now living apart, that he was aged beyond his years but perhaps not sufficiently to dampen the old Adam in him, and that they would marry in due course, it would be logical to conclude that he and Katherine had grown close again. Constance’s withdrawal had left them free to rekindle their relationship, and it is possible that they had become lovers once more, although if this was the case, they must have been very discreet about it, for Katherine was openly visiting the Duke, attended by an entourage, without attracting adverse comment. Although there is no hint of scandal in the chronicles, it is clear from what Froissart, an eyewitness at the court of Richard II, states, that in 1396, people at court were saying that the Duke had married the woman who had been his concubine for a long time, ‘inside and outside his marriage’, which must mean after it ended in 1394, since we have established that their liaison began after John had married Constance. Elsewhere, Froissart says that John loved and maintained Katherine after Constance’s death. This all strongly suggests that a sexual relationship between them was regarded as an established fact, and not only in the distant past. Katherine was now about forty-one, young enough to bear children, but old enough to have passed the menopause, so pregnancy might not have been a risk.

Of course, this may be putting too modern an interpretation on their relationship: John had twice publicly repented of his former life, and promised to God the complete amendment of his ways, and Katherine
had not only accepted his renunciation of their love in good part, but had perhaps bought herself a papal indulgence by donating funds to his ‘crusade’. That all suggests a sincere degree of repentance on both sides. Each of them may have been reluctant to prejudice the state of grace they had reached by backsliding into immorality, and they might well have considered the effect that discovery of a sexual affair might have on their maturing children and their wider families. On the other hand, aristocratic society took a lenient view of extramarital affairs, so any evidence that the Duke and Katherine Swynford were once again lovers would probably have been accepted with tolerance in courtly circles. And privately, within the family — and even by the King, whose treatment of Katherine proves he was aware she was more than the average royal mistress — it may have been known that if the opportunity ever arose, John intended to marry Katherine.

It may be too that the horror John had clearly felt in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt was now a distant memory. He and Katherine were both heart-free and no longer young. Maybe they decided to seize the chance of happiness while they could. And, so long as discretion was maintained, who could have blamed them?

In the spring of 1391, the Duke was probably at Lincoln — he dated a letter there on 5 March, omitting the year, to the ruler of Lithuania, asking him to release two of Henry’s knights,
¹⁰¹
so the letter almost certainly belongs to 1391. That same month, he arranged for Gascon wine to be sent to Katherine in Lincoln by cart from London.
¹⁰²
Perhaps he had visited her at the Chancery, and wished to reward her hospitality; perhaps there was more to it than that. He was back at Westminster when Henry of Derby and Thomas Swynford returned from their crusading adventure (and a winter spent enjoying the hospitality of the Teutonic Knights) around 30 April; John Beaufort was there to greet them when they disembarked at Hull.
¹⁰³
It was probably after their return that the Duke invited Thomas Swynford to serve him as one of his chamber knights; his presence in the Duke’s household is attested to by the surviving checkrolls.
¹⁰⁴
On 12 May 1393, as a signal mark of royal favour, Richard II would grant an annuity of 100 marks (£15, 179) to Thomas and his wife Jane.
¹⁰⁵

As we have seen, John of Gaunt was well aware of the pressing need to make suitable provision for his bastard children, and in December 1390, the King licensed him, along with Sir Thomas Percy and the Lancastrian receiver in Northamptonshire, to grant the manors of Overstone, Maxey, Eydon and a half share in Brampton Parva,
¹⁰⁶
together worth £88 (£35,372) a year, to John Beaufort, with reversion to Thomas and Joan
Beaufort. Henry Beaufort’s name is missing from the reversions because he was already earmarked for a career in the Church.
¹⁰⁷

John of Gaunt spent the Christmas of 1391 at Hertford, bringing his minstrels with him.
¹⁰⁸
Katherine and their daughter Joan were among the guests, as were Henry of Derby and his family, and at New Year, Henry gave gifts to Katherine and Joan. Katherine received a gold ring set with a diamond, and Joan ‘a pair of paternosters’ (rosary beads) of coral and gold.
¹⁰⁹
Joan was soon to marry Sir Robert Ferrers, who at nineteen was about four years her senior; the date of their wedding is not known, but it had certainly taken place by 30 September 1394, and is likely to have been celebrated in 1392, because their daughter Elizabeth is described as being aged eighteen and more in 1411: she had thus been born in 1393 at the latest. Joan also had another daughter, Mary,
¹¹⁰
probably named in honour of Mary de Bohun, whose patronage Joan had long enjoyed. After their wedding, Joan and her husband remained in John of Gaunt’s house-hold.
¹¹¹

In the spring of 1392, John of Gaunt was at Amiens negotiating with the French King, Charles VI,
¹¹²
who hailed him as the most revered knight in Christendom.
¹¹³
The Duke ‘took the view that the war had lasted long enough and that a good peace would benefit the whole of Christendom’,
¹¹⁴
but all he could secure was a year’s truce. While he was away, Mary de Bohun bore a daughter, Blanche, at Henry of Derby’s manor house at Peterborough, a residence she seems to have favoured.
¹¹⁵
The Duke returned to England in April, and before June, thanks to his influence, John Beaufort was appointed one of the King’s household knights on an income of 100 marks (£13,903) per annum — an acknowledgement of the younger John’s proven military expertise.
¹¹⁶
Soon afterwards, Henry of Derby departed on another crusade, to Prussia this time,
¹¹⁷
and Henry Beaufort returned to Queen’s College, Oxford, where he would complete a degree in theology in the summer of 1393.
¹¹⁸
On 23 November 1392, Constance’s pleasure-loving sister, Isabella, Duchess of York, died;
¹¹⁹
she was ‘buried by the King’s command at his manor of Langley, in the friars’ church’,
¹²⁰
where Richard II himself would one day be temporarily laid to rest.

Katherine’s lease on the Chancery is known to have run until 1393 at least, and she may not have vacated the property until 1396.
¹²¹
There is no evidence of her role in the Duke’s busy life at this time, nor that she was a guest in the Lancastrian household at Christmas 1392. References to her children are rare, but all were comfortably settled by 1393: John in the royal household, Henry at university, Joan married, and Thomas with his father; further evidence of family solidarity emerged in December of that year, when Henry of Derby — just back from his crusade and a long
pilgrimage to the Holy Land — ordered new suits of armour to be sent to Hertford Castle for the use of himself and Thomas Beaufort in the jousts he planned to hold there. The Duke joined his family at Hertford for the Christmas festivities of 1393, and this time Katherine Swynford
was
among the company. Henry presented his wife and ‘Dame Katherine Swynford’ with four lengths of luxurious white damask silk at 78s.4d (£1,778) each.
¹²²
Her being given the same gift — and costly material — as the Countess strongly suggests that Katherine was now a very prominent member of the Duke’s circle.