So, as we reach the end of this book, who was Katherine Swynford? Clearly, the role she has been assigned throughout history as the mother or lover of others is correct. She was the mistress of John of Gaunt, and she was the mother of numerous important people. However, she clearly was also much more than this. She was educated, intelligent, pious, no doubt beautiful and, moreover, politically discreet. She was also an accomplished diplomat, maintaining relationships with both Richard II and Henry IV in politically turbulent times. She was involved within extensive female networks of book ownership and literary patronage, clearly well read and accomplished.
Katherine also manifestly had a sense of her place, if not in history, then within her own society. Her choice of armorial associates her with the legend of St Katherine and the attributes of this saint. Moreover, this was a conscious decision by Katherine, an adoption of this saint’s ‘worthiness’ as her own. For me, this is the most interesting aspect of Katherine Swynford, and leads to a whole host of questions about women in medieval society. Katherine provides the example that medieval women were conscious, intelligent beings who could control their own image and portray themselves in a way they wished, influenced by other women, and who were not stereotyped, downtrodden, oppressed figures controlled by men. History is full of the achievements of white men, with other categories of society marginalised. Perhaps one of the achievements of these white men is the amount of male authority that permeates beliefs about how societies in the past were structured. Katherine Swynford offers a contrast to this, a look at women through their own eyes, with this overriding sense of male control removed. The Church, in the form of Walsingham and Knighton, tried to dismiss Katherine as Eve, and in part succeeded as the writings of these monks were read in literal ways by many historians and scholars. But Katherine herself, through her own decisions, wanted to portray herself in a different way, and this self-portrayal deserves to be acknowledged. She is an interesting woman, and her example suggests that there are many others like her who were able to feel in control of some aspects of their lives, without the influence of men but within the influence of women. Perhaps the most ironic part is that the women who provided the role models were female saints such as St Katherine and Mary Magdalene, whose stories themselves were suppressed by male authority, their importance within a masculine Church limited to the ways in which men wrote about them. Katherine Swynford clearly shows that they failed, and that women could claim these saints as their own.