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.
