Mistress of the Monarchy (26 page)

In August 1375, John was at Leicester
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with Katherine, and it was probably at this time that William Ferour, the Mayor of Leicester, spent 16s. (£226) on a gift of wine for ‘the Lady Katherine Swynford, mistress of the Duke of Lancaster’, doubtless in the hope of securing her patronage; this payment is recorded in the civic records for the year 1375–6.
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This approach by the Mayor is the first evidence that her position of influence with the Duke was becoming public knowledge. It also shows that the Mayor thought an appeal to Katherine would be more successful than one to the Duchess Constance; to this extent, as Professor Goodman points out, she had usurped the Duchess’s rightful place in Lancastrian affairs.
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Nevertheless, there is no evidence that she exploited or abused her influence. On the contrary, she seems to have avoided embroiling herself in politics, and kept very much in the background. Although there are very few known instances of her exercising any powers of patronage, the Leicester records show that she occasionally used her influence for the benefit of others, while there is evidence to suggest that if she did ask favours from the Duke, it was usually for her own family members, such as her brother-in-law, Geoffrey Chaucer, and her sister Philippa. But she was no Alice Perrers, feathering her nest at the Crown’s expense: no chronicler ever accused her of such greed and rapacity, nor of the bribery and corruption that would bring Alice down.

Certainly Katherine profited materially from her relationship with John of Gaunt, but never excessively. His recorded gifts to her demonstrate his generosity, his care for her welfare and his desire to please her; they made her wealthy, but not ostentatiously so, and they were hardly lavish compared to Alice Perrers’ ill-gotten gains. Nor did he abuse his political power or misappropriate public funds to indulge Katherine. In fact, she seems to have retained her autonomy as a widow and pursued her private
financial and other interests when she was not with her lover, which was relatively often.

It is reasonable to suppose that Katherine accompanied John when he moved to Kenilworth later in August, and that this was only one of many visits that she made to this imposing castle, which she must have come to know well.

Kenilworth, which lies four miles north of Warwick, was to be one of the most magnificent of the castles owned by John of Gaunt, who, by 1377, had begun building a sumptuous range of apartments and lodgings there. This massive and important stronghold, built of golden sandstone, dated from the early twelfth century, and had been extended and formidably fortified by King John — who surrounded it on three sides with a defensive lake called ‘the Mere’ — and Henry III, whose mighty keep still stands. In 1265, the castle had fallen to the latter after a nine-month siege during the Barons’ Wars, and in 1267, it had been granted to Henry’s younger son, Edmund Crouchback, founder of the House of Lancaster. Since then, it had remained one of the chief Lancastrian seats, and under John of Gaunt, it was to become a luxurious palace. He built the massive Perpendicular great hall, which still survives in a ruined state, and an extensive range of private apartments and domestic offices, also now ruined.
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John’s great hall, or ‘New Chamber’, which measures 90’ by 45’, was accessed at one end by an external processional stair leading up from the inner court to an imposing main doorway decorated with fine stone panels and carvings, and set within a vaulted porch. The other end of the hall was graced by an oriel window; in the privacy of its embrasure, which had its own fireplace, would be set the Duke’s table, where he would eat with his family and friends; Katherine must have sat at board with him here on many occasions. The rest of his household dined at trestle tables placed along the length of the hall, which was heated by two vast fireplaces of carved stone and lit by four huge traceried windows with stone seats in the alcoves beneath. Anyone sitting there reading or sewing — as Katherine might well have done — would have benefited from the natural light such windows afforded. The vast timber hammerbeam roof has long disappeared, as has the wooden floor of the hall, but much remains of the once-vaulted undercroft, which was used for storing wine and provisions. From here, a north-eastern doorway led to the three-storey service block known as the Strong Tower, which housed the kitchens, bakehouse, servants’ quarters and other domestic offices.

Adjacent to the great hall at the south-western end were the Duke’s apartments, accessed through the Saintlowe Tower; this range overlooked the Mere. It was here that his family, knights, esquires and, of course,
Katherine would have lodged with him. His great chamber, known as ‘the White Hall’, was a rectangular room located on the first floor; this was where he gave audiences and received guests, seated on a throne on a dais beneath a canopy of estate bearing the royal arms of Castile. Gaunt’s Tower, a four-storeyed edifice that lay beyond the chamber block and projected over the lake, contained his private lodgings, or lesser chamber, which could be reached via a spiral staircase leading from a door in the inner court, although it must surely have been possible to access them from the great chamber. Gaunt’s Tower also contained a chapel, and had garderobes on the ground and first floors. Outside was a garden, which was enclosed in September 1373,
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possibly to allow the Duke some privacy with his mistress, and along the causeway that now leads to a car park, there was a tiltyard.

Work on Kenilworth continued on and off until 1394, cost the Duke a princely fortune, and provided employment for numerous masons, carpenters, goldsmiths and embroiderers. In its finished state, it was the embodiment of its owner’s status, splendour and authority, which was doubtless his intention, and in later years it replaced the Savoy as the showpiece of the Lancastrian inheritance. The great hall, which has been called one of the finest fourteenth-century rooms in England, is said to have inspired Richard II’s remodelling of Westminster Hall in the 1390s.

In September, when John moved south to tour the West Country,
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Katherine returned to Kettlethorpe, and it is often erroneously claimed that she used her influence at this time to get the Fossdyke cleared.
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This, the oldest canal in England, had been constructed by the Romans around AD 120, to link the River Trent at Torksey to the River Witham at Lincoln, eleven miles away, and during the Middle Ages it had become a major waterway for the transport of wool from Nottingham, Hull, York and other places. But for thirty years now it had been silted up, and it was claimed that £1,000 (£282,562) had been lost in trade as a result. During the Michaelmas law term of 1375, a Lincoln jury had made representations about this, pointing out that local landowners such as ‘the Lady Katherine de Swynford’, whose manors and lordships abutted the Fossdyke, ‘ought and were wont to clean, empty and repair’ their own stretches of the dyke, according to an ancient rota; but clearly they had long since ceased to perform their responsibilities in this respect. The protest fell on deaf ears. On 15 May 1376, a commission of oyer and terminer was appointed at Westminster ‘on complaint by the citizens of Lincoln … that the dyke is now obstructed partly by riparian [i.e. riverside] owners [Katherine Swynford being one of them]
who have meadows and pastures on both sides of the dyke, taking across their cattle in summer to pasture, and also by grass growing therein in unusual quantities’.
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Far from agitating to have the canal cleared, Katherine and other landowners were taking advantage of it being silted up. Yet despite parliamentary intervention, nothing appears to have been done, for in 1384, another commission headed by John of Gaunt himself was appointed to solve the problem,
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but even he was not entirely successful, for efforts were still being made to have the Fossdyke cleared in 1518, and the problem was only finally solved by an Act of Parliament passed in 1670.

By the end of September, John had returned to the Savoy
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to prepare for yet another round of peace negotiations in Bruges. Having arranged for his three-year-old daughter Catalina to have her own chamber at Melbourne Castle, where she would be looked after by a Castilian lady called Juana Martyns,
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he departed with Constance for Bruges at the end of October 1375.
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Katherine was probably still at Kettlethorpe at this time.

John apparently took Constance with him because she was expecting his child; no doubt he relished the prospect of her bearing a son and heir to Castile while the eyes of all Europe were on Bruges. Prior to her confinement, the Duchess went on pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint-Adrien de Grammont,
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but the boy she bore late in the year at Ghent — another John of Gaunt — appears to have been sickly, and died young, possibly in November 1376. Constance would hardly have travelled abroad at full term, so her baby was probably born several weeks after her arrival in Flanders, in early December. In that case, she must have fallen pregnant just before John left for Bruges in early March.

Constance would not conceive again for nearly ten years, when there would be compelling political reasons to produce a son. Comparing this dismal record with that of Blanche of Lancaster, who bore seven children in nine years, and Katherine Swynford, who had at least four in the same time-span, it can only be concluded that conjugal relations between the Duke and Duchess were now either very infrequent or had ceased entirely, probably because of John’s passion for Katherine Swynford and Constance’s own antipathy. She seems to have been more preoccupied with her Castilian ambitions than with her husband, and she could not hope to compete with the other woman in his life, whose influence was so all-embracing.

John remained in negotiation at Bruges until at least 20 January 1376, then made a brief visit back to England before returning to the peace conference for the conclusion on 1 March of a new truce, which would prolong the first until April 1377 and bring hostilities to a halt.
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The
lavish ostentation, ‘rioting, revelling and dancing’ — all funded by public money — that attended John’s embassy attracted much criticism from the chroniclers, who suspected that he was only advocating peace in order to enrich himself.
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The Duke and Duchess sailed home at the end of March, and on 23 April John was at Westminster for the annual feast of the Knights of the Garter that Edward III hosted to mark St George’s Day. Five days later, what was to become known as the ‘Good’ Parliament met at Westminster, summoned because the King was in desperate need of money, and John of Gaunt found himself facing one of the worst crises of his career.

J
ohn of Gaunt was now the most hated and feared man in England.

‘Oh, unhappy and unfortunate Duke!’ fulminated Walsingham in 1376. ‘Oh! Those whom you should lead in war you betray by your treachery and cowardice, and those whom you should lead in peace by the example of good works you lead astray, dragging them to ruin!’ People of all ranks were suspicious and envious of the Duke’s vast wealth and power, his incomprehensible — to the insular English — foreign ambitions, and the trappings of sovereignty that underlined his kingly rank; churchmen abhorred his anti-clerical stance and his patronage of John Wycliffe; his perceived military failures, his staunch advocacy of a peace policy, and the recent truce he had negotiated outraged all those who felt that the English should be winning great victories over the French, as in the glory days of Edward III and the Black Prince; and the common people, long burdened by the crippling taxes levied to pay for no more than a series of humiliating losses in the war with France, blamed John for England’s misfortunes. This mounting resentment had been building for some time, and was now about to explode.

No Parliament had been called since November 1373, and such was the importance of this new session that the desperately sick Black Prince had himself carried to Westminster for it. Meanwhile, the City was loudly resonating with ‘a great murmur of the people’, and soon it became clear that the Commons were bent upon challenging the authority of the Crown itself, and that their chief targets were the corrupt influences about the King, foremost among them Alice Perrers, who were ‘neither loyal nor profitable to the kingdom’. This unprecedented attack was to appear dangerously radical to the politically conservative Duke, and his honourable but ill-judged attempts to protect his father’s interests were further to undermine his standing in the land.

Edward III was too infirm to attend Parliament. Thus it was that in May, the Commons dared to confront a ‘very ill-at-ease’ John of Gaunt in the House of Lords.
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They accused the government — and, by implication, John himself — of profiteering from the war, wasting public money and corrupt practices. The King, they insisted, must ‘live off his own’ in future, and not burden his people with heavy taxes. John of Gaunt was inwardly infuriated by the insolence of these ‘degenerate hedge-knights of tallow’, as he put it.

‘Do they think they are kings or princes of this realm?’ he raged in private. ‘Whence have they got their pride and arrogance? Have they forgotten how powerful I am? I will give them such a fright that they shall not provoke me again.’
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But such was the strength of parliamentary fervour that he had no choice other than to back down and graciously agree to an inquiry into the royal administration, along with the impeachment of allegedly corrupt courtiers and the banishment of Alice Perrers from court for having fleeced the King of up to £3,000 (£806,547) a year, to his great damage.
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Never before had a royal mistress suffered such public castigation. John saw this as an attack on monarchical authority itself, and his overriding priority was to crush it, but his transparent efforts to forestall these proceedings, and his highhanded attitude towards his adversaries, only served to antagonise them further.