Margaret Swynford and Elizabeth Chaucer

Medieval English kings sometimes aggressively sought to insert themselves in the business of various women's religious communities in terms of seeing to it that a relative headed up an abbey or priory, or to place a novice within one without paying the commonly paid entrance fees, dowries if you will.  

Eileen Power, whose influential work was on medieval English nunneries, found that the communities were hardly the refuge of unwanted daughters from poor families but rather members of the gentry class or higher.

I offer examples of two medieval women who famously entered the religious communities of Barking Abbey and St. Helene's Priory of London (Bishopgate) and why they matter to the study of Katherine Roet Swynford and her sister Philippa Chaucer.

Prior to my 2003 article published by the Foundation of Medieval Genealogy, there were few  if any researchers who were of the opinion that Katherine and Hugh Swynford had  three children, let alone a probable first-born daughter named Margaret:

1377, July 27. Letters patent to the Abbess of Berking and the Prioress of St. Helen's, London... The King to the Abbess and Convent of Berkyng.  As by right and custom of the Crown it appertains to the King, after his coronation, to nominate a fit person as Nun in their Abbey, which is of the foundation of the King's progenitors, the King nominates his beloved Margaret Swynford accordingly.  Similar letters are directed to the Prioress and Convent of St. Elen in the City of London  for Elizabeth Chausier.

The occasion was Richard II's accession to the English throne upon the death of his grandfather, Edward III.  Richard's own father, Edward "the Black Prince" and Edward III's firstborn, had died the year before after many years of strenuous fighting in England's wars, leaving Richard, a 10 year old boy, as his only surviving heir.

Richard may have been anointed, but as a 10 year old boy, real power was exercised by his uncle, John of Gaunt, Richard's father's powerful younger brother who had already himself claimed the crown of Castile in right of his wife, Constance, daughter of Castile's Pedro the Cruel by his mistress Maria de Padilla.  John of Gaunt may well have been behind the nominations of Margaret Swynford and Elizabeth Chaucer as nuns.

Reason why this necessitates a new year of birth for Katherine

It has been commonly accepted that mother Katherine Roet Swynford had a birthdate of November 25, 1350 which presented no problem with regards to her once only-recognized child, Thomas, born ca. 1366/7 in perhaps her 17th year (if 1350 is accepted as her year of birth).  This dating her year of birth at 1350 based upon the birth of son Thomas Swynford, however, is entirely unsubstantiated due to the year in which she gave birth to a previously unrecognized Swynford child, Margaret, because, as Power noted, young women entering the novitiate at that time were 13 or 14 years of age.

The year of Margaret's nomination to Barking Abbey was 1377, meaning that the new novices would have had to achieved 13 or 14 years of age in 1377, meaning that they were born ca. 1363 or 1364.  If Katherine Swynford, born in 1350, was the mother of Margaret, she would have had to have been a scant 13 or 14 years old herself at the time of her marriage.  While not impossible, birth at such a young age could result in the sorts of gynecological  problems that plagued Katherine's descendant Margaret Beaufort, who bore her only child, the future Henry VII (Tudor), at the age of 13. It seems unlikely even by medieval standards that Katherine was born in 1350 and married at 12 or 13 and giving birth at 13 or 14.  The births of the Swynford children suggest a birth year perhaps as early as 1340, but certainly by the mid-1340s (this would have been true of her sister, Philippa Roet Chaucer, mother of Elizabeth, as well).  Katherine only outlived her duke and second husband by three or four years, dying in 1403 to his 1399, after having given birth to seven strapping children (Margaret, Blanche and Thomas Swynford, and John, Thomas, Henry and Joan Beaufort).

Reasons for Margaret to have been Katherine and Hugh's daughter

Why has Margaret been ignored?  Other than the fact that Anya Seton didn't write about her, it is difficult to understand.  Geoffrey Chaucer's most recent significant biographer, Derek Pearsall, has looked at that same entry in Richard II's Patent Rolls and apparently remains unconvinced that the Elizabeth Chaucer mentioned is a daughter of either Geoffrey or his wife.  He sees the record as a coincidence of the common name of Chaucer.  However, it probably would have been even more of an odd coincidence for Richard II/John of Gaunt to have nominated two other Swynford and Chaucer girls, and the convents selected seem suggestive that the two girls were cousins via their mothers Philippa Roet Chaucer and Katherine Roet Swynford, both of whom had documented ties to John of Gaunt.

St. Helen's Priory, Bishopgate. ca. 1880 engraving

Elizabeth's preliminary destination was St. Helene's Priory, Bishopgate, which in 1379 consisted of 11 nuns (herself being one) and a prioress.  It had found favor with Edward I, who gifted the priory with a piece of the True Cross in 1258.  It, like many such places, practiced the order of St. Benedict, and  was favored by the merchant class in London where it was located.  Two two chapels (one originally a parish church and the other for the monastic attendants, now joined as one) are still extant. Elizabeth was in residence from 1377 to 1381.  Both cousins, however, would end their days at Barking Abbey, Margaret as Abbess. It was a tremendous honor for the two daughters of 'foreigners,' an esquire/clerk and a knight.

To be continued: Life at Barking Abbey