Katherine Swynford
1350 – 1403 · Generation XVII · House of Plantagenet
Katherine Swynford (1350–1403). Married John of Gaunt in 1396. 2 of their children are recorded in this archive. Gaunt’s longtime love, married at last in 1396; their Beaufort children were legitimized by charter — the Tudor line runs through her. Born Katherine de Roet, daughter of a herald from Hainaut who had come to England with Queen Philippa, she was raised at court; her sister Philippa married the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. As the wife of Hugh Swynford, one of Gaunt’s knights, she served the duke’s first wife, Blanche, and later looked after Blanche’s daughters. Widowed and managing her husband’s Lincolnshire manors of Kettlethorpe and Coleby, she became Gaunt’s mistress and bore him at least four children, surnamed Beaufort from a French castle of his. Chroniclers condemned the liaison, grumbling that her income exceeded the duchess’s, and in 1381, amid public outcry, the duke ended the affair and she took a rented house in Lincoln. Their eventual wedding, in Lincoln Cathedral, made her briefly the first lady of the kingdom. After Gaunt’s death she returned to Lincoln, where she died and was buried in the cathedral’s Angel Choir.
Place in the family
- Katherine Swynford was a great-great-great-grandmother of King Henry VIII.
- The archive records 127 of her descendants, across 23 generations.
One of 26 people of House of Plantagenet (1126–1485) in this archive. The longest-reigning English house, counting its Angevin beginning and the rival Lancaster and York branches that fought the Wars of the Roses.
Partners
- Married John of Gaunt (1340 – 1399) in 1396 — 2 children together
Children
- John Beaufort (1373 – 1410)
- Joan Beaufort (1379 – 1440)
Life
- 1350 — Born
- 1396 — Married John of Gaunt
- 1403 — Died