by Alison Weir
77 Excerpta Historica; Foedera
78 Bolingbroke Castle remains to this day the property of the Duchy of Lancaster; it was maintained as a royal castle until the sixteenth century, but thereafter fell into decay. The walls and towers were largely destroyed by the Parliamentarians in 1643, and the gateway collapsed in 1815. The remaining walls and mounds have recently undergone excavation, which revealed some buried stonework, and partial restoration. These ruins are located off an unclassified road in the village of Old Bolingbroke.
79 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem; Calendar of Close Rolls
80 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem; John of Gaunt’s Register
81 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem
82 Jones, Major, Varley and Johnson; Jones, Stocker and Vince; also the works on Lincoln listed under note 46.
83 Cole
84 Froissart
85 Chandos Herald; Froissart
86 Some historians place Henry’s birth in the spring of 1366, but that was when his brother John was born; and on June 1, 1367, we find Edward III rewarding one Ingel-ram Falconer for delivering letters from Duchess Blanche in which she announced Henry’s arrival, while on July 14 the King also rewarded Blanche, widow of Sir Robert Bertram, for bringing him news of the birth. Goodman, John of Gaunt; Exchequer Records, E. 43, E. 403.
87 It was worn by Henry V at Agincourt in 1415, and is now one of the most precious gems in the Imperial State Crown.
88 Froissart; Russell; Foedera; Exchequer Records, E. 403; Chancery Records, C. 53
89 He would appear to have reached the age of twenty- one by July 8, 1389 (Pearsall).
90 Williams; Krauss, Three Chaucer Studies; Delany; Howard
91 John of Gaunt’s Register; Williams; Gardner
92 Perry; Loftus and Chettle
93 Manly; Kelly
94 Kelly; Perry; Christopherson
95 Crow and Olsen. It is sometimes claimed that Geoffrey Chaucer never even bore arms; they were not generally granted to merchants until the mid- fifteenth century, and the arms sometimes attributed to his father, John Chaucer, are probably spurious. But a seal used by Thomas Chaucer at Ewelme in 1409, which bears the legend [G]HOFRAI CHAVCIER, has a shield displaying a bend entire, an unbroken diagonal stripe across a field. These are not the arms customarily used by Thomas Chaucer, whose shield sported a bend countercharged in red and silver, with the disposition of colors in each half of the field and at each end of the bend itself, reversed on the other. It is this latter shield that appears on later portraits of Geoffrey, including those at Harvard University and in the National Portrait Gallery, and on his sixteenth- century tomb in Westminster Abbey. There can be little doubt, therefore, that these were his arms, that the chargings on the seal are an early version, somewhat worn and obliterated, and that Thomas, who used the same arms, was Geoffrey’s son. This is borne out by Thomas once signing himself “son of Geoffrey Chaucer,” and being described as such by the fifteenth- century Oxford theologian Thomas Gascoigne, who was personally acquainted with him.
There are also several instances in this period of men choosing to display their mother’s arms rather than their father’s, if the mother was of higher rank. The arms of Maud Burghersh were more prestigious than any Chaucer could have borne, for she came from a prominent baronial family. And of course Geoffrey Chaucer must have been only one among many male relatives whose arms do not appear on the tomb. As Martin Ruud says, Thomas Chaucer was a snob, not a bastard.
It has also been pointed out that there is no record of Thomas Chaucer ever claiming the property in Hainault he inherited from his mother, as Thomas Swynford did in 1411; this too has been seen as evidence of bastardy. But it is worth mentioning that we similarly lack any record of Walter de Roët or his sisters inheriting those lands, or of the date of death of Paon de Roët, who left them to his children. We only know of the existence of such an inheritance through Thomas Swynford’s claim, and only because it was contested. A reasonable conclusion is that the records relating to this inheritance, which cannot have been substantial, have simply been lost, so perhaps Thomas Chaucer did get his share. See, for example, Thomas’s seal in Cotton ms. Julius, BL. Cvii, f.153; Exchequer records, E. 164; Leese; Howard; Ruud. 96
96 John of Gaunt’s Register; Leese; Pearsall
4. MISTRESS OF THE DUKE
1 Cartulaire des Comtes de Hainaut
2 Register of Thomas Appleby; Palmer, “Historical Context…”
3 John of Gaunt’s Register
4 Sloane ms. 82, f. 5; Harleian mss.; Lane
5 Goodman, John of Gaunt; Register of Thomas Appleby. I am indebted to Professor Goodman for sending me the latter reference.
6 Froissart, Le Joli Buisson de Jonece
7 Register of Thomas Appleby. There is other evidence that Blanche died in 1368. Dr. J.J.N. Palmer cites a letter John of Gaunt wrote in France on August 17, 1369, in which the duke asks that his cousin, Blanche Mowbray, Lady Poynings, be invited to attend the obit to mark the first anniversary of the duchess’s death; there is also a letter of December 1368 from Louis de Male, Count of Flanders, to Queen Philippa, rejecting a proposal that John of Gaunt marry his daughter Margaret, so Blanche was dead by then, which is why there is no record that she was issued with the customary new robes at Christmas 1368, nor with mourning garments for Queen Philippa the following year. Palmer, “Historical Context…;” John of Gaunt’s Register; Brewer. Stow also gives Blanche’s date of death as 1368.
8 Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum …; Silva- Vigier. Later, John of Gaunt would donate two pieces of expensive gold cloth to the abbey “for the soul of Blanche his wife, whose body lay here one night.”
9 Dugdale, History of St. Paul’s Cathedral
10 Stow, London; Webster
11 She was the niece of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, being the daughter of his sister Eleanor, who married Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel.
12 John of Gaunt’s Register
13 Ibid.
14 Brewer; Pearsall; Perry; Galway
15 Brewer
16 Stone, introduction to Chaucer, Love Visions
17 Pearsall
18 Goodman, John of Gaunt; Silva- Vigier; Palmer, “Historical Context…”
19 Brewer
20 Froissart
21 Exchequer Records, E. 403
22 On November 28, 1368, Philippa had been listed as one of thirteen damoiselles of the Queen who were to be given new robes for Christmas; as a member of the King’s household, Geoffrey Chaucer also received such robes. Pearsall.
23 Froissart
24 Froissart, Le Joli Buisson de Jonece
25 Brewer; Pearsall; Perry; Galway; Exchequer Records, E. 101
26 Testamenta Eboracensia
27 John of Gaunt’s Register; Duchy of Lancaster Records, DL. 28. Over the years, there are numerous references to the annual obits in John of Gaunt’s Register and the Receiver-General’s accounts for the Duchy of Lancaster, further proof of John’s enduring devotion to Blanche’s memory.
28 Bruce
29 Cole
30 Froissart
31 John of Gaunt’s Register; Exchequer Records, E. 101
32 Froissart
33 John of Gaunt’s Register
34 Froissart
35 The palace was damaged by fires in 1597 and 1704, and completely demolished in 1800.
36 Froissart; Gardner
37 Froissart
38 Ibid.
39 Armitage- Smith
40 Additional ms. 12531, fol. 10, detached leaf
41 Froissart also says that the marriage took place at St. André- de- Cubzac, just north of Bordeaux, while Sandford, writing in the late seventeenth century, claims they were married in the Abbey of St. Andrew in Bordeaux.
42 John of Gaunt’s Register
43 Testamenta Eboracensis
44 Goodman, John of Gaunt
45 John of Gaunt’s Register
46 Ibid.; Froissart
47 John of Gaun
t’s Register; Exeter Cathedral Archives
48 John of Gaunt’s Register; Goodman, John of Gaunt
49 Froissart
50 John of Gaunt’s Register
51 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem; Calendar of Close Rolls; Richardson
52 It has been erroneously claimed that he was buried in Spratton Church, Northamptonshire, but the fine effigy of a knight that lies there in fact graces the tomb of another retainer of John of Gaunt, Hugh’s kinsman Sir John Swynford, Lord of Spratton, who died in 1372. Displayed on this effigy is the earliest- known representation of a collar with the famous Lancastrian SS links. Goodman, John of Gaunt; Gardner; Victoria County History: Northamptonshire.
53 Norris
54 Brewer; John of Gaunt’s Register
55 Brewer
56 Walsingham
57 See Holmes, The Good Parliament, for example.
58 Gardner
59 Emerson
60 Anonimalle Chronicle
61 John of Gaunt’s Register
62 Ibid. Philippa and Elizabeth were given gold filets set with balas rubies to wear on their heads, and their robes were lavishly embroidered with pearls and trimmed with furs.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Calendar of Patent Rolls; Complete Peerage
67 Goodman, Wars of the Roses
68 Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers
69 The Monk of Evesham corroborates the theory that the affair began only after John had married Constance.
70 Walsingham; Percy ms.; Armitage- Smith. The late fifteenth-/early sixteenth- century Percy ms. 78 at Alnwick Castle claims that John of Gaunt begot John Beaufort “in the days of the Lady Blanche, his first wife.”
71 Lord Berners, in his sixteenth- century translation of Froissart, says that Katherine “was concubine to the Duke in his other wives’ days.”
72 Original Letters; English Historical Documents, vol. IV
73 Froissart
74 John of Gaunt’s Register
75 Lopes
76 Froissart
77 John of Gaunt’s Register
78 See, for example, Roger Joy.
79 Calendar of Close Rolls
80 John of Gaunt’s Register
81 Ibid.
82 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem; Calendar of Patent Rolls
83 Ibid.
84 Calendar of Patent Rolls
85 John of Gaunt’s Register
86 Duchy of Lancaster Records, DL. 29
87 John of Gaunt’s Register
88 Ibid.
89 Exchequer Records, E. 403
90 John of Gaunt’s Register
91 John of Gaunt’s Register; Goodman, John of Gaunt
92 Knighton
93 Packe. According to Froissart, Constance’s sister Isabella was “young and beautiful,” but there the similarity to Constance ended, for Isabella was a lively, flighty girl, worldly rather than devout, with loose morals. In years to come her name would become a byword for scandal at court, for her extramarital affairs were notorious. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of the three children she bore her husband was never called into question. Armitage-Smith; Goodman, John of Gaunt; Howard; Silva- Vigier.
94 John of Gaunt’s Register
95 Both Armitage- Smith and Lucraft place his birth date in 1373.
96 Froissart
97 Ibid.
98 Walsingham, Ypodigma Neustriae. Since 1689, Beaufort has been called Monmorency-sur-Aube.
99 Duchy of Lancaster Records, DL. 27; Froissart
100 Goodman, Katherine Swynford; Jones and Underwood
101 By Sandford, for example
102 Armitage- Smith; Jones and Underwood. Professor Goodman has an interesting theory that the Beauforts were in fact surnamed in honor of Roger de Beaufort, brother of the last Avignon Pope, Gregory XI (Pierre Roger de Beaufort). Roger came from a prominent Provençal family and had been a prisoner of John of Gaunt, held in honorable custody at Kenilworth Castle, since 1370. In 1377 he stood godfather there to the son of his custodian, Sir John Deyncourt. Beaufort was a chivalrous knight, and he and his brother the Pope were highly regarded by the duke, which has prompted Professor Goodman to suggest that John may have wished to compliment Beaufort by naming his children by Katherine after him, and that this may also have been an attempt to hide their paternity. Of course, Beaufort could have been complicit in this matter, but it was hardly complimentary of John to name his bastards after the Pope’s brother, and—even more insultingly—thereby imply that Beaufort had fathered them. Goodman, Katherine Swynford.
5. BLINDED BY DESIRE
1 Howard
2 Knighton
3 Troilus and Criseyde
4 Anonimalle Chronicle
5 Thynne
6 See Chapter 8.
7 For late medieval attitudes to sex and morality, see, for example, Given- Wilson and Curteis; Goodman, Honourable Lady; Gardner; Silva- Vigier.
8 John of Gaunt’s Register
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.; Brewer
11 John of Gaunt’s Register
12 Letters of Mediaeval Women
13 John of Gaunt’s Register. Lady Wake had been born Alice FitzAlan, daughter of the Earl of Arundel, and she was a niece of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, a cousin to Duchess Blanche, and married to Thomas Holland, eldest son of Princess Joan. Thus, she was eminently suited, through her connections alone, to look after the Lancastrian children.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.; Bruce
16 John of Gaunt’s Register
17 Ibid; Goodman, John of Gaunt. Tutbury Castle is now an extensive ruin, having been largely slighted by Cromwell’s troops in the civil war. Three towers remain, as does John of Gaunt’s gateway, but most of the other buildings are fifteenth century or later.
18 Chute
19 Goodman, Honourable Lady. For the governess’s role, see Goodman, Honourable Lady, John of Gaunt; Lucraft, “Missing from History;” Chute; Lewis, Cult of St. Katherine; Tilbury.
20 John of Gaunt’s Register
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Pearsall
27 John of Gaunt’s Register; Rotuli Parliamentorum
28 For the chevauchée of 1373, see, for example, Goodman, John of Gaunt; Froissart; Armitage- Smith; Delachenal; Holmes; Sherborne.
29 Froissart
30 For a reassessment of the campaign, see Palmer; Les Grandes Chroniques France.
31 Walsingham; Eulogium; Russell; Froissart
32 Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers
33 John of Gaunt’s Register. On June 18, while still at the Savoy, John ordered six cartloads of alabaster from the quarry at Tutbury for two effigies to be placed on the tomb being built to the memory of “the Lady Blanche, formerly our consort,” in St. Paul’s; already he had decided that he wished to spend eternity by the side of his first wife. Another mention of the tomb appears on December 4 of that year in the accounts for Blanche’s obit, and in January 1375 the duke paid Henry Yevele, the foremost master mason of the day, for his work on it, yet to be completed; Yevele was also working at the Savoy at this time. In 1376-77, Yevele was contracted to supply a tomb chest of Purbeck marble to accommodate the bodies of Blanche and, in time, her husband, and was paid £108 (£29,036) in part payment for it. The alabaster effigies were later painted, and an iron screen placed about the chantry. Given the expertise, time, and money—in total £486 (£205,139)—that were lavished on the tomb, it must have been magnificent indeed. It was, wrote the chronicler Monk of St. Denis, “an incomparable sepulchre.” John of Gaunt’s Register; Harvey, Henry Yevele; Duchy of Lancaster Records, DL. 28.
34 Lettenhove, introduction to Froissart
35 Armitage-Smith; Goodman, John of Gaunt; Rose; John of Gaunt’s Register
36 Perroy; Holmes; Goodman, John of Gaunt
37 John of Ga
unt’s Register; Duchy of Lancaster Records, DL. 42
38 Crow and Olsen; Pearsall
39 Coleman
40 John of Gaunt’s Register
41 For this obit, see Lewis, “The Anniversary Service;” Webster
42 John of Gaunt’s Register; Silva-Vigier
43 Silva-Vigier
44 John of Gaunt’s Register
45 Roger Joy
46 John of Gaunt’s Register
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.; Kirby. She was paid 100 marks (£11,944) per annum to house him and his attendants.
50 John of Gaunt’s Register
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid. There is no evidence to support the recent theory identifying Blanche Swynford with John of Gaunt’s bastard daughter Blanche, who married Sir Thomas Morieux in 1381 (see Chapter 6). Froissart states that Marie de St. Hilaire was Blanche Morieux’s mother, and as he was in Queen Philippa’s household in the early 1360s, he was in a position to know that, for Marie was one of her damoiselles and his countrywoman. Had Blanche Swynford lived, she would probably have married Robert Deyncourt, but there is no record of that marriage actually taking place.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Foedera; Armitage- Smith
58 John of Gaunt’s Register
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 For Katherine Swynford’s connections with Boston, see principally Thompson; Cook, Boston.
64 Calendar of Escheat Rolls
65 Ibid.
66 Jones and Underwood
67 In medieval times there was no rule about the use of such marks for younger sons: It was only around 1500 that John Writhe, Garter King of Arms, invented a cadency system to indicate a son’s place in the family, whereby a crescent signified a second son. That rule cannot be applied to fourteenth- century heraldry, but Sandford was clearly following a well- established tradition that Henry was the second male Beaufort.
68 John of Gaunt’s Register
69 Records of the Borough of Leicester
