Mistress of the Monarchy (27 page)

John was certainly in touch with Katherine Swynford during this tumultuous time; she had perhaps joined him at the Savoy after his return from Bruges, and she probably conceived another child during that spring. Preoccupied though he was with the tortuous affairs of Parliament, John yet found time, on 15 May, to appoint a commission to address the matter of the draining of the Fossdyke. His aim may have been to mollify the citizens of Lincoln, while at the same time protecting Katherine’s own interests.

The Black Prince had had himself carried into Parliament, but he had fainted several times and been forced to withdraw to his sickbed at Kennington Palace. Claims that he supported the Commons derive mainly from the overimaginative Walsingham and have been greatly overstated: he was far too ill to play any political role, and his overriding concern was to safeguard the rights of his nine-year-old son, Richard of Bordeaux. For six years now, the Prince had suffered the most debilitating and humiliating illness, with a recurrent ‘flux, both of seed and blood, which two infirmities made him so feeble that his servants took him very often for dead’.
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On 7 June 1376, aware that he was dying, he made his will, and his father, his wife and his brothers gathered around his bed ‘amid great lamentations. No one there
could keep from tears’, and there was ‘great desolation at the sorrow of the King taking leave of his son forever’.
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The Black Prince died the following day, Trinity Sunday, leaving young Richard of Bordeaux as the heir to the English throne. The Prince was later buried in a magnificent tomb executed by Henry Yevele in Canterbury Cathedral.

The Black Prince’s death left John of Gaunt as the ailing Edward III’s chief counsellor and hence the most powerful man in the land. ‘The King no longer wished to be guided through his lords assembled in Parliament, and so he had recourse to his son, John of Gaunt, to guide himself and the realm. Until the death of the King, the Duke acted as governor and ruler of the kingdom.’
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The general feeling was that John was too powerful, while some feared that he had sinister designs on the Crown itself. Walsingham claims that during the Good Parliament, John demanded that the French Salic Law, which barred women from succeeding, or transmitting a claim, to the throne, be introduced into England.
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This would effectively have removed from the succession the heirs of his elder brother Lionel, who had left one daughter, Philippa, now the wife of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, by whom she had four children. The implication was that John wanted to be acknowledged heir presumptive after Richard of Bordeaux. For Walsingham, that was a step too near the throne, and therefore suspect, and he tells us that the Commons rejected the Duke’s petition, much to the triumphant glee of the Earl of March. But this episode may just be one of Walsingham’s imaginative calumnies, for it is not referred to in other chronicles. However, Parliament did take the precautions of having Richard brought before it and acknowledged as heir apparent, and of appointing a council of peers to ensure good government, designating several of their number to attend upon the Prince and protect him from his dangerous uncle.

Sadly for the Duke’s reputation, it is Walsingham’s so-called ‘Scandalous Chronicle’ (his
Chronicon Angliae
) that records most of the events of this time. It is hopelessly biased. The waspish and vituperative Walsingham, incensed at, and deeply suspicious of, John’s patronage of the increasingly outspoken anti-clerical Wycliffe, went out of his way to record — and doubtless embroider — every evil bruit he had heard concerning the Duke. He asserted that John was a traitor to his country and his House, guilty of underhand intrigue, bribery and murder; that he was a wicked uncle, intriguing to assassinate Prince Richard, or plotting with the French King to have the boy declared a bastard; that his military campaigns had failed because of his cowardice and corruption; that he led an immoral life — the only accusation founded on fact — and had treated his first wife shamefully. But if
Walsingham knew that the Duke had a mistress, he clearly did not at this time know her name, for if he had he would surely have mentioned it. He resurrected the old calumny that, back in 1362, John had had Blanche’s sister, Matilda of Lancaster, poisoned so that he could claim her inheritance. No accusation was too vile or far-fetched to be levelled at the hapless Duke, and Walsingham was to continue this relentless campaign of character assassination until 1388. The sad thing was that many people were prepared to believe his allegations, with the consequence that John of Gaunt became the scapegoat for all the evils and insecurities that were plaguing the realm.

There is absolutely no evidence that John had sinister designs on the throne. He had given his oath to his dying brother loyally to serve Richard of Bordeaux, and he was always to honour it. He could indeed have challenged Richard’s legitimacy, given Joan of Kent’s chequered matrimonial history, but to his credit, he made no attempt to do so. Nor would the Black Prince have made his ‘very dear and well-beloved brother of Spain’
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his chief executor had he believed that his son had anything to fear from John: this appointment, like so much else, bespeaks a deep respect and trust between the brothers.

There appears to have been a keen mutual regard between John and his widowed sister-in-law and cousin, Joan of Kent — which there surely would not have been had the shrewd Princess for a moment entertained any suspicions of John’s intentions. The welfare of the young heir was a matter of importance to them both: John clearly felt a strong sense of responsibility towards Richard, for he had sworn to protect him, and he had an affection for the boy as his revered brother’s son. An interest in Wycliffe’s teachings was another common bond with the Princess.
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Soon after the Black Prince’s death, John saw to it that Joan’s dower rights were confirmed, ensuring her financial security, while she, on her part, was to prove warmly supportive of him in the months to come. Lavish New Year’s gifts to her are recorded in
John of Gaunt’s Register
.

On 10 July, Parliament had the temerity to refuse the Crown’s request for funds, and in retaliation, an angry Edward III had it dissolved that same day. Now, however, he ‘wholly laid down the government of the kingdom and put it in the hands of the Duke, allowing him to do all he wanted’.
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John of Gaunt became effectively the uncrowned ruler of England, and before the month was out, his overriding influence would be made manifest, as he firmly asserted his authority and began steadily reversing and undoing all the work that Parliament had done, high-handedly reinforcing the supremacy of the Crown and making
many enemies in the process, yet at the same time establishing himself as the supreme champion and defender of royal power.

John then rode north to Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, probably with Katherine in his train, and it was there, on 25 July, that he granted her the wardship and marriage of the heiress of Bertram de Sauneby, in recognition of the ‘good and agreeable’ service she had rendered, and continued to render, ‘to our dear daughters’.
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Again, this grant may mark a new pregnancy.
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When John returned to London in the early autumn, ‘he permitted the King to receive back into grace many who had been perpetually banished from his presence’:
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the courtiers displaced by Parliament were pardoned and restored to their former places, while Alice Perrers hastened back to the side of a grateful Edward III. On 7 October, the ailing King made his will and named John of Gaunt as his chief executor.
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Nine councillors were dismissed. William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and founder of Winchester School and New College, Oxford, had been active in leading the clerical opposition to the Crown in Parliament, and was to prove a lifelong enemy of John Wycliffe. Wykeham had been dismissed as Chancellor in 1371, but recalled by the Good Parliament. He typified the career churchmen so detested by Wycliffe, while John of Gaunt was determined to target the wealth of the Church, which enjoyed immunity from taxation, and was incensed that Wykeham had supported Parliament to the detriment of the King. Thus it may have been the Duke who prompted Wycliffe to preach against Wykeham in London. But the new Bishop of London, William Courtenay, a young aristocrat of great ability and energy, was a supporter of Wykeham, and deplored John’s perceived anti-clericalism, while the Londoners themselves had their own grievances against the Duke: they resented his interference in the City, believing that he cherished ‘an ancient hatred’ against their jealously guarded liberties. In actuality, John was keen to protect the interests of struggling artisans and small craftsmen in the face of the financial might and monopolies wielded by the wealthy merchants and trade guilds.

In October, still relentlessly moving against his enemies, the Duke accused William of Wykeham of misappropriating public funds, and presided over the judicial proceedings taken against him; on 17 November, Wykeham was stripped of his temporalities and banished from court.
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It was perhaps around this time that the Duke’s infant son by Constance died,
¹⁶
a tragedy that must have hit John hard.

That same month, Walsingham claims, John attempted to chasten the Earl of March by ordering him to Calais, but the Earl refused to go, so he was forced to resign his office of Marshal of England, which was
assigned by John of Gaunt on 1 December to his cousin Henry, Lord Percy,
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one of the foremost northern barons, in a successful attempt to buy the latter’s loyalty. What is more likely is that March resigned the marshalship because he was needed in Ireland.
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However, Peter de la Mare, Speaker of the Commons during the Good Parliament,
was
a target of the Duke’s wrath: he was sent to prison. In January, Adam Houghton, Bishop of St David’s, a friend of the Duke, and of his first wife, Blanche, was appointed Chancellor of England. In his prologue to
Piers Plowman
, William Langland refers scathingly to the ‘rout of rats’ by ‘a cat of the court’ — John of Gaunt — who

Meanwhile, on 20 November, in belated response to the urgings of the Commons in the Good Parliament, Richard of Bordeaux had been created Prince of Wales. On Christmas Day, the King hosted a great feast in Westminster Hall, at which all the peers, led by John of Gaunt, knelt in turn and solemnly swore allegiance to Richard as the heir to the throne; then the boy was placed next to his grandfather at table, above the Duke and the King’s other children.
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This was a tactical move, no doubt orchestrated by John himself, to demonstrate that he was no threat to Richard but loyally supported him as heir to the throne. On 25 January, further underlining his commitment, John of Gaunt and his brothers attended a great open-air entertainment put on by the Londoners for the Prince, with mummers in fantastic costumes parading by torchlight, and prizes to delight a young boy.
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It was during that turbulent year of 1376–7 that Katherine Swynford received her first recorded payment, of £50 (£13,442), for the wardrobe and chamber expenses of Philippa of Lancaster. The Duke also arranged for her to be paid £100 (£28,885) a year in equal portions, at Easter and Michaelmas, to meet these expenses, for which she was to issue letters of acquittance under her seal
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— which sadly does not survive. This grant suggests that she was caring for her charges throughout the tumultuous period of the Good Parliament and its aftermath; Elizabeth, as the younger daughter, would have shared her sister’s chamber. The Duke ordered these payments to be made to William Oke, the clerk of his Great Wardrobe, so perhaps both governess and charges were in residence at the Savoy for much of the period. John’s readiness to entrust such large sums to Katherine demonstrates his confidence in her integrity and her financial acumen.

The closeness and family solidarity increasingly and enduringly demonstrated between the Lancastrian children, the Swynfords, the Beauforts and the Chaucers suggests they had all known each other from childhood, so it is quite likely that Katherine had her own children with her when she was acting as governess to the princesses, and that the Chaucer children were in evidence too, in Constance’s household with their mother. It is not beyond the bounds of probability that Katherine’s royal charges sometimes came to stay with her at Kettlethorpe, just as they sojourned from time to time in other households. These arrangements meant that all the children grew up in an environment in which learning, literature, poetry, religion, the arts and intellectual debate were strong elements, and that they would have absorbed those influences from their infancy, even the girls being encouraged to participate, for John of Gaunt was the most enlightened of mediaeval men in that respect, and Katherine was herself a cultivated and intelligent woman. Furthermore, it is obvious that John’s legitimate children were fond of Katherine, and readily accepted her children by their father as their half-siblings, even embracing her Swynford children within the family circle.

The effects of such an upbringing are apparent in the success that all these children were to achieve in later life. That success, and the establishing of close and harmonious relationships within what could have been a highly dysfunctional family, must largely be a tribute not only to John of Gaunt’s forceful character and influence, but also to Katherine’s tact, humanity and obvious gift for getting the best out of people.

All the evidence suggests that Katherine and John were good and caring parents, whose children grew up to love and respect them. Judging by the gifts that attended their arrival, the births of the Beauforts were welcomed by the Duke, who must have seen them as a means of extending his affinity and influence. But there was more to it than that. John, whose devotion to his offspring by Katherine was commented upon by Froissart, was to prove diligent in securing for them a place in society that befitted their noble birth, and in promoting their interests, whilst cautiously ensuring that these did not infringe upon the rights of his legitimate heirs, a policy that would have pre-empted any jealousy on the part of the latter. As for Katherine, ‘she loved the Duke of Lancaster and the children she had with him, and she showed it’.
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