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).

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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.

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