Royal Affairs: A Lusty Romp through the Extramarital Adventures that Rocked the British Monarchy

by Leslie Carroll

  Isabella’s life was spared by her son, and she repentantly re-invented herself as a loving grandmother and keeper of her late husband’s flame—as well as his heart. In her last few months of life, Isabella took the habit of the Order of the Poor Clares, but was evidently too proud to be buried in sackcloth when she died on August 22, 1358.

  Leave it to Isabella to have the ironic last laugh—or perhaps she was desperate to have in death what during her life her husband had so humiliatingly bestowed upon Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser to the detriment of his kingdom. Wrapped in her red wedding mantle, Isabella was buried holding a silver casket containing her late husband’s heart, which had been delivered to her as a memento mori prior to Edward’s entombment on December 20, 1327.

  JOHN OF GAUNT, DUKE OF LANCASTER 1340-1399 and Katherine Swynford 1350-1403

  Like so many other medieval women, Katherine Swynford might have been relegated to the musty pages of history as a minor character, but instead she became a cult fiction icon six hundred years after her birth. Her story captured the imagination of readers worldwide in 1954, when Anya Seton published Katherine, a popular romance novel featuring a fictionalized version of Swynford’s affair with John of Gaunt, the John D. Rockefeller of his day.

  The real Katherine was born Katherine de Roët, the daughter of a Flemish herald, an ambassadorial officer who traveled to England in the service of Philippa, queen consort of King Edward III. Nothing is known of her mother. Katherine’s date of birth remains a subject of controversy; her two most recent biographers disagree by about five years, and I opted for the later date of 1350. No physical description of her exists, other than the occasional mention that she was very beautiful.

  Katherine and her siblings were raised in the English court, where her two brothers distinguished themselves. Katherine’s sister Philippa eventually married Geoffrey Chaucer, who was a distinguished civil servant and poet, and the author of The Canterbury Tales.

  At the age of nine, Katherine was given a court position of her own. She joined the household of the handsome, strawberry blond-bearded John of Gaunt, the fourth son of King Edward III (and grandson of the ill-fated Edward II), most likely around the time of his marriage in 1359 to the beautiful, flaxen-haired Blanche, a daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, in what was as much a love match as it was a dynastic arrangement. Katherine was probably engaged as a cradle rocker or “rokestare,” a position commonly held by young daughters of court favorites.

  Gaunt (his name was an anglicized pronunciation of “Ghent,” where he was born in 1340) stood too far down the line of succession to hope to ascend the throne. But when his father-in-law died, he inherited something far less troublesome—the Lancaster title and all the appurtenant property. In this way, Gaunt became the founder of the Lancastrian branch of the Plantagenet dynasty. Although he was never a king himself, through his Y chromosomes he quite literally became a kingmaker.

  John of Gaunt was tall and very slender, and quite the ladies’ man, evidently; but contemporary chroniclers also referred to him as wise and reasonable, prudent, generous, imaginative, intelligent, cultivated, and accomplished. In addition to this laundry list of virtues, he had studied “science, art and letters” in his youth, according to Chaucer, who used to discuss astronomy with him. Gaunt became Chaucer’s patron, commissioning a poetic elegy on his wife Blanche’s beauty titled The Boke of the Duchesse. In the debit column, according to the chroniclers, Gaunt’s contemporaries found him lofty, “jealous of honor, sudden and quick in quarrel.”

  By 1366, Katherine was a sort of subgoverness for the ducal children. In a match common to maids serving in medieval royal households, she was married to Hugh Swynford, an English knight in the retinue of John of Gaunt. Katherine bore Hugh a son, Thomas, in 1367, and two daughters, Blanche and Margaret. There may also have been another daughter named Dorothy. The duke himself stood as godfather to little Blanche.

  Gaunt wielded considerable power in the governance of the country. On the death of Edward III in 1367, Gaunt, a career diplomat, became the most important adult male in England. In essence, he was the real ruler of the realm for several years as the de facto seneschal for his ten-year-old nephew, King Richard II. Gaunt himself never desired the crown; in fact, he did everything he could to prop up his weak nephew’s reign.

  On September 12, 1368, at the age of twenty-six, Blanche of Lancaster died, a month after giving birth to her seventh child in nine years of marriage. Only three of her children survived infancy. Losing Blanche utterly devastated Gaunt, but practical concerns dictated that he remarry as soon as possible.

  He wed Constance of Castile, the eldest daughter of the deposed and murdered King Pedro I, in September 1371. It was a diplomatic match; Gaunt chivalrously (and not at all altruistically) was set on placing Constance rightfully on her father’s throne, and the conquest of Castile became his primary focus for the next several years. As Constance’s husband, Gaunt was authorized to use the Castilian royal titles. He did proclaim himself king, minted coins, and issued state documents.

  After joining Gaunt on his campaign to Spain, Hugh Swynford died in Aquitaine on November 13, 1371, leaving Katherine the lands they held in jointure, including Kettlethorpe, the Swynford estate. Being well settled allowed Katherine a rare degree of independence, and she chose to remain in Gaunt’s household.

  In 1372—or perhaps as early as November 1371, on Gaunt’s return from Spain—Katherine began her affair with him. She was to bear Gaunt four children between 1373 and 1379. During Katherine’s years with Gaunt, he became the wealthiest man in Europe without a crown on his head. By the 1370s, his family owned lands comprising one-third of England and controlled what would today amount to more than $5 billion in annual rents. He was one of the first conscious capitalists, an empire builder who throughout his life added to his vast estates. In the medieval real estate market Gaunt was literally a “brand name”—a fourteenth-century Trump.

  Katherine’s name appears regularly in Gaunt’s records of the 1370s, often referred to as “nostre tres chere et bien amee” (our very dear and good friend). At first their royal affair was conducted with the utmost secrecy. Discretion was vital; Katherine was newly widowed, compelled for a full year by societal dictates to wear the nunlike black and white mourning garments that advertised her very unattainability. Gaunt was newly wed. If people knew he had a mistress, it would greatly damage his chances of permanently claiming the Castilian throne.

  Although a politically biased account of the era known as the Anonimalle Chronicle refers to Katherine as “une deblesce et enchantresce” (a she-devil and enchantress) responsible for Gaunt’s forsaking his wife, other sources report that their affair was a true love match that grew by choice out of carnal desire as well as proximity. Katherine was tender and accommodating, and great with his kids. Outside of the nursery, she was vivacious and shrewd, and got along famously with the late Edward III’s remaining power brokers, which made for harmony all around, as Gaunt was the policy maker for young Richard II.

  Naming her his children’s magistra, or governess, was Gaunt’s way of keeping Katherine close without causing tongues to wag or eyebrows to rise. He showered her with gifts of expensive jewelry, bolts of opulent cloth, barrels of Bordeaux, and cords of firewood. He deeded Lancastrian manorial properties to her, so that she would have a steady income, even though Hugh Swynford had left her well provided for.

  Constance and Gaunt never bothered to learn each other’s native tongue, and she evinced little interest in assimilating into English society, preferring to live apart from her husband, in the Spanish way, surrounded by an entourage of Castilians. In the spring of 1372, Gaunt gave her a generous settlement to provide for her household. Contrary to some accounts of their relationship, he did not wall her up or shunt her off to some distant Lancastrian castle after his relationship with Katherine began. The spouses mutually chose to maintain separate lives.

  By 1375, Katherine’s affair with the duke was co
mmon knowledge. And it clearly appalled certain segments of the population. Thomas Walsingham, a contemporary monk chronicling the age, condemned Gaunt . . . because he himself put aside respect for God’s dread, deserted his military duties, rode around the country with the abominable temptress, seen as Katherine once called Swynford, holding her bridle in front of his own people, not only in the presence of his wife, but even with all his retainers looking on, in the most honored towns of the kingdom.

  This criticism needs to be set in context. For one thing, the contemporaries who spoke ill of Katherine were really gunning for Gaunt; her reputation simply became collateral damage. For another, during the Middle Ages, among the nobility as well as the gentry, dynastic marriages were the rule. Mistresses were commonly accepted, although it was always better if they were discreet. Katherine seemed to have had that quality in spades. But many medieval chroniclers were monks, expressing the Church’s attitude toward all women as Eve—the original sinner, seducer, and betrayer of mankind. Yet as far as royal mistresses go, Katherine Swynford was not poured from the mold of a gold digger. Her religious devotion is well documented and seems genuine—though how pious could she have been if she carried on an adulterous affair with her employer?

  Katherine—and her royal lover—would soon be compelled to confront their guilt.

  In 1381, John of Gaunt was the most powerful man in England, as well as the most despised—for the kingdom’s myriad domestic problems, and for waging an unpopular war in Spain, which was seen as purely self-aggrandizing. Additionally, an oppressive poll tax on every subject was bleeding the poorer men dry. And in June 1381, the fomenting cauldron bubbled over, culminating in the Peasants’ Revolt, led by Wat Tyler. Gaunt, the architect of Richard II’s policies, was their convenient scapegoat. Thirty thousand strong, the mob swarmed into London. Joined by legions of apprentices, they opened the prisons, set fire to homes and brothels, and stormed the Savoy, Gaunt’s magnificent white palace on the Strand, willfully destroying his priceless treasures and burning it to the ground.

  Shaken by these violent events, Gaunt was convinced that God was punishing him, so he publicly confessed to the sin of lechery with Katherine Swynford.

  According to the Anonimalle Chronicle, after renouncing Katherine in 1381, Gaunt reconciled with Constance and begged her pardon for his misdeeds. After fainting upon seeing him, “she forgave him willingly . . . and there was great joy and celebrations between them. . . .”

  Although Gaunt had dumped Katherine in a most ostentatious way, he didn’t fall out of love with her. In fact, he showed her how much he still cared the following Valentine’s Day. On February 14, 1382, in a formal legal document known as a quitclaim, Gaunt released all claims on the properties he’d given to Katherine, meaning that all the lands, residences, and other buildings, along with the income derived from them, were hers for the rest of her life.

  Katherine and Gaunt remained in touch because of their four children, and over the years he continued to send them all (including Katherine) generous and costly gifts. Gaunt had given his children by Katherine the surname of Beaufort, after one of his many territorial titles. Since Castle Beaufort was located in Anjou, which had fallen to the French in 1369, this wisely chosen name posed no threat to the duke’s legitimate heirs—his son and two daughters with Blanche and his daughter Catalina (Katherine) with Constance.

  In 1387, perhaps in an effort to gradually bring her closer to him again, Gaunt arranged for Katherine to have a position in the household of his daughter-in-law, Mary de Bohun.

  That same year, having learned the hard way that military victory in Iberia was an impossibility, Gaunt concluded a peace treaty with Juan I of Spain, arranging the marriage of Katherine (or Catalina), his fifteen-year-old daughter by Constance, to Juan’s son Enrique. With Gaunt’s claim to Castile now mooted and their daughter its future queen, he and Constance no longer needed each other dynastically. Constance took up residence at Tutbury, disassociating herself from the Lancastrian household. She spent her last few years in Leicester Castle—while Gaunt once again lived openly with Katherine—dying on March 25, 1394.

  Although Katherine and Gaunt were reunited while Constance still lived, there is no clear date for the recommencement of their romance, nor what the circumstances were. But once Constance died, there were no more impediments to their bliss. Gaunt loved Katherine and wanted to legalize their liaison and legitimize their four children. When he was in a position to do the right thing, he did it.

  So twenty-four years after she became his lover, on January 14, 1396, Katherine wed John of Gaunt in Lincoln Cathedral. She was forty-six years old (if born in 1350) and her husband was fifty-five. A papal dispensation was required to remove “the impediment of . . . compaternity” because Gaunt’s standing as Blanche Swynford’s godfather made him Katherine’s “brother” under canon law. It would certainly have turned the affair into an even greater scandal if their adultery was compounded by what the Church would have deemed a form of incest. Not only did the Pope ratify their marriage, but in an unprecedented step, the four bastard children sired during Katherine and Gaunt’s lengthy royal affair were legitimized by His Holiness and recognized by the king as such.

  The Beauforts became mantle-children, a distinction usually given to offspring born out of wedlock to a couple that later marries, not to the children of an adulterous liaison. And Richard II’s patent of legitimation of the Beauforts is unique in British history because it entitled them to all rank and titles, as well as to the right to inherit property, a privilege that was (absent a king’s decree) legally denied to bastards. Richard’s proclamation also clearly indicated that the Beauforts had a place in the line of royal succession.

  Nevertheless, the union shocked the aristocracy, which saw no reason for the richest lord in the land to marry his commoner mistress. At least that was the view that was handed down through history, during an age when even the chroniclers reflected someone’s political agenda.

  A mid-fifteenth-century prior, John Capgrave, wrote in The Chronicle of England that Gaunt had wed Katherine “ageyn the opinion of many men.” And the author of an early sixteenth-century chronicle of Plantagenet, Lancastrian, and Yorkist kings also refers to the astonished reaction their marriage received: . . . the duke wedded the seyde Kateryne, the wheche wedding caused mony a monnus wondering, for, as hit was seyde, he haad holde here longe before.

  No matter what people thought, Katherine was now Duchess of Lancaster, and until the widowed king remarried she was the highest lady in the land. Her new status scandalized the aristocratic ladies, who refused to admit a baseborn woman, duchess or not, into their midst.

  After waiting to wed him for nearly a quarter century, Katherine enjoyed only three years of marital happiness with John of Gaunt. He died on February 3, 1399, possibly from venereal disease.

  Inscribed on Gaunt’s tomb in St. Paul’s Cathedral is a glowing tribute to Katherine Swynford, translated from the Latin as HIS THIRD WIFE WAS KATHERINE,

  OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY,

  AND AN EXCEPTIONALLY BEAUTIFUL WOMAN;

  THEY HAD NUMEROUS OFFSPRING,

  AND FROM THESE CAME THE MATERNAL FAMILY OF

  HENRY VII, MOST PRUDENT ENGLISH KING

  And yet he was buried beside Blanche, his first love, the woman whose connections and family fortune had brought him nearly limitless wealth and power. However, desiring that he and Katherine remain spiritually linked, Gaunt left a bequest for masses to be said jointly in their names.

  On the morning of Gaunt’s death he drew up a detailed will, leaving his “most dear wife Katherine” a vast amount of real estate and personal property.

  Unfortunately, on his demise Gaunt’s lands became forfeit to the crown because Richard II had exiled his son by Blanche, Henry, Earl of Derby, as a threat to his rule. And indeed he was. Better known as Bolingbroke, Henry eventually returned with his army and deposed Richard II, crowning himself Henry IV, the first king of the Lancastrian dyna
sty.

  As a testament to Katherine’s character, or perhaps to her savvy diplomatic acumen honed during a lifetime of association with the royal court, she was able to form close connections with both kings. Richard II eventually acknowledged his uncle’s will and restored Katherine’s entitlements from the duke’s estates. And one of Katherine’s sons by Gaunt—Henry Beaufort—became the chancellor for his usurping half brother, Henry IV.

  Katherine retired to Lincolnshire after Gaunt’s death, becoming a tenant of the Dean of Lincoln Cathedral. She died in 1403, probably at the age of fifty-two, and was buried in the cathedral. In 1644, her tomb was defaced by the Cromwellian Roundheads during the English Civil War.

  The legacy of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt is staggering. With Blanche, John of Gaunt was the immediate ancestor of three Lancastrian kings—Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI.

  His affair with Katherine led directly to the creation of the Tudor dynasty and to monarchs from the houses of York and Stuart. Through their eldest son, John Beaufort, Katherine and Gaunt were the great-great-grandparents of the Earl of Richmond, who defeated the Yorkist king Richard III (the grandson of Katherine and Gaunt’s daughter Joan) on Bosworth Field in 1485.

  Richmond, who became Henry VII, took the name Henry Tudor. His subsequent marriage to Elizabeth of York united the warring houses of York and Lancaster—each of which descended from King Edward III, Gaunt’s father, and each of which believed they had a more legitimate right of succession. It was Henry Tudor who finally ended their protracted and bloody feud known as the Wars of the Roses.

  The Stuarts were added to Katherine and Gaunt’s family tree when John Beaufort’s granddaughter (another Joan) wed a Stuart king, James I of Scotland.