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.
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).
