It hath and schal ben evermore
That love is maister wher he wille.1
Gaunt’s second wife was born amid the parched brown hills, flat wide landscapes and cream-grey stonework of Castrojeriz in Castile, northern Spain. Two hours’ drive (today) south of the Bay of Biscay, it sat along the popular pilgrim route the Camino to Santiago de Compostela, which leads to the Galician cathedral of St James. Particularly popular with English pilgrims, the devout had trod its path since the eleventh century, finding shelter in the hospitals and hostels along the route and pausing to pray in the Romanesque churches. As they approached Castrojeriz, still almost 500 kilometres from their destination, the pilgrims of the 1350s would have seen two imposing sights. Stumbling up the road, under the stone archway and into the ancient monastery of San Antón, where monks of the Hospital Brothers of St Anthony bathed their weary feet, they could not help but notice the palace of King Pedro of Castile. ‘O noble, O worthy Petro, glorie of Spayne, whom fortune held so high in majesty, well ought me thy piteous death complain’, effused Chaucer in The Monk’s Tale. Yet Pedro also earned the epithet of ‘Pedro the Cruel’ and his two daughters found themselves exiled from their homeland as a result of his wars.
Pedro had been the intended bridegroom of Edward III’s daughter Joan of England, who had embarked full of hopes with coffers packed full of dresses of red and green silk, embroidered with stars and diamonds, roses and animals, but she died from the plague before reaching Castile. Five years later, the tall, fair-haired ‘muscular’ Pedro fell in love with a Spanish noblewoman named Maria de Padilla and married her in secret. Although he was forced soon afterwards to make a dynastic marriage, Pedro abandoned his new wife, Blanche of Bourbon, on the grounds of her reputed adultery with his brother, and imprisoned her. He returned to Maria, who went on to bear him four children, of whom three daughters survived to adulthood: Beatrice, born in 1353; Constance, in 1354; and Isabella, in 1355. Maria died in 1361, possibly during the outbreak of plague that killed the parents of Blanche of Lancaster. The rejected Blanche of Bourbon also died that year, but her death came at the end of eight years of imprisonment and the suggestions that Pedro ordered her execution have never been satisfactorily proven or disproven.
On 18 November 1362, Pedro made a will declaring his children by Maria to be legitimate and produced witnesses to the effect that their marriage had been valid. He then entered a prolonged war with Aragon and lost his throne, sending his daughters into exile. Pedro appealed to the Black Prince, as the ruler of Aquitaine, to help him regain it in 1367, but his reputation clearly preceded him. As a guarantee for Pedro’s good behaviour, the Black Prince required that his two daughters be sent as honourable hostages in Aquitaine, under the hospitality of the English. Pedro agreed to the demand and the young Constance and Isabella were dispatched north to Bordeaux, where they would have been supervised by Edward’s wife Joan of Kent. They probably stayed in the Archbishop’s Palace, on the site of the current Palais Rohan, where Joan had given birth to her second son that January. On 3 April, Edward and Gaunt accomplished a victory for Pedro at the Battle of Najera, despite their army being vastly outnumbered by the combined forces of France and Castile.
However, Najera proved to be something of a pyrrhic victory. Pedro did not repay his friends, even though his daughters were in English custody. It was whilst waiting at Burgos for Pedro to reimburse his expenses that the Black Prince fell ill with dysentery. With symptoms of terrible stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea, the disease swept through the English camp, wiping out 80 per cent of the surviving soldiers.2 The English heir would never fully recover his health. Pedro would not enjoy his kingdom for long either. He was murdered in 1369 and although his second daughter Constance inherited his title of Queen of Castile, the throne was immediately seized by Pedro’s half-brother and killer, Henry of Trastamara. Ruling Aquitaine in his brother’s absence, John of Gaunt was struck by a plan. He would take Constance as his second wife, and his younger brother, Edmund of Langley, would marry Isabella. Between them, they would retake Castile and its throne would then pass into Gaunt’s eager hands.
On 21 September 1371, Gaunt married the 17-year-old Constance at Roquefort near Mont-de-Marsan in Aquitaine. The ceremony probably took place at the church of Santa Maria, which was attached to the twelfth-century Benedictine Abbey. The couple presented each other with the gift of a gold cup, Constance’s bearing the decoration of a double rose and dove. Little is known about Constance’s appearance, but a manuscript produced over a century later depicts her with dark hair. Her daughter Catherine was described on several occasions as tall, with blue eyes and fair, reddish-blonde hair, so it is likely these genes were inherited from the English royal family or from her Castilian grandfather Pedro. Constance was pious and serious, focused on restoring her father’s memory and lands, but this was about all she had in common with John of Gaunt. With Edward III ageing, the Black Prince severely ill and the second brother, Lionel of Antwerp, dead since 1368, Gaunt had become the most powerful man in England; following his marriage, he adopted the coat of arms of Castile and León and took the title of king, addressed as ‘My Lord of Spain’ or ‘Yo el Roy’. After a couple of days of celebrations in Bordeaux, the newly-weds requisitioned a merchant ship at La Rochelle on 25 September and arrived in Fowey, Cornwall, on 4 November.
Even given the terrible conditions sometimes experienced in the Celtic Sea and Bay of Biscay, their return journey was a long one. As the crow flies, it is little more than 430 miles. If she had not already conceived in Bordeaux, Constance would do so on board the Gaynpayn and would probably experience her first symptoms of pregnancy, although it is likely that she may have confused these with seasickness. Fowey was just a small fishing village, so after their initial recovery, they left it and travelled to the Augustinian Priory of St Peter and St Paul at Plympton in Devon. The party had covered the 40 miles across Bodmin Moor by 10 November, followed by a similar distance again, along the edge of Dartmoor to Exeter. Constance’s first experiences of her adopted country were of wide skies and sweeping landscape dotted by crops of stone, which were not so unlike the plains of Castile. Exeter was her first experience of an English city, with its tall, narrow medieval buildings clustered around the green on which the imposing cathedral stood. Constance would have approached its impressive West Front, begun as recently as 1340 from Purbeck marble, with its row of stone angels and kings of Judah looking down disapprovingly. Deeply devout, she would have welcomed the opportunity for silent prayer and, despite being short of money, the couple made an offering of 20s.3
Constance’s next stop was the thirteenth-century hunting lodge of Kingston Lacy. Gaunt’s main home in the west, it was an impressive building on the site of the present seventeenth-century mansion, which lay forgotten until a storm in 1990 uprooted trees that exposed some of the foundations of the house that Constance stayed in, as well as marble roof tiles, ceramic tiles and pottery.4 In 1371, the property was at the height of its glory, before going into decline in the fifteenth century, with three gates, a central courtyard surrounded by a thatched cob wall, outside which were a hedge and ditch. Within it stood the house topped with marble tiles, a chapel, kitchen, dairy, bakehouse, granary, dove cot, stable, workshop, cattleshed and garden. Inside the house, the plastered walls were painted ochre and the glazed floor tiles were yellow, brown and green.5 It appears that Constance remained at Kingston Lacy for a while, perhaps to rest and recover, while Gaunt returned briefly to London. Her sister Isabella would have been with her but it is unclear whether any Spanish or French ladies were included in her retinue. Gaunt may have recruited local women to support his wife, assisted by Kingston Lacy staff, to watch over her in his absence. After a brief stay at the Savoy, perhaps to see his children, Gaunt travelled back to Dorset, where he celebrated Christmas with Constance, Isabella and his father, who were all named in an order to the clerk of the wardrobe for the distribution of Christmas presents.6 The festivities did not last long though, as Gaunt was back at Hertford Castle by 3 January and was there again, or still there, a week later. It is not impossible that Constance had travelled there with him as the final stop on her journey to the capital, although being positioned to the north of London it would have taken her considerably out of her way. On 30 January, Gaunt had returned to the capital to oversee the final arrangements.
On 10 February, Constance made her ceremonial entrance into London, where she was greeted by the Black Prince, who had risen from his sick bed for the occasion. The crowds gathered in Cheapside to see her progress to the Strand, where Gaunt had ridden ahead to welcome her. He then conducted her back to the Savoy, the palace he had inherited from the Duchy of Lancaster, which Constance now saw for the first time. Built of stone around two courtyards, it included a great hall, chapel, cloister and private apartments, and was catered for by its own stables, smithy, bakehouse, brewery, laundry and fishpond, as well as a fruit and vegetable garden surrounded by a hedge.7 Constance would have entered through the large street gate that led to the Strand and been settled into her private rooms, which faced inward, rather than out on to the river. She would have prayed in the chapel and given thanks for her safe arrival, then rested in the palace for a while with her husband, as arrangements were made for her own household to be set up at Hertford Castle. Gaunt’s presence there between 1 and 3 March suggests that they set out from London at the end of February.
Hertford Castle was 30 miles north of the Savoy, on the River Lea. Behind an impressive gatehouse frontage, it contained timber-framed apartments on the east side, a chapel and an aisled hall which dated from the thirteenth century. The property also had a sizeable park that was renowned for good hunting. In early March, Gaunt introduced Constance to her new home and, perhaps, to her stepchildren, who were to form part of her household, returning on 4 April to see how they had settled in. Among these new surroundings, these strange English customs and ways, and speaking little of the language, Constance would have sought comfort in her faith and ambition. She had already been displaced from home and Gaunt was, in effect, her saviour; their marriage does not appear to have developed into a love match but it gave her status, stability and hope. As a dynastic match, it was a prestigious and important alliance that benefitted both husband and wife.
In April, Constance was benefitting from the ducal wardrobe, when Gaunt’s clerk received the request to deliver jewels for her personal use, including 1,808 large pearls and 2,000 smaller ones, a string with four rubies, a gold circlet set with emeralds and rubies and twenty-one pearls set in gold. She also received from her husband a reliquary in the shape of a barrel, decorated with gold and precious stones, perhaps specially chosen for her in recognition of her piety. Such reliquaries were fairly uncommon: one similarly barrel-shaped survivor in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore contains a central crystal section, bored through the centre to create a chamber that would preserve and magnify a relic. Constance may already have had an object she wished to house in the barrel, perhaps a finger bone or fragment of the clothing of a favoured saint, or else the sacred item was already preserved within. Given the timing, it is likely that the relic may have had some significance for her approaching confinement, as expectant mothers would cling to religious objects and wear the girdles of saints in the belief that this would ease their suffering.
Constance had fallen pregnant very soon after her marriage. In the summer of 1372, just nine months after the ceremony, she retreated to Hertford Castle to await the child’s arrival. From around 1360, it had been one of Gaunt’s chief country residences, conveniently located just 30 miles north of the Savoy, where the duke was awaiting news. From there on 6 June, he issued an order to the receiver of Leicester to send Ilote, or Elyot, the wise woman to Constance ‘with all the haste in any manner that you can’.8 Katherine Swynford also received instructions to attend on Constance, as her experience of the practices of childbirth were clearly valued, and her own sister Philippa Chaucer and Constance’s sister Isabella of Castile may have been present too. Although the baby would have been christened by that point, it is not certain whether her name, Catherine, or Catalina in Castilian, was chosen by her mother or father. Gaunt’s movements may suggest an approximate date for the baby’s arrival. According to the Register of John of Gaunt, he was in London on 25, 26, 27 and 30 June, conducting business from the Savoy and Westminster, and is also recorded there on dates through the early and middle part of July, being in residence on the 19th, before showing up in the records at Hertford Castle on 20 July.9 It was a fleeting visit though, as he was back at the Savoy again two days later. The suggestion that he was also present on 7 July is unlikely, as he was conducting business on the other side of London at Reigate Castle.
There is a chance, though, that Constance’s baby arrived at a later date, or that a second child arrived some nine months after she had delivered her first. A reward is recorded as being made to Katherine Swynford on 31 March 1373, for bringing Gaunt news of his child’s birth. Gaunt was then at Hertford on 20 April. It may simply be that there was a delay in the issuing of the reward and its record in the accounts, but if this was in fact Constance’s first child, it must have been conceived when Gaunt visited Hertford on 20 July 1372. The other possibility is that Constance gave birth to a first child early in June, soon after the midwife Elyot was summoned, and had risen from her bed and been churched by the time Gaunt arrived six weeks later. She may have conceived again on that occasion and borne a second infant the following March. If this is the case, the chances are that the second child did not survive, perhaps having been conceived so soon after the process of giving birth. So far as can be ascertained, Constance did not bear another baby. She and Gaunt may have been disappointed, as Catherine was the sole inheritor of their claim to Castile and her gender no doubt made this more problematic. At some point, there would be her future marriage to consider, as the title of King of Castile would transfer to her husband. It is possible that Gaunt and his wife continued to sleep together in the anticipation of more children, especially a son, but his burgeoning romance with Katherine Swynford may have kept him from Constance’s side. It was around this time that Katherine conceived the first of four children she would bear him.
On 11 July, Edmund of Langley married Isabella of Castile at Wallingford Castle in Oxfordshire.10 If Gaunt attended, he must have covered the 50 miles between there and the Savoy at great speed, since he was recorded as being in London on both 10 and 13 July.11 The imposing Wallingford was once a major royal residence which had been considerably refurbished in the thirteenth century and had belonged to Gaunt’s grandmother, Isabella of France. There, the 31-year-old Edmund married the 17-year-old Isabella, ensuring that the Anglo-Castilian claim would be preserved, even in the unfortunate eventuality of Constance dying in childbirth. Gaunt’s gifts to the newly married couple were singularly unusual, including cups and ewers decorated with grotesque figures and a three-legged silver gilt vessel shaped like a monster. In comparison with Constance’s rose-lidded cup, jewels and reliquary, they might indicate a difference between the sisters’ characters or tastes. With the Castilian connection secured, Gaunt could return to London to plan his campaign to claim the Iberian throne: increasingly driven by the desire to be a king in reality, he hoped to fulfil his ambition and the intention behind his marriage in one go.
Katherine Swynford must have become Gaunt’s lover early in 1372, almost as soon as they had become reacquainted. Due to his absence in Aquitaine, the last time they could have seen each other was before Gaunt’s departure in the summer of 1370, although the dissolution of Blanche’s household may have made it even earlier than this. If Katherine had retired to Kettlethorpe after the loss of her mistress, the pair may not even have seen each other since the autumn of 1368. A lot had changed since then. Their marital positions were now reversed: Katherine was in her widow’s weeds and Gaunt was once again a married man. The deaths of Duchess Blanche and Queen Philippa, followed by the dominance of Alice Perrers, made for a different atmosphere at court and Katherine was associated with earlier, happier days, as well as having proved a loyal and valued servant. Perhaps there was also an element of chivalric protection towards the widow of a man who had fought at Gaunt’s side and lost his life while in his service. Their reunion would have stirred memories of their shared past and, perhaps, reawakened feelings of attraction that the pair had not been in a position to act upon before. No doubt Katherine was also attractive, perhaps with the similar fair hair and pale skin that evoked memories of the lost duchess.
Did their eyes meet with ‘subtil looking’ over the cradle waiting by Constance’s bed, or as Katherine read to Elizabeth and Philippa? Were there ‘dissymulyngs’ at the dinner table? The monk of the Evesham Chronicle related that Gaunt knew Katherine carnally ‘for a long time, during the lifetime of his wife Constance’, and the Chronicon Angliae suggests that it was a fresh scandal in 1378, which may be the point at which the affair became public news, but it is clear their connection began long before this point. There is little doubt that the relationship would have been initiated by Gaunt as Katherine’s position and degree of dependency would have prevented her making any overt approach or suggestion that could be taken as an affront to his status. The ducal household was a microcosm of the court, with its mixture of familiarity and formality. By necessity, members of the royal family lived in close proximity to the minor gentry, who served them, and while this meant that daily life used ritual and service as means of preserving social distance, it also created a degree of familiarity. This social mixing also created opportunities for mobility in the careers of those who proved their worth and, sometimes, on a personal level.
The precise point at which any woman’s relationship became sexual with a social superior, let alone a prince, can be difficult to ascertain. For those at the top and bottom of the structure, expectations were clearly defined: queens and princesses were legally wedded and expected to yield up the marital debt as soon as their age made it legitimate to do so. Likewise, the transaction between a nobleman and a prostitute, or woman of lower class, was unambiguous. But Gaunt and Katherine’s attachment was based in affection, which would endure for the rest of his life: whatever John’s methods of seduction, Katherine was responsive. There was much in Gaunt to attract her, but the protection of such a powerful figure would also have been invaluable to the widow of a knight. His attention would have been flattering, especially once it became clear to Katherine that it was not just to be a passing fancy. Sizeable grants made to ‘our very dear demoiselle’ that May, and the settlement of her lands in June, might suggest that the relationship had already become physical. Gifts of venison for her table and oaks to rebuild her house soon followed.
There is also the question of the plague. By 1373, Katherine and Gaunt’s world had been shaken by two devastating outbreaks of the disease and several lesser ones, the impact of which is impossible to measure. Not only had around a third of the population died in 1348, but the outbreak of 1361–62 in particular had proved devastating for Blanche’s family and Gaunt’s sisters. Besides the practical problems, such as the harvest not being gathered, the empty clerical posts, the closed universities and courts, the businesses and homes abandoned, and the rise of wages, survivors cannot have escaped a certain impact of this onslaught, an alteration of their approaches to life, a reawakening of the underlying medieval certainty that life was ‘nasty, brutish and short’.12 Although it is impossible to generalise, considering that almost the entire memory of a generation was overshadowed by the plague, any periods of abeyance along with the human highs of success, love, marriage and childbearing, may have seemed like affirmations of life and worth pursuing. This is not to suggest that their lives were hedonistic, although some of the chroniclers feared this consequence, but a shared sense of survival against the odds may have united those who had witnessed loss. As Katherine’s brother-in-law wrote, ‘all too little … lasteth such joy, ythanked be Fortune, that seemeth truest when she will beguile’. The sense that Dame Fortune had turned her wheel, or that God had spoken through the pestilence, or the sincere religious devotion of men like Gaunt did not prevent them from seeking pleasure. The king in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale speaks philosophically about death, advocating the need to accept its inevitability, and the importance of making a virtue of necessity. In Katherine, Gaunt found a woman with whom he was able to connect in a way that he did not with his wife. The usual expectation that equality of status was most desirable in marriage was overridden by more personal concerns.
Having assisted with the delivery of baby Catherine, Katherine soon became aware that she had conceived Gaunt’s child. Based at Hertford Castle, her pregnancy would have become visible by the autumn, so it is likely that she retired to Kettlethorpe in order to be out of Constance’s sight, though perhaps not out of mind. There is no way of knowing when Gaunt’s wife became aware of her husband’s infidelity, whether she cared, or if the lovers were discreet. Gaunt’s banishment of a group of Constance’s Castilian ladies to Nuneaton Abbey between 1373 and 1375 was a punishment for their gossip about his affair, so it would seem that Constance probably knew about Katherine then, although her husband’s harsh response might have counselled her to remain aloof, considering the mistress a necessary evil, rather than a threat to her status as duchess. Ultimately, Constance needed Gaunt to recover Castile, so, though conscious of her position, she was unlikely to initiate any sort of breach with him.
When Gaunt sailed from Sandwich on 31 August, the pregnant Katherine was probably left behind. Suggestions that she bore her child abroad run contrary to Gaunt’s usual practice of leaving his women safely behind at home, as well as his knowledge of the terrible conditions he had encountered at sea and in the army camps. It was a lucky escape for Katherine. The ships were buffeted by storms, blown off course and some were smashed to pieces with great loss of life. Forced to admit defeat before setting foot on French soil, John returned home. He spent that Christmas with Constance and his children at Hertford.
Katherine gave birth to a son early in 1373. He was acknowledged by Gaunt and given the name John Beaufort. He was her fourth child, perhaps a full decade younger than her daughter Blanche. The name bestowed on the boy has given rise to much speculation. He was not born in the Chateau de Beaufort, which had been lost to the French, nor, probably, in the English Beaufort Castle, which John had previously owned and sold. The title might have been an acknowledgement of the lordship of Beaufort that Gaunt had once held, and to which he still felt entitled, but it may equally have been descriptive, combining the French words for ‘handsome’ and ‘strong’, as a tribute to the newborn’s appearance. The likeliest locations for his birth are Kettlethorpe or Gaunt’s house in Lincoln.
Katherine’s sister Philippa had probably embarked on bearing her family too: having been married for seven years and served the queen and Constance in succession, she is thought to have borne between two and four children. It has been proposed that, with Chaucer in the separate establishment of the king, she might also have been the object of Gaunt’s affections and that he fathered at least one of her children. The evidence suggests otherwise though, as Gaunt did not deny his paternity of Katherine’s son but never acknowledged any child of her sister. Additionally, any connection between Gaunt and Philippa would have created a bond of affinity that would have served as a barrier in later years, when he wished to make Katherine his wife. The Chaucers must have found ample opportunity for privacy during the periods that the royal households overlapped and all contemporary evidence points to the conclusion that all Philippa’s children were Geoffrey’s.
In the summer of 1373, Gaunt was planning a second attempt at the invasion of France that had been defeated by the weather. He equipped and repaired Tutbury Castle as the residence of his wife and children during his absence, but for Katherine he had a different plan entirely. On his way south to join his armies, he paused for around three weeks at Northbourne Manor near Deal in Kent, which was owned by St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury. The present Jacobean house and gardens on the site probably sits on the medieval foundations of Gaunt’s property, close to which stood a chapel dating from the twelfth century. The house was conveniently close to the post of Sandwich, just 6 miles along the coast, easily accessible once the tides and winds decided to co-operate. Katherine was with him for part, or all, of his sojourn in Kent, before his departure for Aquitaine at the end of July. After that, Katherine may have returned to Constance’s household at Tutbury to resume her intermittent role as governess and to await Gaunt’s return the following April. In the autumn of 1374, Katherine conceived her second child by Gaunt, a boy she delivered the following summer, probably at Kenilworth Castle. Gaunt had inherited the property from Blanche of Lancaster, who had received it on her father’s death, and in 1373 he began an extensive building programme that would include new state apartments, a great hall, kitchens and towers. With his wife based at Hertford, Katherine might have been the first to benefit from Gaunt’s improvements. Her lover may have been with her, or at least waiting nearby until she gave birth, as the Register places him 30 miles to the north-east, at Leicester Castle on 4, 12 and 18 August, before his arrival at Kenilworth on 30 August 1375. Their son was given the name Henry Beaufort.
With the arrival of her children by Gaunt, Katherine was also considering her eldest daughter’s future. Assuming that Blanche had been born soon after her mother’s first marriage, she would have been approaching her twelfth birthday by the arrival of 1375. Although she had been educated alongside the duke’s children, young Blanche was still the daughter of a knight and her proposed husband was of a similar rank. As a New Year’s gift, Gaunt granted Katherine the wardship and marriage of the son of Sir Robert Deyncourt, deceased, who might have had connections to Kenilworth Castle. On 13 January, instructions were given to Gaunt’s steward to guard Robert’s son until such time as Katherine sent for him to be married to her daughter. However, no more references to young Blanche survive and her fiancé lived on into the 1440s, suggesting that Katherine’s daughter died before she came of age. Given that she would have reached maturity at the age of 14, this would mean that Blanche died at some point between 1375 and 1377. Little is known about the life of this elusive child, who was given an education above her station and whose life was probably spent entirely within a female, domestic sphere, in which Katherine and her sister Philippa, Blanche of Lancaster and Constance of Castile were the most significant figures, before succumbing to some childhood illness. The year 1375 also saw another outbreak of the plague in England, which offers another potential reason for Blanche’s loss, not that much reason is required to explain the consistently high levels of childhood and early adult mortality in the fourteenth century. No doubt the loss of her eldest child, so close to the threshold of her adult life, would have been a terrible personal blow to Katherine. Yet these years were also to witness political upheaval and change.
As Edward III became increasingly infirm in body and mind, the political influence of his mistress Alice Perrers had created resentment at court and by April 1376, Parliament was ready to move against her. Known as the ‘Good Parliament’, it refused the king’s demands until, as Thomas Walsingham put it, ‘certain abuses and defects had been corrected, and until certain persons who seemed to have impoverished the king and the kingdom, to have vilely tarnished his fame and to have greatly diminished his power, should have been eliminated, and their excesses properly punished according to their kind’.13 Parliament was aiming at no less than the removal of Alice Perrers, perhaps even her execution. Edward certainly believed so. That final word of Walsingham’s account is most ominous, as Alice was considered to be of a base ‘kind’, rumoured to be illegitimate, who posed a threat to the good kingship and laws Edward had previously come to represent. Having already borne Edward at least one illegitimate child, Alice was then discovered to have been married in secret, to a William Windsor, and to have successfully petitioned the king for his release from charges of bribery and extortion. This meant that she had put the unwitting Edward in the position of committing adultery. Although Alice was temporarily removed, on condition that she stayed away from him, he summoned her that September in the belief that he was dying.
The double blows of Parliament’s attack and Alice’s marriage paled into insignificance when it became apparent that the Black Prince’s life was ebbing away. Having endured ill health that often confined him to a stretcher for a decade, Prince Edward died at Westminster Palace at the age of 45. He was survived by his wife, Joan, and their second son, Richard of Bordeaux, then aged 9. In his final hours, the Black Prince requested that his father should protect their inheritance. That September, the king’s eldest son was laid to rest in Canterbury Cathedral in a tomb of his own design, carved from Purbeck marble by Henry Yevele and featuring his coat of arms and the motif of three ostrich feathers used by the Prince of Wales. That title was quickly conferred upon his son Richard, in the face of Parliamentary concerns that Gaunt might attempt to seize power.14 The king did not last long enough to see his new heir reach adulthood. Almost exactly a year after the death of his eldest son, on 21 June 1377, he suffered a stroke and passed away at Richmond Palace.
By the terms of his will, written at Havering atte Bowe the previous October, Edward left his heir, young Richard, ‘an entire bed, marked with the arms of France and England, now in our Palace at Westminster’, 1,000 marks to Joan of Kent and appointed John ‘King of Castile and León and Duke of Lancaster’ as one of ten executors. Edward’s body was carried through the streets to Westminster Abbey, followed by great processions including his sons, nobles and prelates, before he was laid to rest beside his queen. Nine years later, a monument was erected to him, featuring carvings of all his children. It was of great significance that his will named Richard as his heir, followed by Gaunt and his sons, bypassing the claim of Lionel of Antwerp’s daughter Philippa and her 2-year-old son Roger, Earl of Mortimer. This was the line from which the Yorkist kings would later descend, arguing their precedence over the heirs of Lionel’s younger brother John of Gaunt.
England’s new king was only 10 years old in 1377. If there was any foundation to the rumours that Gaunt was considering usurping his nephew, he did not act upon it. To the contrary, he protested in Parliament, refusing to serve on a committee until he was ‘excused of the things which the Commons [common people] had evilly said about him’.15 In fact, Gaunt scarcely needed to act upon his ambition: a Continual Council was appointed to guide King Richard during his youth but, in effect, Gaunt was now the most powerful man in the land. Yet that land was in crisis. Gaunt’s failed expeditions to France had resulted in the imposition of new taxes but the financial situation remained desperate and there had been a collapse in trade, so an even higher rate was imposed in 1380. This proved deeply unpopular and Gaunt was held responsible in the popular imagination; his coat of arms was defaced in London and scandalous rumours were spread about his foreign birth. He also came in for criticism for his support of John Wycliffe, a religious reformer who led the Lollards and advocated the translation of the Bible into English and favoured a personal approach to God rather than following the dictates of a corrupt church. On one occasion, as Adam of Usk relates, Gaunt had to flee a London mob along the Thames in a boat ‘hastily provided’. Yet Usk was wrong to claim that Gaunt fled from the rebels in 1381; he was already campaigning in Scotland when the Peasants’ Revolt broke out in Essex and Kent.
Gaunt was an easy target. His foreign campaigning and high status put him out of touch with the common people in a way that was only exaggerated by his chivalric code; his aspirations for the Castilian crown and extensive power and lands created fear and suspicion that England was being ruled by two masters. Led by three figures, a subversive priest named John Ball, the speaker Jack Straw and their figurehead Wat Tyler, the rebels declared they would accept no king called John and marched on London. At Blackheath, they sent a petition to King Richard demanding the deaths of the men they perceived to be his enemies and theirs, including Gaunt. It is not clear where Katherine was at this point, but it is likely that she was not in London when anarchy broke out. Initially, she may have been with Constance at Hertford, or at Kettlethorpe, or perhaps at Leicester when the rebels went on their spree of killing and looting. According to the Anonimalle Chronicle, once the news reached her, she ‘went into hiding where no one knew where to find her for a long time’,16 as ‘savage hoards’ attacked prominent figures and properties. The Savoy was looted and burned to the ground, the wine casks in the cellar smashed, furnishings torn down and Gaunt’s treasure thrown into the Thames. Five wagon loads of treasures were destroyed, along with court rolls and duchy records: Gaunt’s ‘lodging unrivalled in splendour and nobility within the kingdom’ was left a ruin. Constance fled north to Pontefract Castle as a mob attacked Hertford Castle, looting and inflicting further damage. Their absence from the capital certainly saved the lives of Gaunt and his women. Terrifying reports must have reached them of the damage, although by that time, the bravery of the young king in confronting them had already brought the rioting to a standstill. For a while, Gaunt remained in Scotland, fearful for his life and the rumours that Parliament had declared him a traitor, until Richard made a clear denial of this and summoned him south.
Gaunt must have viewed the wreck of his beautiful palace on the Thames with horror. The Savoy had been a symbol of his power, his government, but also of every privilege that his rank brought in terms of luxury, beauty and the arts. All that had been desecrated by the rampant mob, and it must have become something of an emblem for him, a warning against the follies of the flesh and his own powerlessness in the face of fortune. For twenty years it had been his London base but he had no inclination to repair it. Lead was taken from the roof and sent to make repairs at Hertford Castle and damaged timbers were sold.17 The palace gates were rebuilt to repel intruders but inside them, the Savoy remained a ruin. Gaunt would not even mention it in his will eighteen years later.
The attacks upon Gaunt may have come as a shock to Katherine. The last few years had been full of personal happiness and success. She had borne a son, Thomas, around 1377 and a daughter, Joan, in 1379, both probably at Kettlethorpe. Two successful marriages had also been arranged: Blanche and Gaunt’s second daughter, the 17-year-old Elizabeth of Lancaster, became Countess of Pembroke through her marriage to the young John Hastings at Kenilworth Castle in June 1380. The following March, Gaunt’s illegitimate daughter Blanche, by Marie de St Hilaire, was married to Sir Thomas Morieux, one of Gaunt’s knights, and received gifts of silver spoons, ewers, saucers and basins, plus an annual £100 drawn from the estates of Fakenham and Snettisham in Norfolk. The scandalous reports of Gaunt riding brazenly about the countryside with Katherine sharing his horse also date from this period. Yet if the reports of the revolt were not bad enough, a worse shock was about to reach Katherine. Gaunt was devastated by the news. Although he had initially tried to conceal his horror at the evident depths of the hatred directed at him, which certainly would have claimed his life, these events sent him into a deep contemplation of his life. Dwelling on how he might have caused such offence, he sought advice from his household and various men of the cloth, reaching the conclusion that ‘he had paid no attention to what was said to him, because he was blinded by desire, fearing neither God nor shame amongst men’.18 Deeply shaken, he needed someone to blame for having taken the wrong direction.
Gaunt now vowed to ‘remove that lady from his household, so that there could be no further offence’; in the confessional he ‘blamed himself for the deaths … and reproached himself for his liaison with Katherine Swynford, or rather renounced it’. Summoning Constance north to meet him, he asked her forgiveness ‘for his misdeeds to her’.19 Determined to lead a new, blameless life, he dismissed Katherine from his service – as a reference to her in February 1382 as ‘recently governess of our daughters’ confirms – and increased her annuity to 200 marks for life, to enable her to live independently of him. Gaunt did not forget her children either. He granted Katherine’s son Thomas Swynford an annuity of 100 marks on his marriage to Jane Crophill, which took place in March 1383; three years later, he knighted Thomas along with Robert Ferrers, who was betrothed to Katherine and Gaunt’s young daughter Joan. Katherine retreated to Lincoln, where she took a house in Minster Yard called The Chancery. Here, inside the first-floor chapel, she must have also prayed for guidance, now that it seemed her liaison with Gaunt was over and an uncertain future stretched ahead.
Constance willingly accepted her husband’s apology. If the first decade of her marriage had been less than successful, in terms of personal relations, childbearing and the pursuit of the Castilian throne, the coming years would bring her some comfort. Constance was now in her early thirties and although she may have borne a short-lived son, she and Gaunt had only the one daughter, Catalina, whose thirteenth birthday fell somewhere between summer 1385 and spring 1386. She was approaching marriageable age when relations between England and Portugal changed for the better. After years of struggle against the Spanish, the Battle of Aljubarrota had confirmed King John I as Portugal’s ruler in August 1385. John then made friendly approaches to Gaunt, to forge an alliance against their mutual enemies, offering safe passage and an escort for English ships across the Bay of Biscay. With the recent turmoil in England and his narrow escape, Gaunt was ready to shift his focus elsewhere, to press his advantage and recapture his wife’s inheritance. With the signing of the Treaty of Windsor, Constance could finally feel confident that her long-held ambitions were on the verge of being realised. Then, to their great encouragement, Pope Urban VI recognised Gaunt as the legitimate king of Castile and León. It was the spur he needed.
While Gaunt’s standard was raised in St Paul’s Cathedral and prayers were conducted for his campaign, Constance responded by embarking on a pilgrimage. It was common for all ranks of society to undertake such devotions to ask the saints for intercession in their lives. Pre-Reformation England was a network of religious sites, from the popular and fairly commercial shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury and the Virgin’s Chapel at Walsingham, to holy wells, local churches and shrines to obscure saints. Hundreds of thousands journeyed relatively long distances to ask for forgiveness or guidance on matters of health, wealth, marriage and fortune: whatever question might be troubling them, there was an appropriate saint to whom they might offer thanks, or ask questions, and leave a gift of whatever amount they were able. Constance headed to the Abbey at St Albans in Hertfordshire, then a particularly important Benedictine community, centre of the arts and home to the chronicler Thomas Walsingham. She would have prayed for success in the Castilian campaign at the exquisite Lady Chapel, completed in 1327 in Purbeck marble carved with painted figures, angels and foliage. Located just 14 miles to the west of her usual residence of Hertford Castle, it was a community she would have known well and they would have enjoyed her patronage since the early days of her marriage. She was greatly admired there for her piety and during her visit was received into the confraternity of the abbey. More secular confirmations also took place, with a ceremony at Westminster, where Richard II placed gold coronets on the heads of Gaunt and Constance. Then, on 9 July 1386, Constance, Gaunt and Catalina set sail from Plymouth, along with Philippa and Elizabeth of Lancaster, accompanied by more than ninety ships and thousands of men. Constance was going home.
The English fleet arrived at the port of La Coruña on 25 July, the feast day of St James the Apostle. Since it was a day of devotion and celebration, the citizens put up little resistance and Gaunt’s armies were able to enter the undefended town. According to Froissart, they remained there a month before proceeding south to Santiago de Compostela, where Gaunt was immediately recognised as king. An illustration in Froissart’s chronicle depicts the surrender of the city to Gaunt and Constance, who appear on horseback. It is a generic enough portrait, with Constance riding side-saddle, demure enough for a conquering claimant to the throne, dressed in a golden gown with blue trim, her hair scraped back under a cone-shaped hennin with a gauzy veil. A coronation may even have been staged, using a crown of Spanish gold that had been brought specially from England for the purpose. Gaunt set up court for the winter of 1386–87 at Ourense, 100km to the south-east; a Roman town that sat at the junction of four rivers. Perhaps he and his family took over the twelfth-century episcopal palace with its courtyards, cloisters, lodgings and defensive walls. As word spread, the Galician nobles came to submit to Gaunt and pledge to help his campaign; this might have been prudence, given his position of occupation, but it gave him the support he needed. Constance was back in her homeland for the first time since her exile. With her husband and daughter at her side, this first part of the campaign was a great success, and as she moved within reach of her birthright, it must have been a happy time for the long-neglected wife.
That November, Gaunt met with John of Portugal to discuss their joint invasion, which was confirmed by a treaty of marriage between Blanche’s eldest daughter Philippa and the Portuguese king. Catalina was initially suggested as the bride, but the hostility between Castile and Portugal led John to choose Philippa instead of her Castilian half sister. She was then 26 and though various offers had been made for her hand, none had come close to fruition. An illustration from Jean de Waurin’s fifteenth-century Chronique d’Angleterre depicts Gaunt and John, along with various prelates, debating the marriage over dinner. Although produced long after the event and therefore unhelpful as an actual portrait, it is remarkable as a depiction of their setting, with its tiled floor, red and gold walls, blue hangings and the formal table, draped in white and set with plates, bread and knives, as a chain of servants bring out the dishes. Gaunt himself is solid and grey-haired, with furs around his neck and lining his hat. Most significantly though, the ladies are not present as their futures are decided. Before the middle of November, Philippa had said her goodbyes and departed for Portugal. Her marriage took place the following February, at the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady in Porto, also depicted in an illustration accompanying Jean de Waurin’s work, in which the magnificently dressed couple stand before a golden altar flanked by marble pillars. In reality, the service was performed in the couple’s absence, by proxy. They did not meet until they were already man and wife.
In March, Gaunt and John of Portugal prepared to invade Castile and crossed the River Douro to engage with the armies of Constance’s cousin, John I of Castile, son of the man who had killed her father. Constance, Catalina and Elizabeth of Lancaster went with them. They travelled south, taking the towns of Valderas and Villalobos, although their arrival had been anticipated and defences were ready in most other major towns, reinforced by French mercenaries. The campaign proved disastrous: ‘they found the country all laid waste and the English suffered much from the climate.’20 As they ran out of supplies, terrible sickness spread through the troops; a number of leading knights died, including Gaunt’s son-in-law Sir Thomas Morieux, and he was forced to abandon his plans. By May, after quarrelling fiercely, John and Gaunt agreed to come to terms with Castile. Walsingham recounts that the Portuguese king urged Gaunt to kill a number of English deserters but Gaunt wept and replied that they were driven to it out of desperation, not treason.21 Perhaps the presence of his wife and daughters is the reason for his easy capitulation, or else his personal epiphany following the Peasants’ Revolt made him less willing to push his men to the limit in impossible conditions, as he had on previous campaigns. It is also not impossible, as the single chronicler of St Denys suggests, that Constance was pregnant during this time and lost a child. Having returned to his wife and repudiated his mistress, Gaunt may well have seen his duty extending to fathering a new son, an heir to Castile who would be born on Spanish soil. Such a loss might have underpinned Gaunt’s despair in the early summer of 1387.
Gaunt may also have been considering the situation of his daughter Elizabeth. Her marriage to John Hastings, concluded in 1380, had been annulled when it emerged, shortly before their departure for Spain, that Elizabeth had been seduced by her cousin, John Holland, Duke of Exeter. Holland was the son of Joan of Kent, Princess of Wales, from her first marriage, and was then in his mid-thirties. John Hastings was still only 14 and it seems unlikely that their union had been consummated. The royal party was already at Plymouth, waiting to embark, when the scandal broke. Elizabeth was pregnant and she and Holland were married just two weeks before they set sail. Her daughter, Constance, must have been delivered in Spain, probably early in 1387 at Ourense, and Elizabeth was nursing an infant of 3 or 4 months during the campaign. At the end of May, Holland and Elizabeth left the army and were granted safe conduct through Castile back on to Portuguese soil. Negotiations for a truce were made at the end of June and early July, at Trancoso, where Gaunt had stopped on his way to visit his newly-wed daughter Philippa. These led to the Treaty of Bayonne, which was concluded in 1388.
However, Constance’s point had been made. Although she and Gaunt renounced their claim to the throne of Castile and agreed to return their conquests in Galicia, they were compensated with a payment of 600,000 gold francs, followed by an annual income of 40,000. Nor was Constance’s right forgotten: her daughter Catalina was to marry the King of Castile’s son, the 9-year-old Henry, and one day become queen by his side. Although some historians have considered the campaign to be a disaster, Walsingham thought the settlement was favourable, as it was the result of Gaunt’s prayers and conveyed divine favour.22 Their final weeks in Portugal were not easy. King John fell gravely ill and it was believed that he would soon die; the pregnant Philippa miscarried; and a plot was hatched by a Castilian knight to poison Gaunt. Around this time, he wept in public in repentance of his many sins and made a vow to the Virgin Mary not to return to his dissolute ways. Perhaps this was in anticipation of his return to England, or a response to his recent misfortune.
The peace proved decisive for another daughter of Lancaster. Catalina married the 9-year-old Henry of Castile at Palencia Cathedral on 17 September 1388. The union neatly tied together the English and Castilian claims and it must have been a moment of triumph for Constance to attend this legal union with the title that her father had held. She must have relinquished the possibility of ever reigning Castile herself, but this was the next best thing, knowing that the line would continue through her daughter. Henry would inherit the throne in 1390 and Catalina would go on to bear him three children. Constance also took the opportunity to visit them in Castile that October, where she arranged for the reburial of her father’s remains in the tomb of his ancestors. At the end of the month, Gaunt set sail for Bayonne, where he insisted that English pilgrims should keep their right of access to visit the shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostela even if he was handing over his Galician conquests.23 A considerable period of negotiation followed. Gaunt, Constance and the remaining members of his family finally set sail and landed back in England on 19 November 1389, after an absence of over three years.
Gaunt returned to a scene of political drama. During his absence, certain reputedly ‘evil’ counsellors of the young Richard II had been challenged by a group known as the Lords Appellant. Led by Gaunt’s younger brother Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester and including Gaunt’s son Henry of Bolingbroke, then aged 21, they launched an attack in the Merciless Parliament of 1388, forcing the young king to come to terms with them after a number of his favourites were impeached and executed. It was largely due to Gaunt’s influence after his return from Castile that the king and the Lords Appellant were reconciled, although the problem was alleviated rather than solved. Political tension continued to simmer at court.
During Gaunt’s absence, Katherine received an unprecedented honour. In April 1387, Richard II appointed her a Lady of the Garter, for which she attended a lavish ceremony of investiture at Windsor Castle, dressed in robes of red and blue embroidered with gold. This was a remarkable step for the king and Richard’s motivation is not transparent. Following Gaunt’s repudiation of his relationship with Katherine, it must have been satisfying for her to receive this recognition, which was the highest honour available to her as an English woman. It may even have been a reward for her recent chaste living, although this was more the result of, rather than the catalyst for, Gaunt’s return to his wife. The true nature of their affair, though, is not clear and Richard’s action may have been intended to honour Katherine for her new-found morality, for her service to the family or her position as Gaunt’s mistress. Whatever moved Richard to honour her in this way, it was a significant step considering Katherine’s birth. She now divided her time between her estate at Kettlethorpe and the house in Lincoln, but would have continued to visit London in a ceremonial role. It was also a mark of the respect in which Katherine’s experience was held within the family, that she was called upon to assist on at least one occasion at the lying-in of Mary de Bohun, Gaunt’s young daughter-in-law. As a result of these connections, or perhaps even by letter from Gaunt himself, she would have learned that he was heading back to England.
On her return to England, Constance retired to her castles of Tutbury and Hertford. Her main aims in Castile had been achieved and her daughter was well married, so she lived out a quiet, pious existence with regular contact with the nearby Benedictine community at St Albans. Gaunt had commissioned a new chapel to be built at Hertford in 1380 and the work had been completed around three years later, providing Constance with a new location for her devotions. By this point, there was little purpose in maintaining relations with Gaunt on a personal level and the pair lived apart for the remainder of their marriage. This separation was also reflected by Katherine and Gaunt’s reunion, and Katherine’s presence in the ducal household is indicated by the 12d a day that was spent on the maintenance of the dozen horses she kept in his stables. However, she was a visitor rather than a permanent resident. The majority of the time, until 1393, Katherine appears to have been living at The Chancery in Lincoln. By 1391, Gaunt’s household records show that his four children by Katherine were also involved in his life to some degree, being allotted 6d a day for their lodgings and given stabling for their horses. In March 1391, he sent wine to Katherine at Lincoln and that Christmas she was invited to Hertford Castle, along with their daughter Joan and Gaunt’s son Henry and his family. Gaunt’s gift to his mistress was a gold ring set with a diamond. In her final years, Constance is likely to have turned a blind eye to her husband’s relationship and, given that chroniclers date a public awareness of his affair to after Constance’s death, Gaunt most likely behaved discreetly out of respect for her. They would have come together mainly on ceremonial occasions, the last time being at Hertford for Christmas 1393. Gaunt was sent to France to conclude a four-year truce early in 1394, so he was far from home when Constance died at Leicester Castle on 24 March.
Constance, Duchess of Lancaster was 40, or not far off it, when she died. The cause of her death is not known. Her loss did not affect Gaunt to the degree that Blanche’s had, back in 1368. That death had caused him a deep, almost inconsolable grief following their union of affection. There was never any suggestion that Constance was a replacement for Blanche in that sense, but she had proven herself to be a perfect model wife: regal, devout and serious, a suitable consort and partner for the pursuit of his Castilian ambition. She had set a standard of serious piety, given him a daughter and lived quietly without scandal. On a personal level, there was clearly little attraction between them, but the match had been made for dynastic, not personal reasons. Gaunt would have mourned his wife as befitted her character and status as the daughter of a king, but he was not heartbroken. Constance was laid to rest as she had lived: with honour and dignity alongside Henry, the first Duke Lancaster and his duchess Isabel at the church of the Newarke in Leicester. She had played her part in Lancastrian history, but ultimately left a limited mark in terms of its future. In the year of her death, 1394, the dynasty was about to enter a period of great trial. Its impending change in fortunes would threaten the Lancastrian inheritance, its reputation, even its very existence.
1 Gower.
2 Mortimer.
3 Goodman.
4 Papworth.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Emery.
8 Goodman.
9 Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt’s Register.
10 Now in Oxfordshire, it was in Berkshire until the redrawing of the county boundary in 1974.
11 Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt’s Register, Volume 1.
12 Quotation attributed to John Locke.
13 Walsingham.
14 Fletcher.
15 Ibid.
16 Weir.
17 Emery.
18 Walsingham.
19 Ibid.
20 Froissart.
21 Goodman.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.