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/

KS Mythbusters -- Catherine d'Avesnes

First Installment of KS: Mythbusters!

In this inaugural installment, I will examine the claim repeated all over the world in genealogical websites that Payne/Giles Roet married a sister of Philippa of Hainault named Catherine d'Avesnes.

I am more than half-way finished reading Kathryn Warner's biography of Philippa of Hainault.  Throughout the book but most extensively and intensively in Chapter 1 "The Hainault Family," she identifies all know natal family members of Queen Philippa.  Her parents and grandparents have long been known to us but her many siblings and half-siblings have not been identified with the same degree of certainty.

Warner notes that Queen Philippa was "sometimes also known as Philippa of Avesnes, the name of her dynasty."  Her parents had nine or ten identified offspring consisting of four sons and five or six daughters.  While the years of birth are not necessarily known (but the daughters are identified via proposed marriages for them), the names and proposed birth order are thus:

1.  Margaretha (b. ca. 1310/11).

2. Johannna (b. ca. 1311/1312).

3. Sybilla (? Mentioned in record; died young)

4. Philippa (married Edward III)

5. Agnes (b. ca, 1310s/early 1320s)

6. Isabella (b. ca. 1320s).

Not a Catherine among them.

Philippa's father's illegitimate daughters (two, possibly three of them; all nuns):

1. Aleide (nun, 1332)
   
2. Matilde (Abbess of Nivelles in 1351)
   
3. Elizabeth 'of Holland' (Nun at Stratford-le-Bow, d. 1375).
   

Again -- no Catherine.  She is quite possibly a myth that arose due to what Warner calls "the enduringly popular" novel written about KS by Anya Seton.  Seton of course made no mention of a Catherine d'Avesnes, however, the popularity of the novel prompted one or more persons to try to have religious ordinances for the dead performed and contributed genealogical information to an American church for three 'people' who only existed in a novel, namely, 'twins little Hugh and Dorothy' (presented using those words by Seton herself as offspring of KS' son, Thomas Swynford) and a 'Catherine d'Avesnes' (to serve as a royal mother of KS' and wife to her father Payne/Giles).

.

Meet the Swynfords: Hugh and his scoundrel brother Norman

We know a fair amount of information about the Swynfords beginning with Sir Thomas Swynford, his son Hugh Swynford, and Hugh's descendants, at least the male ones.  What is difficult to find, however, is reliable information regarding Thomas' forebears and other family members.   There were several individuals with the Swynford name in Lincoln, Northampton, Huntingdon, Essex and Suffolk.  There were even a couple in London in the 16th C. or so.  In 14th C. Lincoln and Northampton, they intermarried into the families of Darcy, Arderne and even Luttrell (Of The Luttrell Psalter fame), with at least five known individuals with the surname Swynford and bearing the coat of arms seen above, sometimes with marks of cadency, of argent, a chevron sable with three couped boars heads, or, or a close variant. The question remains were they related, and, if so, how?

(Right:  "A framed miniature of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell inserted between Psalms 108 and 109 dominates this page. It was not unusual for the patron of a manuscript to appear somewhere, but they would normally be shown in a attitude of devotion. Not only is this miniature the largest in the entire manuscript, but Sir Geoffrey has had himself portrayed as a fully-armed knight, resplendent in his coat of arms. He is attended by his wife and daughter-in-law, both dressed in heraldic gowns, making a visual statement about the successful alliances he has made."  British Library.)


With a later 19th century interest in examining various life records of individuals in the poet Geoffrey Chaucer's milieu, some sleuthing endeavors were expended on the family of his wife's sister, Katherine Roet Swynford, in an attempt to paint a portrait of the unequal social circles of the two sisters Roet and how this might be discerned in or help explain the writings of the poet.  One large difference became readily apparent:  Katherine Roet married a landed knight named Sir Hugh Swynford whereas sister Philippa married a clerk.  This is a a somewhat overly simplified explanation of things, as Chaucer was an trusted envoy of Edward III who went abroad on occasion for diplomatic missions.

The 19th C antiquarian and printer Samuel Bentley, in his work Excerpta Historica, attempted to sketch out the ancestry of the Hugh Swynford family line.   He notes evidence of Sir Thomas Swynford of Lincolnshire being the father of Sir Hugh Swynford, first husband of Katherine Roet.  His and others' evidence is borne out by examining  the contents of various Inquisitions Post Mortem.


Bentley brings our attention to a Lincolnshire knight named Norman Swynford.  Norman is assumed to have been Hugh's brother on account of his bearing the same arms with a cinquefoil in canton, understood to be a mark of cadency (shown to the left).  Like his brother Hugh, Norman was a knight, in the retinue of the Black Prince in 1356 serving in Gascony.  We might assume him to have been a second son of Thomas Swynford because his arms are the same but with an added mark of cadency, as well as the fact that Hugh, not Norman, received lands and manors in Kettlethorpe and Coleby from their father Thomas in 1361.

Sir Norman Swynford:  Scoundrel

Simply put, Norman Swynford was a scoundrel who cheated his stepson out of his inheritance while reaping the products of securing the physical wardship of his wife's son by her first husband, alienating lands which were not his to alienate, and laying waste to lands he occupied, including the medieval manor of Harlaxton (now home to a medieval scholarly powerhouse).

Norman owned land in Brauncewell, Lea and surrounding areas and outlived his brother by a decade, some of which were doubtlessly acquired via marriage to Margaret Trehampton, whose family owned the manor of Lea and other lands and were donors to the local church dedicated to St. Helen in Lea.  At one time medieval glass windows depicted major donors to the church including Margaret and her family.

But he wasn't a very nice person.

He married Margaret Trehampton of Lea who was a local heiress in her own right to lands in Lincoln, namely, the manor of Lea and rents of Lea and Scothorn. Margaret's first marriage was to a John Brewes (Braose and etc.).   Margaret and John Brewes had a son, also named John.  All was well until John Brewes Sr. died and Margaret remarried; her second husband was Norman Swynford.

Margaret must have looked like quite the catch for Norman especially as she held her late husband's lands for her son who was declared to be an idiot and an idiot from birth.