Mistress of the Monarchy (62 page)

1
Wylie

2
Brook; Lejeune. See Genealogical Table 1, which is compiled from numerous sources.

3
Gilles Rigaud de Roeulx, who died in 1308, was a grandson of Eustace IV, Sire de Roeulx, and nephew of Eustace V. By his marriage to Isabeau de Ligne, Lady of Montreuil, he was the father of seven children, including Eustace VI, Fastre and Gilles. It has been suggested that this second Gilles may have been Katherine’s grandfather, who was baptised Gilles but usually bore the nickname Paon. This is unlikely, because the arms of the lords of Roeulx, and thereby Gilles’s eldest son, Eustace VI de Roeulx, were ‘or, three lions gules’, and as a younger son, Paon would have borne the same arms differenced, which he did not. Cook: ‘Chaucerian Papers’; Perry: ‘Judy Perry’s Katherine Swynford Coat of Arms’; (
www.geocities.com
);
The Wijnbergen Armorial
. Turton (
Plantagenet Ancestry
) failed to find genealogical evidence to link Paon with the lords of Roeulx.

4
His name is spelt Paon in the
Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut
and by Froissart. Jean Froissart, one of the greatest of mediaeval chroniclers, was born in Hainault and came to England in 1361, where he was ‘brought up in the court of the noble King Edward the Third, and of Queen Philippa his wife, and among their children’. In 1362, he was appointed one of the clerks of the chamber to the Queen, his countrywoman. He left England in 1366 and accompanied the Black Prince on a campaign in Gascony. Although he remained nominally in Queen Philippa’s service until 1369, he did not return to the English court until 1395, when he met Richard II. He would have known John of Gaunt, and probably also Katherine Swynford, whom he would have found interesting because she too was a Hainaulter. Froissart’s chronicles are vividly written, but although they
make for entertaining reading, especially in their repetition of court gossip, their accuracy cannot be relied upon, chiefly because he wrote mainly from memory, or relied on hearsay, and has been proved wrong in several instances.

5
For Paon’s descent, see Brook.

6
Ibid. The lion was the heraldic lion of Hainault.

7
Speght; Rietstrap; ‘The Visitation of the County of Warwick’

8
‘Inventories of Plate, Vestments etc.’

9
Howard

10
Galway: ‘Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer’. ‘Paonnet’ is not a diminutive form — that would be ‘Paoncel’ or ‘Paonciel’ — and may be just an affectionately extended nickname.

11
Notably Froissart

12
Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut

13
Perry

14
Galway: ‘Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer’

15
Calendar of Patent Rolls

16
Cook: ‘Chaucerian Papers’

17
Galway: ‘Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer’; Hardy

18
Several genealogical sites on the internet give names for Paon’s wife (a few even ludicrously calling her ‘Mrs de Roët’!) but none cites any contemporary source wherein their claims can be substantiated. Some identify her as ‘Chenerailles Bonneuil (1315–72)’, but these are names of places rather than people: there are four places called Chenerailles or Chenerilles in France, and seven places called Bonneuil. The name Chenerailles does appear as a name in French genealogies, but without specific sources being cited, it is impossible to pursue this claim further. See, for example,
www.goldrush.com

19
See, for example, Turton;
www.childsfamily.com
;
dannyreagan.com
;
www.rootsweb.com

20
Some internet websites state that Katherine’s mother was Katherine d’Avesnes, a sister of William III, Count of Hainault (
c
.1286–1337), father of Queen Philippa, and therefore a daughter of John II d’Avesnes, Count of Hainault (1247–1304) by Philippine, daughter of Henry II, Count of Luxembourg. There are two problems with this claim: first, Katherine is nowhere listed with William III’s known sisters, Margaret, Alice, Isabella, Jeanne, Marie and Matilda, and second, if she was born at the latest by 1304, the year her father died, she is hardly likely to have borne a child, Katherine, around 1350. Others assert that Katherine d’Avesnes was the daughter, not the sister, of Count William III. That would make her Queen Philippa’s sister, and Katherine Swynford the Queen’s niece, something disapproving chroniclers would surely have commented on, because such a relationship would have placed Katherine and John of Gaunt, Philippa’s son, firmly within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity — as would also have been the case
if Katherine’s mother had been the Queen’s aunt. When applying for a dispensation to marry Katherine, John of Gaunt did not cite such an impediment. Furthermore, William III is recorded as having had six or seven daughters, Sybilla, Margaret, Philippa, Joan, Agnes, Isabella and perhaps Elizabeth, who in 1375 died a nun at St Leonard’s Abbey, Bromley, Middlesex (see Manly:
Some New Light on Chaucer
).

21
It has recently been suggested that Paon married one Jeanne de Lens. There is a record of Simon Lalaing, Lord of Quievrain and Hordaing, and Bailiff of Hainault from 1368–60, marrying the daughter of Gilles de Roeulx, Lord of Écaussines by Jeanne de Lens, who was possibly a relative of the Lord of Ligne. In 1414, Jacqueline, daughter of a lord of Lalaing, was made a prebendary of the abbey of St Waudru in Mons, like Paon’s own daughter Elizabeth more than half a century earlier. There is nothing conclusive here. The arms of Simon Lalaing do not incorporate those of Rouelx or Roët, and there were at this time several members of the Roeulx family called Gilles; genealogical records are incomplete, and any one of them could have married a Jeanne de Lens; Gilles Rigaud de Roeulx married Alice de Ligne, and his son married Isabeau de Ligne. Nor is Paon anywhere referred to, especially by the knowledgeable Froissart, as the Lord of Ecaussines. The St Waudru’s ‘connection’ is probably purely coincidental: one would expect to find daughters of these local lords and gentlefolk entering this prestigious abbey. See Perry: ‘Katherine Swynford’ (
katherineswynford.blogspot.com
)

22
Galway: ‘Walter Roët and Philippa Chaucer’

23
Froissart

24
Weever. A king of arms was a herald with expert knowledge of the laws of arms and aristocratic pedigrees, whose chief responsibility was to ensure that coats of arms were correctly awarded and borne. His was an increasingly important function in a world in which kings and lords were obsessively preoccupied with chivalry and heraldry. A king of arms also played a diverse ceremonial role, officiating and umpiring at tournaments, or serving as an envoy in time of war.

25
His appointment would appear to be borne out by a grant of
c
.1334 from the ‘King of Arms of the Duchy of Guienne, Sergeant of Arms’ to two brothers surnamed Andrew, which bears a drawing of a seal bearing three plain silver wheels, the arms of Paon de Roët. Thomas Speght, who in 1598 published the works of Chaucer with biographical details, states that he had it on the authority of a sixteenth-century herald, Robert Glover, that Paon was Guienne King of Arms; doubtless Glover too had seen the tomb inscription. Apart from the latter, the grant of
c
.1334 is the only fourteenth-century source to identify Paon as Guienne King of Arms, although there is some disputed evidence that the post of Guienne King of Arms existed sporadically from the late thirteenth to the late fifteenth century; during the latter period, its holder was apparently little more
than a glorified herald. Doubt has been cast, however, on the authenticity of documents dating the office from the reign of Edward I, and if they are indeed forgeries, then there is no historical evidence beyond the grant and inscription cited above for the existence of a Guienne King of Arms before the reign of Henry VI (1422–61). It is on record, however, that during the fourteenth century, several new kings of arms were appointed, among them Windsor, Norroy, Surroy and Clarencieux, so it is not beyond the bounds of probability that Guienne was at that time a new creation. ‘The Visitation of the County of Warwick’; Crow and Olsen; Goodman:
Katherine Swynford
; Ruud; McKisack; Brewer; Howard

26
Froissart

27
Ibid.

28
Ibid.

29
McKisack

30
Cited by Lettenhove, introduction to Froissart

31
A prebend was a member of the chapter of a monastery or convent. This prebend had become vacant due to the death of one Beatrix de Wallaincourt.

32
Galway: ‘Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer’

33
Newton

34
The Vatican suppressed St Katherine’s feast day in 1969.

35
Weever incorrectly calls her Anne.

36
Weever

37
Lucraft:
Katherine Swynford
. Lucraft believes that when Thomas Speght, the Elizabethan editor of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer (whom Philippa was to marry), referred to her as ‘
altera filiarum
’, he meant ‘second daughter’, but Speght was perhaps using the alternative meaning of
altera
and referring to Philippa as the ‘other’ sister, who was less famous than Katherine; had he described her as the second daughter of Paon, that would have made Philippa the elder of the two, as they had an older sister, Elizabeth, although Speght may not have known that, in which case he may indeed have meant that she was younger than Katherine.

38
In a royal writ of deliverance of cloth and furs for Queen Philippa’s ladies, dated 10 March 1369, both Philippa Chaucer (who was almost certainly Paon’s married daughter) and Philippa Picard are listed; the former was then a
damoi-selle
(lady-in-waiting) of the Queen, the latter a
veilleresse
(night watcher) of the Queen’s Chamber. Philippa Picard may have been the daughter of Henry Picard, a rich London vintner, who was Mayor of London in 1356 and a fellow guildsman of Chaucer’s father.

39
Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut
; Leese

40
Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut

41
Galway: ‘Philippa Pan, Philippa Chaucer’;
Foedera; Complete Peerage
. Paon is mentioned again in the
Cartulaire
on 1 May and 4 August, these entries referring to his routine expenses.

42
Perry

43
It is intriguing to discover that a shield bearing what appears to be Paon’s coat of arms, impaling the arms of the See of London (which feature crossed swords), was painted on the ceiling of Old St Paul’s. It was one of a number of painted shields placed there that have been dated to no later than 1525, and which were recorded in the reign of Charles II by Thomas Dingley. Similar arms were also recorded in 1575 by the Elizabethan antiquary William Lambourne in a window in the Divinity School of Oxford, ‘in one place contiguous to the shield of the See of London’, implying a connection with the painted arms in St Paul’s. In northern Europe, it was — and still is — the practice for bishops to marshal their personal arms with those of their diocese; however, since the Roët arms were not borne by any bishop of London, it has been suggested that those on the ceiling belonged to a member of the Roët family who was perhaps appointed Dean of St Paul’s. There has been speculation that this could have been a son of Walter de Roët, but unfortunately, no Roët features on the roll of deans of St Paul’s, which is complete from 1322 to the Reformation, so the likelihood is that these arms were in fact those of a late-mediaeval bishop of London, and that they were misrepresented by Dingley. Perry; Dingley; Lambarde

44
Cited by McKisack

45
Froissart

46
Power; Labarge

47
For a description of Blanche of Lancaster, and a discussion of her birth date, see Chapter 2.

48
See Chapter 2.

49
Walsingham; Waleys Cartulary. Thomas Walsingham (d.1422) was a Benedictine monk of St Albans Abbey, one of a number of notable chroniclers of St Albans. He wrote several works, including a continuation of Matthew Paris’s
Chronica Majora
up to 1422, and a chronicle of England (
Historia Anglicana
) covering the period 911 to 1419. His chronicles are especially valuable for the period 1377 to 1422. However, Walsingham’s approach to the writing of history was partisan and credulous. He was sternly moralistic and bordered at times on the histrionic. For him, events like the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 were the judgement of God on a wicked people. He considered the reformer John Wycliffe to be ‘the mouthpiece of the Devil’, and for many years he was John of Gaunt’s most vehement and vitriolic critic, largely on account of John’s perceived anti-clericalism. His condemnation of John’s affair with Katherine Swynford is to be found in his brief
Chronicon Angliae
, which for very good reasons is known to historians as the ‘Scandalous Chronicle’; it covers the period to 1388. Walsingham’s lacerative and damning disparagement of John of Gaunt in this chronicle ensured that it would be many centuries before historians came to take a more considered and objective view of him, despite the fact that, in his later works, written under the Lancastrian kings, Walsingham
himself revised his opinions and wrote of John in a more sympathetic tone, effectively rehabilitating his memory.

50
Murimuth

51
Walsingham

52
Froissart

53
Jean le Bel

54
Register of Edward, the Black Prince

55
Froissart

56
Walsingham

57
Knighton. Henry Knighton (d.
c
.1396) was an Augustinian canon and chronicler of the abbey of St Mary-in-the-Meadows, Leicester. His chronicle covers the period from the tenth century to 1395. He was particularly well informed, thanks to his links with John of Gaunt and his household, John being a generous patron of the Abbey and personally known to Knighton. Consequently, Knighton displays a sympathetic Lancastrian bias in his writing — he consistently (and uniquely among the chroniclers) takes a favourable view of John and often refers to him as ‘the good Duke’ or ‘the pious Duke’.