Mistress of the Monarchy (31 page)

We can only conjecture that it was this episode that drove the Chaucers apart. What seems likely is that Geoffrey and Philippa separated on reasonably amicable terms. In the 1380s, it was he who usually went to the Exchequer twice a year to draw her annuity.
⁹⁰
She remained a member of Constance’s household, on very good terms with the Duke and Duchess.
⁹¹
However, her removal to Lincolnshire, although apparently primarily for personal reasons, came at a time when her sister’s relationship with the Duke had become notorious, and afforded her perhaps a welcome respite from the tensions in the Duchess’s chamber.

Philippa and Katherine now had much in common: both were essentially
femmes soles
, both had dedicated a daughter to God, both were rearing sons called Thomas who were of similar age, and both were an integral part of the Lancastrian social circle, Katherine especially so. But while she was the Duke’s mistress, Philippa loyally served the Duchess, and historians have conjectured that Philippa could only have looked on her sister with disapproval, and that her loyalties were painfully divided between Constance and Katherine. Yet if so, Philippa would hardly have chosen to go and live for some years with Katherine at this time and in these circumstances. It may have been a case of loving the sinner whilst deploring the sin, but her removal to Kettlethorpe perhaps reflects the need of the younger and distressed sister for the support and companionship of the elder, who had in the past demonstrated great concern for Philippa through the favours she had obtained for her and her husband. And Constance, regardless of her feelings towards Katherine Swynford, seems to have liked Philippa for her own sake; they were, after all, much of an age, and Philippa seems to have rendered excellent service to her mistress.

It may have been Geoffrey Chaucer who disapproved of Katherine, despite all the favours that her influence had procured for him. His disparaging remark about governesses with a past, and his panegyric lauding Pedro the Cruel may well reflect his opinion of his sister-in-law and his loyalty to Constance.
⁹²
In ‘The Man of Law’s Tale’, the heroine — tellingly called Constance — is a model of patience and piety who accepts ‘the will of
Christ’ in all the misfortunes and sufferings that are laid upon her.
⁹³
This too may be a comment on the tribulations and virtues of the Duchess Constance. Certainly Katherine does not feature largely — or features barely at all — in the surviving records of Chaucer’s life, and it may be that, after his separation from Philippa, he had as little to do with her as possible. His attitude towards her may have been a further source of discord between the Chaucers.

With Philippa in residence at Kettlethorpe, it would surely have been a lively household. When she was not in attendance on the Duchess, Philippa would have had her ten-year-old son with her. Thomas Swynford, probably a year older, and the young Beauforts were playmates for him. As there is no record of her marriage, we may suppose that Blanche Swynford, who would have been about fifteen in 1378, had already died, but possibly her sister Dorothy was still at home. John Beaufort was now about five, Henry possibly three and Joan not quite two. It would have been a chaotic household, with all the building works that were going on at this time, and of course the lady of the manor was often away. Katherine was probably with John when he was at Leicester Castle on 4 October, for on that day he issued letters patent permitting her to cut down oak trees at his manor of Enderby in Leicester Chase, ‘and to sell or carry this wood wherever she wishes, and use the profits for her own use’.
⁹⁴
It was probably used for the ongoing renovations at Kettlethorpe, which by now must have begun to look very imposing indeed; it was perhaps in this period that the great stone gateway was built.
⁹⁵
To all appearances, Katherine’s was now a lordly household, reflecting the wealth and social position of its mistress.

Katherine probably went home to supervise the new works she was planning when John rode south to Gloucester, where Wycliffe was allowed to address Parliament, which assembled there in late October. That was to be Wycliffe’s political swansong. The following year, ‘this second Satan’ would attack the sacrament of the Eucharist itself, whereupon the deeply orthodox Duke began to distance himself from his former protégé — ‘he was deceived, as were many others’.
⁹⁶
In 1380, Wycliffe was ordered not to preach, and the following year his heretical views on transubstantiation were condemned by the Church. He had just completed his translation of the Bible into English, but his works were all condemned and banned in May 1382. By then, John of Gaunt had severed all connections with him, and he had retired to Lutterworth, where he died of the effects of a stroke in 1384. His bones were exhumed and burned in 1419, under a heresy law that had not been in force in his lifetime.

Nevertheless, when Parliament, in 1395, proposed the burning of
Wycliffe’s Bible, John of Gaunt, with ‘great oaths’, spoke up in its defence. ‘Other nations have God’s law in their own mother tongue,’ he argued, ‘and we will have ours in English.’
⁹⁷
In this, he was way ahead of his time — it would be another 150 years before English Bibles were chained in churches for all to read.

After spending some months at the Savoy, John of Gaunt was again at Leicester in August 1379,
⁹⁸
probably enjoying the pleasures of the chase. But he was back in London before 12 September for Blanche’s obit at St Paul’s,
⁹⁹
where an elaborate iron grille had been set up around her new tomb.
¹⁰⁰
John must have left immediately after the obit for Kettlethorpe, where, only two days later, he made a grant to Katherine.
¹⁰¹

This was probably a fleeting visit, for John was not among the witnesses to a deed dated that same day, 14 September, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and issued at Kettlethorpe in the presence of the rector, Sir Robert de Northwood; in it, John de Dovdale of Chaworth granted to Katherine and her heirs ‘certain tenements he had in the town and fields of Kettlethorpe and Laughterton’. Some years later, on 25 July 1387, John de Sereby, citizen of Lincoln (who had been at her son’s baptism), granted to ‘Lady Katherine de Swynford, Lady of Kettlethorpe … all his rent which he had in Kettlethorpe, Laughterton and Fenton’.
¹⁰²
By using part of her substantial income to purchase small properties and plots of land in nearby villages, Katherine was prudently extending her holdings at Kettlethorpe and Coleby, and thus conserving and improving her son’s inheritance.

John was at Kenilworth from 27 October to the second week in November, doubtless to see how his extensive renovations were progressing; they were evidently causing a lot of disruption, because when the Duke came to Kenilworth for Christmas, he and his retinue had to lodge at Kenilworth Priory, where a floor was laid for dancing in the great chamber
¹⁰³
— surely an unwelcome intrusion in the monastic regime. During his sojourn at Kenilworth in the autumn, John had ordered the payment of moneys to Geoffrey Chaucer; he also, on 6 November, commanded his receiver in Lincolnshire to pay ‘our dear and well-beloved
damoiselle
’ Philippa Chaucer’s annuity.
¹⁰⁴
These orders may have been prompted by Katherine, who had perhaps accompanied her lover to Kenilworth. John was again at Kettlethorpe with Katherine from 14 to 16 November.
¹⁰⁵
By 17 November, he had ridden south to Newark.
¹⁰⁶

It is doubtful if Katherine spent the Christmas and New Year of 1379–80 with John at Kenilworth,
¹⁰⁷
for he would have presided over the festivities with the Duchess Constance for form’s sake, but Philippa
Chaucer was almost certainly of the company, for among John’s New Year gifts was a silver hanap (a cup with a lid) costing 31s.5d (£609) for her.
¹⁰⁸
On 2 January, a payment of 20s. (£368) was made to a messenger of Matilda de Montagu, Abbess of Barking, who had come to receive a gift for the Abbess from the Duke; it is tempting to specu-late that this messenger had brought a message from Margaret Swynford for her mother, and that a part of his handsome fee was intended for the young nun.
¹⁰⁹
Constance had moved to Hertford by 11 January 1380, while John, who had stayed at Kenilworth, later rode south to the Savoy, where he remained until March.
¹¹⁰

John was at Windsor on 1 April for the magnificent wedding of the King’s half-sister, Maud Holland, to Waleran, Count of St Pol.
¹¹¹
On the following day, he arranged for Catalina, his eight-year-old daughter by Constance, to be brought up in the household of Joan Burghersh, Lady Mohun, the widow of John, Baron Mohun, who had been a retainer of the Black Prince and had died in 1375. The child was taken to Lady Mohun on 8 June, and remained in her care until at least 1383, when the Duke paid £50 (£20,360) for her expenses.
¹¹²
It was quite usual for children of the aristocracy to be reared in a separate establishment, it being generally felt that parents might be too soft when it came to education and discipline.

Understandably, John did not show disrespect to his wife by placing her daughter with her two half-sisters under the governance of his mistress. However, he was now effectively living apart from Constance; on 12 May, at the Savoy, he ordered his receiver in Norfolk to pay 500 marks (£65,002) annually for her wardrobe and chamber expenses at Tutbury. In March 1381, he would augment this sum by a further 200 marks (£25,420), and then increase Constance’s original settlement of 1,000 marks per annum (worth £125,221 in 1381) to £1,000 (£375,662).
¹¹³
These increases may well reflect the increasing political importance of ‘his dear wife the Queen’, as his hopes for the Castilian throne grew more realistic; it may also have been in part the result of the pricking of the Duke’s conscience over his adultery with Katherine Swynford.

Meanwhile, on 15 April, at Kenilworth, he had handed over £100 ‘to Dame Katherine Swynford, governess of our daughters, Philippa and Elizabeth of Lancaster, for the expenses of their wardrobe and chamber for the past Easter term’.
¹¹⁴
As is becoming clear, references to Katherine in records dating from the late 1370s and early 1380s, although sparse, suggest that she was now a permanent fixture in the Duke’s life and that of his daughters, and that he seized every opportunity to have her with him.

* * *

John was based at the Savoy from May to July 1380. In May, the young Richard II, now thirteen, bound himself by treaty to marry Anne of Bohemia.
¹¹⁵
With talk of a royal marriage in the air, John now turned his attention to finding suitable spouses for his older children. On 24 June 1380, Elizabeth of Lancaster, now a spirited young woman of seventeen, was wed to John Hastings, third Earl of Pembroke, at Kenilworth;
¹¹⁶
from Elizabeth’s point of view, this union was not entirely satisfactory, for her new husband was just eight years old. It is likely that Katherine Swynford, who had played an important role in Elizabeth’s life, was involved in the preparations for her wedding, and was present. Afterwards, Elizabeth had her own household as Countess of Pembroke, and no longer needed Katherine’s care.

Elizabeth had grown into a headstrong and extroverted girl, very different from her serious older sister. Her tomb effigy in Burford Church, Shropshire, shows a tall, slender woman with long fair hair and markedly Plantagenet features; evidently she favoured her father in looks. While she was intelligent and literate, dancing and singing were her great talents, and she so excelled at the former that she would one day be awarded a prize for being the best dancer at Richard II’s court. Richard thought well of her, and in 1383 pardoned a murderer at her instigation.
¹¹⁷
But although Katherine instilled in Elizabeth her own love of learning and literature, and a sense of piety that would become more evident as she grew older,
¹¹⁸
time was to prove that she had not been entirely successful in her role as governess, because the example she had set in her own conduct with Elizabeth’s father proved the most unsuitable role model for an impressionable girl who was driven by her own youthful passions, which marriage to a child nine years her junior could not satisfy.

It seems odd that the Duke should marry off his second daughter before his first, Philippa, who at twenty was quite old to remain unwed, but John possibly hoped to use her as a diplomatic pawn in his bid for the Castilian throne. Marrying her to one of his allies could secure invaluable political support.

With Philippa, Katherine seems to have been more successful as a mentor. John’s eldest daughter had grown into an amiable, literate and pious young woman who liked to read psalms and edifying devotional texts, yet she also had the skills that befitted her to grace any European court, and was an avid participator in courtly games of love. Before 1386, the poet Eustace Deschamps composed a
ballade
entitled
Des Deux Ordres de la Feuille at de la Fleur
(Of the Two Orders of the Leaf and the Flower), in which he describes a popular May Day intellectual pastime in which courtiers declared themselves partisans of one or the other, the two symbols being regarded as either male or female. The finer details of this play have
been lost in time, but Philippa, Deschamps tells us, was the chief patroness of the Order of the Flower.
¹¹⁹
Unlike her sister, though, her life would never be tainted with scandal.

Philippa’s tomb effigy depicts a lady with small, delicate features — did she take after her mother? — and a long, graceful neck. The sixteenth-century Portuguese genealogy in the British Library, in which Queen Constance’s image (already discussed) appears, shows Philippa with reddish hair and a fuller face, although this may be a fanciful representation.