The Fall of the House of Roeulx... into Roet?
In the beginning…

Most people who are aware of Katherine Swynford know that she was the daughter of one Payne/Payn/Paon de Roet, and that she had a sister named Philippa who married the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer.  What little we know about Katherine, her sister Philippa, and their father Giles (Payne or Paon seems to have been a dit name or nickname) is transactional at best.  The wills of all three Roets seem to have vanished, thus we don't even know the things they valued sufficiently to pass on to their children.   We know of grants made to Katherine, her sister Philippa and the dates upon which they were ordered.  The birthdates (in terms of the year rather than the exact dates themselves) are all guesswork with no corroborating evidence.  For Katherine and Philippa even the place of their births is guesswork.   Even less is known for certain regarding their father and his family. 

Katherine has long been assumed to have been born in 1350, possibly in the month of November, the month in which her namesake saint's feast day was then on the liturgical calendar (the feast of her namesake saint, Katherine of Alexandria, was removed from the liturgical calendar in 1969 along with the revered St. Christopher and others).  However, for reasons which will be suggested, later scholarship is more incline to place the year of her birth as being between 1340 and 1345, in which case it seems likely that she was born in England and not Hainaut, the county in which their father and his family once likely held land.  A similar problem exists for her sister Philippa’s birth year and birth place.

Regarding Katherine and her sister Philippa's father, details are often threadbare at best.  He was a Hainauter who came with Philippa of Hainaut probably upon her marriage to England’s King Edward III, which suggests he could have been in England by 1327 but we have no record  of his being in England and in Edward IIIs service until the Battle of Crécy in late 1346 (XXX).  He is not mentioned in Froissart’s account as forming part of Phililppa’s retinue in 1327 and it has been assumed that Roet was one of the pluissier jone esquier individuals the celebrated chronicler Froissart wrote about.(XXX)  

In due time, Roet was granted the title of Guyenne King of Arms2 and was present at both the Battles of Crécy (1346) and Calais (1347).(xxx)  He was one of an estimated English army of more than 50,000 men.  Not long after the Battle of Calais, in which Froissart specifically notes Roet as one of two individuals to accept the surrender of Calais, Roet disappears from the English record as he had apparently returned to Hainaut to serve Queen Philippa of Hainaut’s sister, Marguerite(XXX).  He had granted English arms to the brothers Andrew(e) and his seal on Roet’s  grant giving the brothers Andrew arms are said to be one of three wheels with a central pierced molet, or star, a seal repeated impaled with the arms of Swynford on a 1377 document involving his daughter, Katherine.(XX)  His arms described thus, appear to be a canting coat of arms, which the English were fond of, being indicative of his own family in Hainaut, with “Roet” meaning “wheel.”  Three such wheels were probably thought to nicely balance his coat of arms and the central pierced molet – echoed only in Katherine's own 1377 seal but never by the Chaucers or anyone other than Katherine herself, may have been a mark of cadency of where he stood in the greater family of Roet.  Thus, the arms of Roet that can still be seen in Ewelme decorating the tombs of Alice Chaucer and her parents' (Thomas Chaucer and wife Maud Burgheresh) do not display the pierced molet.  As we shall see, it was also not included on Roet arms displayed on the Westminster Abbey tomb of Lewis Robessart(XXX)

The immediate family of Payne Roet.

Payne Roet’s name appears to have been Giles at birth.(XXX) As of this present time, determining the names of his parents, siblings and grandparents has ended in near futility.  An editor of Froissart’s Chronicle, Kervyn de Lettenhove, postulated that Payne Roet was the son of Huon son of Jean de Roet but didn’t include any rationale for his statement.(XXX)  The family is elusive at best.  Complicating things, there had been a princely Lord of Roeulx family, in which the name “Payne” is not found; but a few individuals named “Giles” are noted.   Additionally, the arms for the Roeulx family do not consist of wheels (Roet/Ruet/Rueth etc. are variations on the Latin word for “wheel).  The Lords of Roeulx, having descended from the family of the Counts of Hainaut, celebrated their ancestral connection by utilizing arms that displayed not wheels but rather the lions of the count.  The current arms of the town of Roeulx, however, combines both:  A lion holding a wheel aloft in one paw.
Lindsay Brook argued that Giles/Payne Roet was a descendant from the lordly house of Roeulx.(XXX)  There are a few indications that make this proposed identity tantalizing, not the least of which is the finding of a document testifying to the legitimate birth of Katherine’s Swynford son, Thomas, who attempted to claim his ancestral heritage in Hainaut.9
Until fairly recently, the only offspring of Payne/Giles Roet recognized were daughters Katherine and Philippa.  Even when scholars at the time didn’t know the given name of Chaucer’s wife, one Philippa Chaucy, she was fairly suggested as a sister of Katherine Swynford and daughter of Payne/Giles de Roet due to the prominent display of of Katherine and her father’s arms (minus the pierced molet) at St. Mary’s at Ewelme, established by the poet’s granddaughter, Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk. It was once believed that existed no Chaucer coat of arms there for the poet’s son, Thomas, his wife Mathilde Burgheresh, and granddaughter Alice, a finding which has puzzled Chaucer genealogists for a few centuries.  It was later found in Special Collections of a U.S. Ivy League university(XXX). 

Lewis Robsart's tomb in Westminster Abbey and Katherine's arms and those of Swynford are on it. Why?

 

Here we see the outside of the magnificent and colorful tomb of Lewis Robessart in Westminster Abbey.

The knight Sir Lewis Robessart has a splendid painted medieval tomb in Westminster Abbey.  While the painting was redone in the 1960s as it had been washed over with a gray coloring, sufficient notes exist to indicate the heraldry originally sported on the tomb.

Robessart was a celebrated figure.  He was a Knight of the Garter who was born in Hainaut, just as Sir Walter Maunny and Giles Roet were born there.  He was granted free denizenship (making him a full English citizen) by Henry V in 1418 and was made a Knight of Bath two years subsequent to that and served as Standard Bearer to the king; he was also one of Henry Vs executors of his will.  Robessart married as her second husband Elizabeth Baroness Bouchier,   He died at Amiens in battle in 1431.

Robessart and his tomb is of interest to us in discovering more of Giles Roet, father of Katherine Swynford.  His tomb is a fine example of Morganstern's Tomb of Gothic Kinship and displays many fine heraldic shields.  The purpose of tombs such as Robessart's is to proclaim marital and family affiliations with leading members of society.  His own arms and his arms with his wife Elizabeth are prominently displayed on the tomb but so are many others; the total number of such shields is 46 or 48 (differs on articles and websites listed below).  By comparison, the tomb of Edmund of Langley, youngest son of Edward III (1342 - 1402) has seven along each long side; his father Edward III (1377) had six weeper statuettes on each long side (six are now missing); and the tomb of Edward's heir, The Black Prince, interestingly, has multiple shields but all belong to him (England and France, ancient, quarterly; and the ostrich plume of Hainaut adopted as the badge of the Prince of Wales).  

Robessart's tomb is decorated with a Saracen't head and a single wheel, suggesting a close connection with the Hainaut lands of Du Roeulx, an area which is also associated with Giles Roet.    He takes his name from the village Robesart located 18 miles south of Mons in Hainaut while  Le Roeulx is 13 miles north-east from Mons.  Other villages/towns in the area include families with which Roet/Roeulx intermarried, including Ecaussines, Morlanwelz, Ath, Gavre and others.

The crowned Saracen head with tresses displays a distinct St. Catherine wheel with spokes (St. Catherine being patron saint of Hainaut).  The six shields of Robessart display varying marks of cadency indicating their order in the family.  Most information in this post is derivative of his articles on the tomb authored by C. R. Humpherey-Smith on the Robessart tomb.  Among the 46 coats listed  and lists are found the following coats of arms:

 

    13.  Gules, 3 wheels or (for Roet)

    14.  Argent, on a chevron Sable, 3 boars' heads close couped Or (Swynford)

    15.  Per pale Argent and Gules, a bend counterchanged (Chaucer)

    16.  Ermine, three hamards Gules (D'abringecourt)

So far (and considering many of the coats of arms that I have not described here but which were identified by Humphery-Smith), the shields have all been related to family connections.  Therefore, #s 13-16 seem to diverge from the others as no obvious familial connections have been made, although subsequent coats of arms are surmised to have come by way of the Chaucers, especially Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk and granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, but these are all guesses at best.

Why Roet?  this coat might be included for a number of reasons.  Giles Roet, like Lewis Robessart and other Robessarts, was born in Hainaut near Mons, thus one connection could be that the arms are on the tomb as a sign of solidarity with a fellow Hainauter.  Persons from Hainaut and Flanders were often considered, as Humphery-Smith relays, as "free boosters."  I suspect the term is not flattering.  Individuals from these areas were 'othered' and their origination recalled at least as late as the Great Fire of London in 1666.  Many Londoners, convinced that the fire was arson and an act of war, blamed Catholics, the Dutch and French men, likely including some Flemish residents, some of whom were hurriedly executed.

In addition to the possibility that Roet arms were included as a show of an enduring connection with many Hainauters who came to England along with Philippa of Hainaut, wife of Edward III, it should be noted that a member of the Robessart family daughters, Constance, was, like Elizabeth Roet, provided a living upon entering the beguinage of secular canonesses of St. Waudru of Mons, which technically required only that the woman come from a knightly family, in fact many of its members were from leading families in Hainaut, suggesting that both Constance Robessart and Elizabeth Roet came from leading families.

              

Above is a selection of shields near the top of the Robessart monument.  I have identified these for you as representing the families of Chaucer, Swynford and Roet.  A golden angel holds two shields each.  These shields only make sense for inclusion in a group of largely family and family connection shields if Robessart could indeed make claims of kinship.  Of the three, that of the three gold wheels on gules for Roet , which has familial ties to Swynford and Chaucer, likely indicates that Robessart's family had at some point intermarried with that of Roet.  Swynford would thus make sense as a family of kinship (as a husband of one of Giles' daughters, Katherine) and Chaucer due to his daughter Philippa having married Geoffrey Chaucer.  Humpherey-Smith further surmises that otherwise unidentified families having shields depicted on the tomb indicate not only kinship with Geoffrey Chaucer but in particular that of his famous granddaughter Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, as well.  The Swynford arms are given twice, as above and with a label of red, which probably refers to a son of Katherine and Hugh's son Thomas.

For our study, this leaves the shield of D'abrichecourt (the common spelling of the name).  It has been surmised that a Roet/Roeulx daughter married into the D'Abrichecourt family in Hainaut:

"Sir Nicholas Dabrichecourt of Enghien and Valenciennes.  Married Elizabeth Roeulx or Roet? Daughter of Pain de Roet of Hainault.  Was still living in 1358." (Soc.genealogy.medieval usenet group)

A Philippa Roeulx is noted as the daughter of Giles II Rigaut du Rouelx; his date is given as 1308 with Philippa being born in 1296.  Her mother's name appears to have been Alix de Ligne and Philippa is said to have married Nicholas D'Auerberchicourt by 1326 (https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/LKMZ-ZMF/philippa-de-roeulx-1296-1345) .  The ancestry of D'abrichecourt and Bugicourt and D'abrigecourt  (the family may have split into two main families, perhaps via marriage of a second son with an heiress daughter of another family) is murky at best for this period, but prior to Humpherey-Smith's decades long work on the Robessart monument, a tie between this/these families with Roet was already being studied.

Morganstern discusses her definition of Gothic Tombs of Kinship which would seem to apply to the Robessart monument:

The tomb of Lady Montacute like hundreds of comparable monuments created in the gothic period, consists of a rectangular chest on which an effigy… rests … The long sides of the chest are decorated with arcades framing figures carved in relief that have been long identified as the lady’s own children… The figures representing Lady Montacute [the lady whose tomb she references as being indicative of a gothic tomb of kinship] are generally called “weepers” …  

“In all these monuments, an effigy of the deceased is accompanied by figures representing members of his/her family, hence their designation of tombs of kinship.

Both Edward III and his wife Queen Philippa's tombs had weepers and shields:

                                        

TL;DR version:  the Lewis Robessart monument at Westminster Abbey appears to suggest a marital family tie with the family of Roet which sheds further light upon the status of Katherine Swynford's paternal family beyond that of mere knighthood.

Further reading:

Humphery-Smith, C. R. (1964). The Robessart Tomb in Westminster Abbey.  Family History.  2 (11): 142-149.

Humphery-Smith, C. R. (2004)  The Robessart Tomb in Westminster Abbey.  1 (3): 178-192.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Gothic_Tombs_of_Kinship_in_France_the_Lo/awNAv9ieXwcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/sir-lewis-robessart-lord-bourgchier/

https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.medieval/search?q=Roeulx

    

Henry VIII protects John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster's tomb in Old St. Paul's from reformation despoilment; plans for funeral to have depicted his Beaufort lineage as well as heraldry celebrating the marriage of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford!

 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 07, 2006

Henry VIII Prohibits Destruction of John of Gaunt's Tomb?

As I developed an interest in English history while in middle school, I had then (coincidentally the time of my first visit to the UK) began a collection of the various "Pitkin Pictorial Publications" found at many tourist sites within Great Britain.  The following is from one of those booklets that was the "St Paul's Cathedral Guide."

Oddly enough, it has a (very) brief history of the cathedral at the very end, and I was surprised to read the following (p. 28):

"The reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI saw great changes in the Church of England; at the onset of the Reformation the churches were despoiled of their wealth and treasures and the services reduced to the utmost simplicity. St Paul's suffered no less than others in this respect. On St Barnabas's Day, 1549, the high altar was pulled down and in its place a plain table, for the administration of the sacrament, was set up in the middle of the choir. The reredos was hacked to ruins and, among the tombs, only that of John of Gaunt was spared damage."

Yet another indication that Henry VIII not only remembered but apparently revered his connection with John of Gaunt. One naturally wonders whether his concern regarding the despoilment of an ancestor's tomb applied to that of Payne Roet's, as well.

And that's not all!  

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 02, 2005

Katherine remembered... by Henry VIII

What with Richard III reportedly muttering to anyone who would listen that John Beaufort, eldest son of John of Gaunt by Katherine Swynford, was 'in double avoutry gotten', it has sometimes been assumed that Katherine's position as Duchess of Lancaster being preceeded by that of being mistress of the Duke of Lancaster made her a bit of a skeleton in her descendant's closets that they wished kept well hidden.

However, it seems that she was to have been recalled with pride in a display of heraldic pageantry planned as part of the funeral ceremonies for Henry VIII:

"...A draft ceremonial for the funeral of Henry VIII, prepared by Garter Barker and later placed with the State Papers for Edward VI with a mistaken attribution to Garter Dethick ... 'a banner of somerset and beauchamp' (for John Duke of Somerset and Margaret Beauchamp of Bletsoe, Henry VII's grandparents), ... 'a banner of lancaster with the mariage' (presumably for John of Gaunt and Catherine Swinford, née Roet, his mistress and third wife from whom the Beauforts descended), 'a banner of Somersett and Richemonde' (this must be reversed for the marriage of Edmund Tudor with Margaret Beaufort daughter of John Duke of Somerset, Henry VIIII's grandparents),..."

"The pageant at Leadenhall [for the entry of Charles V in 1520] ... was eighty feet (24.38m) in length and must // have been one of the more elaborate at any English entry of the period. At the foot was John of Gaunt:

'... in a rote and oute of the rote sprang many braunches ... and on euery braunche satte a kyng and a quene or some other noble parsonage descend of the sayd duke, to the nomber of lv. images, and on the toppe stode the Emperor, the kyng of England and the Quene, as thre in the vi. dgree from the sayd Duke. [fn 67]'" (pp. 75-6)

--The Antiquaries Journal, 82(1) (2002): Some Aspects of Heraldry and the Role of Heralds in Relation to the Ceremonies of the Late Medieval and Early Tudor Court. John A. Goodall.

The "other" Katherine Swynford & the Importance of Remembering our Roots (2012)

 

THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012

The "other" Katherine Swynford & the Importance of Remembering our Roots

Though Katherine Roet Swynford didn't live long enough to see her namesake granddaughter, her son Thomas Swynford and first wife Joan Crophill did indeed produce a daughter whom they named Katherine, after his famous mother. 

In 1404, Thomas Swynford, Hugh and Katherine's son, became Captain of Calais under the authority of his half-brother, John Beaufort. This was apparently an appointment of trust for Beaufort; the previous year had witnessed the treachery which has arisen between the lieutenant and the soldiers there…. 

He would stay overseas for the next couple of years as one of two negotiators appointed by step-brother Henry IV seeking a treaty with Flanders. By 1406, son Thomas would be born with daughter Katherine following in 1410. Katherine's birth seems to have come at a difficult time for her father, who by 1409 had been relieved as Sheriff of Lincoln and been declared an outlaw due to indebtedness to a London draper. By 1411, he seems to be desperate to claim an inheritance in his mother's father's lands in Hainault; the occasion was accompanied by letters patent issued by Henry IV in which he declares his step-brother's legitimate birth.

It's an odd document. Thomas' legitimacy was not questioned at his birth, nor in his father Hugh's inquisition post mortem, nor was it questioned when he took possession of his patrimony of Kettlethorpe and assumed his father's arms. Even if Lindsay Brook of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy is correct in his proposition that Paon Roet was identical with the known Giles du Roeulx of the same era, there simply would not have been any Hainault lands to inherit as the last Lord of Roeulx -- Eustace -- and surviving brother, Fastré, were forced to sell back their patrimony to their Count due to economic circumstances. Regrettably, many secondary genealogy sources state that the House of Roeulx died out for lack of heirs; however, this is clearly not the case as the last generation of Roeulx and certainly the two preceding it had no lack of heirs or heiresses. 

But such is the stuff of family remembrance and legend, and what had occurred 3 or 4 generations previously is likely to have escaped Thomas' notice, and thus memories of a long-disposessed patrimony were forgotten in favor of remembering the family's possible glory days. Such is the power of ancestral memories, the key to a person's identity. For the family of Swynford, these were enshrined in heraldic remembrances, several of which no longer exist but were once established with pride and taken note of by passers-by.

By 1421, Thomas' wife Joan Crophill had passed away and he remarried a widow, Margaret Gray, first the wife of John Lord Darcy. His son was 15 and his daughter 11, and added to his financial responsibilities were the many minor children of his new wife, later joined by the addition of Thomas and Margaret's own son, William Swynford, last Swynford owner of Kettlethorpe. Thomas himself evidently alienated Kettlethorpe before his death as his IPM does not show him owning any lands in Lincolnshire.

His daughter Katherine, however, was to be married into the ancient (as in, living in England as of the Conquest) Drury family of Rougham, Suffolk. She married William Drury, knight, son and heir of Sir Roger Drury and Margaret Naunton. The marriage would have had to have taken place at some point prior to 1429 when their eldest surviving son, Thomas, perhaps named for his ailing grandfather, was born; Thomas, son of Hugh and Katherine Swynford, died in 1432. Other children followed: Roger (who appears to have survived until at least 1475), George (Parson of Wolpitte; also alive as late as 1475), and at least three daughters, one of whom was also named Catherine. Daughters Ann and Catherine Drury took the veil, but third daughter, Mary, married into the Grimston family.

Living to the ripe old age of ~67 years, Katherine Swynford Drury died in 1478. Many internet sources place her internment at Lincoln Cathedral but this seems unlikely. Her husband William, who predeceased her in 1450, requested to be buried in the Church of the Friars Minor of Babewell in his will. This building is no longer extant. Other Drury relatives were buried in the Rougham Church in Suffolk, and her daughter Mary's monument was once to be seen in a Thorndon, Suffolk church: 

in the chancel of a stone is the portraiture of a woman above whose head are these arms per pale france and Ingland qtrly a label of 3 points and azure a chevron charged with 3 boars heads coupd, about the arms these words, these be the arms of dame Katherine Swinford. 

Mary Drury took the memory of her famous heritage to her death. As the great-granddaughter of Katherine Roet Swynford, the memory of her grandfather's arms were still fresh in her mind (the the label of three points has been noted elsewhere as being the arms of Thomas, son of Hugh and Katherine), and she knew that her family was closely related to the royal family itself, as indicated by the inclusion of the royal arms, just as happened in her grandfather's time at the church of Ss. Peter and Paul at Kettlethorpe. Sadly, the Thorndon monument seems to have disappeared in the remodeling efforts that destroyed many medieval relics, including most of Kettlethorpe's.

Mary likely had another sister who tends not to be found in Drury genealogical accounts but whose existence seems confirmed by the 1471 Bylaugh, Norfolk, brass to her and her husband, Sir John Curson/Curzon. Her name was Joan and she outlived her husband, and though many accounts give her family name as Bacon, the heraldry on her husband's brass clearly allude to her Drury-Swynford heritage:

Finally, the family Swynford and Roet were remembered in the mid-15th century tomb of Lewis Robessart in Westminster Cathedral. Swinford, Thomas Swynford, and Katherine Roet were remembered on Robessart's tomb emblazonings. What we don't know is why. Robessart was a Hainaulter, like Katherine Roet Swynford's father. He may have served abroad with Thomas Swynford. In any case, the relationship was clearly worth remembering for one reason or another that may well be lost to us now.

We only know about some of these otherwise obscure relationships because tombs were the vehicle for immortality. There was a time when it was important to know from whence we came and our relationships with our relatives and close friends.

Further Reading:

THE ROBESSART TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. Cecil Humphery-Smith, Foundations (2004) 1 (3): 178-192.

Humphery-Smith, C R (1957). The Blount Quarters. The Coat of Arms. 4: 224-227

Humphery-Smith, C R (1964). The Robessart Tomb in Westminster Abbey. Family History. 2 (11): 142-149.

Engravings of Sepulchral Brasses i N orfolk and Suffolk..., John S. Cotman, Vol. 1 (London: 1839).

http://www.genealogysource.com/drury.htm

KATHERINE ROET'S SWYNFORDS: A RE-EXAMINATION OF INTERFAMILY RELATIONSHIPS AND DESCENT. Judy Perry, July 2003, Foundations 1 (2): 122-131.]; Foundations (2004) 1 (3): 164-174.

Katherine Roet and Her Swynfords

Fifteen years after publishing my article on the Swynford family into which Katherine Roet married, I am distressed by those writers who continue in the same old treads of half-truths and suppositions, some of which are unfounded.

For starters, it is still claimed that it is claimed that Thomas and Hugh held the Lincolnshire manor of Coleby.  This is incorrect; they held a hy third ownership in 1345.  It likely wasn't prosperous even then inasmuch in 1361 the holding was described as barren or not very productive.  The property did have a windmill and dovecoat, both of which indicate some degree of wealth in the past but seemingly not during the period of Thomas and Hugh Swynford's 1/3 share of it.

It is also, strangely, continued to be claimed that Sir Thomas Swynford's wife was one Nichola Arderne, widow of Sir Ralph Bassett.  This is almost certainly not the case.  And it is important for dating the birth of Hugh Swynford, Thomas' son, who has been assumed to have been born ca. 1340.

Kettlethorp has  been historically assumed to be the place of the Swynford family going back many generations.  This is also not true.   The property changed hands in the period immediately preceding Sir Thomas' ownership of it and was even later than the acquisition of the 1/3 interest of Coleby, taking place in 1356; the prior owner was of the St. Croix family.  This means that Hugh, Katherine's husband who was born ca. 1340, was born and grew up someplace else.

By the time Hugh Swynford and Katherine Roet were married, her future was by no means certain.  Her husband, Hugh, was a knight of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and possibly of his brother before him, Edward, the 'Black Prince" of Wales.  But this meant little in the wages in addition to the meager rents due to him as 1/3 owner of Coleby and sole owner of Kettlethorpe.  The detail of their marriage is lost, even the date and location.  As for the location, it has been and still is popularly said to have taken place at St. Clement Danes of London, a medieval church that no longer exists.  But in 40 years of looking, I have never seen an attribution or source of any kind attesting to the place.

The year of the marriage is an entirely different matter.  One good method of backdating a marriage date is a known or testified date of an heir born of the marriage.  For many, many years it has been dated according to the testified birthdate of Hugh and Katherine's son, Thomas, likely named for his grandfather.

Of dogs and medieval tombs...

        ( Joy's sketch of Katherine's tomb brass;  Dugdale's sketch of the tomb prior to vandalism)
 

The late Roger Joy was a ceaseless advocate for restoring the lost brass of Katherine Swynford, taken no doubt for melting down to make ammunition or just mere hooliganism during the English Civil War.  Above at the top is his delicate pen and ink proposal for Katherine's brass restoration and to the bottom is the sketch of the tombs of Katherine and Joan in their original side-by-side position made by Dugdale.

If you enlarge and look at the bottom-left of Joy's drawing, you will see a charming dog at Katherine's feet, something not depicted in the Dugdale drawing:  a little dog nestled in her robes at her feet, collared with little bells, and looking up at her with loving eyes of devotion and might well have been playing with the hem of her gown and robes: 

Depicting dogs thus on medieval tomb brasses was not unknown.  Katherine's own daughter-in-law, Margaret Holland, even has not one but two dogs at her feet in her rare triple-effigy tomb she shares with John Beaufort and her second husband, the Duke of Clarence.  Here you can see them playing at her feet and wearing little golden collars with bells:

Noblemen and noblewomen both welcomed dogs into their lives.   Well known is the English lordly love of hunting which was heavily reliant on its use of dogs to sniff out the target and alert his master on horse.  

These dogs must have been quite fierce indeed yet there was a special bond between such a dog and his owner.  We even know the names of some of the pampered medieval dogs thanks to a book written by the second Duke of York, Thomas, titled The Master of Game, which is said to be the oldest book on the sport of hunting in England.  Katherine herself would not known of this book written by her nephew, Edward of Norwich, whose father was a brother of John of Gaunt, as it has an estimated composition date of 1406 to 1413, but was surely not ignorant of the place of dogs in royal households.  This Edward, who was born ca. 1373, was coincidentally the first-born son of his father, Edmund of Langely, and Isabella of Castile, younger sister of John of Gaunt's second wife, Constance.

Edward's book, a translation of an earlier French book, has chapters written entirely by him which do not appear in the earlier version.  He took care in describing a few key canine breeds, and one, an English favorite, the Greyhound, is the first he described.  They are "The goodness of greyhounds comes of right courage, and of the good nature of their father and their mother. And also men may well help to make them good in the encharning of them with other good greyhounds, and feed them well with the best that he taketh... He should be courteous and not too fierce, following well his master and doing whatever he command him. He shall be good and kindly and clean, glad and joyful and playful, well willing and goodly to all manner of folks save to the wild beasts to whom he should be fierce, spiteful and eager."  

Also noted is the 'dog of Spayne," the Spaniel, which while would later be bred as a fine lady's lapdog, began its English life as a hawking dog, given the predisposition of the breed to run ahead and bark at things, scaring the hawks from their position and alerting the greyhounds to follow in fight. Seen here is an image from the MS. f. fr. 616, Bib. Nat., Paris showing men and dogs in a medieval hunting scene from a manuscript dating from 1410 of the earlier French version of the book.

Edward's book mentions the names of various dogs, presumably his own.  Just a few noted were named Troy, Nosewise, Amiable, Nameles, Clenche, Bragge, Ringwood and Holdfas. Such hunting dogs were given basic care by a child of the household who was to "lead out the hounds to scombre twice in the day in the morning and in the evening, so that the sun be up, especially in winter. Then should he let them run and play long in a fair meadow in the sun, and then comb every hound after the other, and wipe them with a great wisp of straw, and thus he shall do every morning."  

Greyhounds in particular were a noted 'status symbol' much like the Chihuahua, Gidget, from the fast food empire of Taco Bell of recent ad campaigns.  A 2013 article by David Scott-Macnab produced a list of more than 1,000 names of such hunting dogs mentioned in various treatises and warned against confounding the roles of hunting versus pet dogs both of which, nonetheless, are richly depicted in medieval manuscripts, some waiting patiently at its master's feet at the table, hoping for some heavenly morsel to drop from the master's hand while smaller dogs, perhaps Terriers, scamper on the very food-laden table itself!  It is clearly the pet dogs which appear on many English tombs.

They are found on both memorial brasses representing the deceased on fine purbeck marble, the new popular stone for monument construction after the use of alabaster slowly declined, but they were found on alabaster tombs as well.  This link shows an actual 15th C or earlier carved alabaster dog which looks rather like the dog drawn by Dr Joy for Katherine's brass.  Part-way down, this blog post has quite the nice collection of dogs on brasses and carved of stone, mostly of the 14th to 15th C.  

The lady's lapdog is frequently depicted in various art media -- on tombs, both brass and carved stone, tapestries and paintings/miniatures on manuscripts -- and are depicted in distinctively companionship-oriented relationships.   Chaucer's Prioress in the Canterbury Tales, for example, depicted a tender-hearted woman whose lapdogs enjoyed some of the same foods as their mistress, which was considerably better than the foodstuffs consumed by the human poor whom were ostensibly served by the well-born heads of female religious houses.  Such lapdogs were viewed with suspicion and consternation by later church officials as evidence of women's questionable nature and folly.

But for one, brief, shining moment, as it were, dogs were depicted as the delightful companions to the humans who owned them.

Further reading (most interesting!):

https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/world-medieval-dogdom
--The World of Medieval Dogdom

http://diannesmedievalwriting.blogspot.com/2016/04/whats-with-medieval-tombs-part-18.html

https://murreyandblue.wordpress.com/2020/03/05/the-medieval-doggie-and-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-them/

https://www.academia.edu/44222801/THE_NAMES_OF_ALL_MANNER_OF_HOUNDS_A_UNIQUE_INVENTORY_IN_A_FIFTEENTH_CENTURY_MANUSCRIPT?

https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/02/nothin-but-a-hound-dog.html

THE MEDIEVAL DOGGIE AND EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THEM…

THE MEDIEVAL DOGGIE AND EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THEM…

THE MEDIEVAL DOGGIE AND EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THEM…

The Aftermath of 
the Death of John of Gaunt 

Arms of John of Gaunt at St. Albans Cathedral

When we last saw him, we wondered "what would happen now to his wife and their four children?" upon the death of John of Gaunt. 

For the period immediately after his death the answer seems to be "not much."  After having his will made a full year prior, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, former titular King of Castile, passed away at Leicester, aged ~59 years.  He had been ailing since the banishment of his son and heir, Henry of Derby, at the hands of Gaunt's mercurial nephew Richard II, whose rights he had striven to assure for his father and brother's sake, if not for England's.

Still, he had reason for weariness and wariness the last year of his life.  His nephew, the king, had delivered to him a set of documents of unknown content.  However, having had their contents read to him, he shortly thereafter took his leave of life.  All that would normally have been required was burial at the cathedral of his choice, St. Paul's of London, as well as the proving and follow-through of the wishes expressed in his will.  However after the murder of his brother, he may have felt compelled to order that his body not be embalmed or otherwise cered for a period of 40 days, likely due to the fear of either assassination like his brother, or of being buried alive.

As his late biographer, Sydney Armitage Smith, noted, 

In accordance with his wishes, his body was carried to the Carmelites in Fleet Street, to remain there until the day of burial.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum, er, St. Paul's cathedral.  London was more than a day's distance from Leicester, and John of Gaunt had had his heart set on being buried alongside his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, at St. Paul's in a magnificent double-tomb of alabaster and other stone, possibly the grandest memorial the medieval structure was to see and which he had started construction of by 1374, completed by 1380.  Thus it happened that his cortege and accompanying mourners, including his grieving widow, the former Katherine Swynford, and son, Henry Beaufort, now the scandalously young Bishop of Lincoln, required services and lodging for a night at St. Alban's.

The now Cathedral of St. Albans, Hertfordshire

Yes, that St. Alban's, of the chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, who chose the most unfortunate language to describe the grieving widow in happier times.  It would seem that some nicety of church etiquette allowed the head of St. Alban's the right to refuse the request of Henry Beaufort to officiate the services for his father the evening of their lodging there.  This provided St. Alban's with the right to press for the payment of a ring of Beaufort's that the head of St. Alban's coveted in return for Beaufort's request to celebrate and officiate services for the evening of the lodging.  

Henry Beaufort.  Painted portrait on glass
at Queens College, Oxford (ca. 1633)

                                                     

Beaufort's biographer G. L. Harriss noted the injury to Beaufort and the double enmity St. Alban's was inflicting in Beaufort's time of grief.  As Harriss notes, Beaufort never forgot the slight and later was to recover the coveted ring.  Even in death, John of Gaunt was buffeted by politics  and disapproving monastic chroniclers, including that of St. Alban's in Hertfordshire, where Constance frequently maintained a court presence.  His body was finally brought to London to the Carmelites on Fleet Street, where the funeral's plans were executed according to his will, being buried March 16, 1399.

The medieval edifice of St. Paul` of London prior to the 1561 lightening fire which struck and destroyed its magnificent spire.  Queen Elizabeth I personally contributed to the spire's reconstruction and heard services there upon the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

The greater part of his will was dedicated to numerous bequests to religious institutions above all.  He wished his funeral to avoid any signs of ostentatiousness but desired to be remembered especially by his family as well as his peers of the nobility.  He took great care in the establishment of trusts for each of his Beaufort offspring that they always be taken care of via the purchase of profitable properties that did not endanger the inheritance of his offspring by his first two wives.  One gift to Richard II was of a valuable and cherished gold cup recently given to him by his third wife, the Duchess Katherine; thus had the great Duke sought to sow whatever peace and tranquility after his death that he could.

http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/specialcollections/2016/09/01/the-destruction-of-old-st-pauls/