Where are you? (redux)

I like this so much I thought I'd repost it.

Just in case anybody new wants to add themselves.

Medieval Lent & Judaism

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, which kicks off the penitential season of Lent. The faithful head to their parish church to hear mass and receive the mark of the cross on their forehead from the ashes of the previous Palm Sunday's palm fronds. Palm trees almost certainly didn't grow in Katherine Swynford's England; one wonders what was burned at SS Peter & Paul in Kettlethorpe?

I've read several accounts of why ashes are daubed onto people's heads. Certainly there is a long tradition of ashes atop the penitent's head in Jewish tradition, as they connote sorrow, mourning and repentance (Jonah 3:4-10; Jeremiah 6:26). However the origin of the specific mark of a cross (from the Greek letter chi, first letter of Christos) may come from Judaism as well. Ezekiel references the protective mark (in Hebrew, tav, a letter which looked a bit like a cross or x) on God's faithful. I find this (a) interesting and (b) more than a little ironic given that, according to the website that you can visit by clicking on this blog entry's title link, one of the more practical reasons for being seen as very publicly observing Lent is that one might not be suspected a Jew!

The blog author referenced above makes the point that Nowadays it's hard for the average Westerner to comprehend how strong an influence religion was... on the medieval mind. For someone like me who was raised in an American religion that sprang up in the 19th century and which observed few to none of the "old" Christian practices, the comprehension gap is doubly-wide. It would be easy enough to dismiss the blogger's sentiment that it was a very good thing indeed to be seen going about medieval life with your ashen cross and not eating during the course of the day but for a particular incident from medieval Lincolnshire history: the "martyrdom" of Little St. Hugh.

In 1255, an eight year old Lincolnshire boy went missing for a month and was eventually discovered at the bottom of a well. A local Jew was tortured into a confession that Jewish practice demanded the annual practice of the ritual murder of a Christian. The lie has been repeated with variations throughout the ages and is generally referred to as a blood libel. The tortured man was executed and as many as 90 Jews were arrested, imprisoned in the Tower of London, with 18 of them being hung and their property confiscated. A 1783 ballad account, The Ballad of Little Sir Hugh, is as follows:
She's led him in through ae dark door,
And sae has she thro' nine;
She's laid him on a dressing-table,
And stickit him like a swine.
And first came out the thick, thick blood,
And syne came out the thin;
And syne came out the bonny heart's blood;
There was nae mair within.
She's row'd him in a cake o'lead,
Bade him lie still and sleep;
She's thrown him in Our Lady's draw-well
Was fifty fathom deep.


You can read more about blood libel and how widespread the phenomenon was here. despite Europe's Jews being exonerated of such charges by at least 5 popes.

The story of Little St. Hugh was likely vividly retold in Katherine's Lincolnshire, by people who may have heard it from someone who actually witnessed it. Ironically, a century earlier, the financing of the construction of Lincoln Cathedral and two abbeys was made possible by a Jew, one Aaron of Lincoln. Visitors to Lincoln can still view his house and those of other members of Lincoln's once prosperous Jewish community:


The 12th-century structure is said to be one of the oldest habitable dwellings in England. Another Norman-era Jewish residence in Lincoln is currently occupied by a restaurant, the website of which recounts the building's history, it having been the residence of a Jewess executed for coin-clipping in 1290, the year all Jews were banned from England. You can view and download a Google 3D model here of it as well, and here can be found another photo of it on Flickr. And a particularly fine photo that has been released into the public domain by the photographer can also be seen. The story of Lincoln's Jewish community is a fascinating one; for further reading, try Cecil Roth's Mediaeval Lincoln Jewry and its Synagogue. I read it many years ago and I'm hoping Alibris has a copy!

More medieval Lent to follow at a later time...

Another 1311 Thomas Swynford!

This will just be a short notice of my finding a Thomas Swynford who is sheriff of Derby and Nottingham in 1311 and my current rambling state of thought concerning the genealogy of the Swynford family:

E. 101/374/I5. T. de Swynford, sheriff of Notts. and Derby, received on 8 Jan. I3II, a Wardrobe letter for L70 9s. 5d.; in K.R. Mem. Roll 84, m. 87 (Status et Visus, Easter, 4 Ed. II), he is allowed the sum. He got the tally on the following 3 Nov. (I. Roll I59, R. Roll I98). These letters of acquittance were not in the same form as the ordinary " Debentur in Garderoba," but were epistolary in style, addressed affectionately to the Treasurer and Chamberlains by the Wardrobe Keeper or in his name, and
bearing his seal appended by a tongue, not applied on the face. The Exchequer endorsed them with the date when the allowance was made or the tally levied.

[SOURCE: Johnson, J.H., The System of Account in the Wardrobe of Edward II. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fourth Series, Vol. 12, (1929), p. 78.]

The following is the beginnings of my current rough draft of an article I hope to develop and submit for publication on the subject.

In 2003/41, I offered an argument as to some possible origins for the Swynford family famously associated with Katherine Roet Swynford, who became John of Gaunt's third wife in 1396 after being his mistress for a quarter century. Additional research undertaken since that time has revealed some errors in my earlier conclusions which I wish to correct here.


A Tale of Two Thomases

In my earlier two-part article, I noted that, in the era in which the father of Hugh Swynford would have been an active adult, he seemed to have rather a lot of responsibilities spread over three or more counties/shires. As I noted then, there are records of a Thomas Swynford serving variously as sheriff of Bedford, Buckingham and Rutland in the mid-1340s2. , Notably, none of these include Lincoln, in which Hugh's father is known to have owned Kettlethorpe manor and an interest in the also Lincolnshire manor of Coleby3. Indeed, hitherto, the standard argument4 has been that Kettlethorpe didn't come into the Swynford family possession until 13565, a mere five years before Thomas Swynford's death.

Bentley has claimed (1931, p.156) that the family had been seated in Lincoln prior to the reign of Edward II. However this has proved troublesome to verify inasmuch as the early Swynfords appear to have been based in Huntingdon6. The Swynford family genealogy is indeed fairly complicated, as I will attempt to show.

With respect to the one or more Thomas Swynfords of the 1340s we find that the family has branched into at least two main branches. Certainly, the Thomas Swynford who was sheriff of Buckinghamshire cannot be identical with the Thomas Swynford who was the father of Hugh Swynford. Heraldry records that the Buckingham/Bedford Thomas' arms as being distinctly different from the boars' heads arms of the Thomas/Hugh Swynford family line. The Buckingham Thomas Swynford bore arms derivative of that of the Burgate, Suffolk family: a paly of six, argent and sable7. This Thomas Swynford is not the last Swynford to bear a paly of six, argent and sable, but he may well be the first. While a few other Swynfords are known to have been lords of the Burgate estate of Suffolk, namely, Sir John Swynford (1315), with his three boars' heads on a field crusilly, and Sir Robert Swynford (1340), with his three boars' heads, 2 and 1, on a field with a chevron (tinctures are not indicated)8. However, the arms of Sir Peter Burgate (1311) are a paly of six (presumably argent and sable, although again, as with the seals of John and Robert Swynford, no tinctures are indicated)9.

Similarly, the arms of Sir Richard de Burgate (1343) are a paly of six on a shield with three unidentifiable charges across the top of the shield10. This Richard de Burgate may be identical with the individual of the same name who is named in a list of individuals in the Odiam Hundred subsidy of 1/20th of 1327 for Liss, Hampshire11, while Peter de Burgate may be related to the Peter de Burgate who, in 1272, was granted charter to hold a market at the manor. This last Peter de Burgate is known to have had a son Robert de Burgate who was holding said market on 1 November 128612. In any case, arms of a paly of six, argent and some other color may well originate with the these two lords who held the Burgate, Suffolk, estate of the late 13th/early 14th century.

What remains unclear is how and when an unknown Swynford male took on the arms of Burgate. Perhaps a younger son married a Burgate heiress? This speculation seems supported by the finding of heraldic stained glass in the parish church of St. Andrew, Great Staughton:

The north chapel, probably built about 1455, has a blocked three-light east window; on the north side is a shallow bay having a three-light window in its north wall and very small square-headed lights at the sides, and arched over with a panelled vault having three bosses carved with shields, (fn. 261) viz.: (1) in the centre, [Argent] on a cross [Sable] six escallops [Or] (Stonham), impaling [Argent] a horse-barnacle [Sable] (Barnack); (2) [Gules] a fesse dancette between seven crosses croslet [Or] (Engaine), impaling [Argent] two pales [Sable] (should be paly, for Burgatt); (3) [Argent] a cross engrailed [Vert] (Noon), impaling [Argent] three boars' heads couped [Gules] (Swinford)13.

This last articulation of Swynford arms is identical with arms borne by a John de Swynford of Huntingdon in the reign of Edward II14.. This split of the Huntingdon-based Swynford family would ultimately see a William de Burgate in possession of a part of the Great Stukeley, Huntingdon manor called Swynefordsmanere in 1380[15].

It is unclear how William de Burgate came into possession of the Swynford property, but intermarriage with with the Swynford paly of six family seems a plausible enough explanation. It also appears that this branch of the Swynford family also intermarried with that of Tyrell, as the Burgate/Swynford paly of six arms are found quartered with those of Tyrell in both the 1557 brass of Lady Jane Ingleton1 and the 17th century stained glass window (called The Italian Window) of Thornton College2.

Returning to the boars' arms-bearing Swynfords, at some point it appears that a branch settled in Lincoln, proving Bentley right. In 1309 a Simon de Swynford3 is in the service of Robert Darcy in Dunston, Lincolnshire4, one of many relationships between the families Swynford and Darcy5. According to a document in the British National Archives (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/), it would seem that a Thomas Swynford of Lincs., who had a wife named Margaret and a son and heir, John, holding property in Kettlethorpe, had married into the D'arcy family, as did his later great-great-grandson, Thomas Swynford:

"ref. DDTO K 5/22 - date: 1307-8 ... Conf: Philip de Arci, knt., s. & h. of Sir Norman de Arci, knt., the conf. of the said Sir Norman to Thos. de Swyneford & w. Margaret, my sister, lands etc., in Noketon, co. Linc."

Noketon is evidently Nocton. In 1311/12, this Thomas Swynford, Lord of Kettlethorpe(6), died, leaving his son and heir, John Swynford, as the new Lord of Kettlethorpe, a position he continued to hold as late as 13287. This John Swynford is likely the same individual who was in the company of Lord Mowbray and owning land in Kelham in 1324(8). The relationship between Simon Swynford and the Thomas – John – Thomas Swynfords is unclear, but by the mid 14th-century available records show a number of individuals with the surname Swynford in Lincolnshire.

It would seem that John Swynford experienced sufficient financial difficulties such that he was compelled to alienate his ownership of Kettlethorpe, as William de la Croice is Lord of Kettlethorpe in 1331[9], and the manor is not noted as being again in the hands of the Swynford family until 1349, when Hugh Swynford's father, Thomas, is in possession of it10. The rationale for surmising that John Swynford lost Kettlethorpe because of financial problems may be glimpsed in an examination of the inquisition post mortem of Hugh's father, Thomas. [see Welcome to Kettlethorpe blog entry]

The relationship between Simon Swynford and the Thomas – John – Thomas Swynfords is at best uncertain, but by the early/mid 14th-century, available records show as number of individuals with the surname Swynford settled in Lincolnshire. For example, in 1358 a Margaret Swynford, mother of Thomas Swynford, holds lands in Nocton1; a Hugh Swynford who is not the later husband of Katherine Roet is found granting land to the prior and convent of Spalding in Lincoln2; in 1345 and 1358 a William Swynford is witness to a charter concerning two manors in Lincoln3 and lands in Northampton4; he is likely to be identical with the William Swynford who held land of Robert Darcy in Dunston in 1346[5]; a Juliana Swynford also held lands, of Philip Darcy, there in that year6. And also appearing in 1346 Lincolnshire records is a Gregory de Swynford, witnessing a charter7.

While it proves difficult to ascertain the exact familial relationship between the above-named individuals, there seem to be two branches in Lincoln and one in Northampton which can be identified with greater certainty. We will begin with Norman de Swynford, who held a tenement in Brauncewell in 1346[8]. In 1366 Norman de Swynford, esq., entered into the service of King Charles of Navarre9 quite possibly because he seems to have been a bit of a scoundrel and he might have found it expedient to leave the country for a while. The year before, Norman Swynford found himself at the center of a legal battle over the Lincolnshire manor of Harlaxton, originally held by John de Warenne, earl of Suffolk, and alienated without license by him to John de Braose10. De Braose had married Margaret Trehampton who, after being widowed, married secondly Norman Swynford11, and thus Swynford enjoyed the properties and privileges of the de Braose heir during his minority. When the heir attained his age of majority, he, in turn, released Harlaxton to Edmund Swynford; however, due to the lack of license for the various alienations, Harlaxton was taken into the king's hands, to the great impoverishment of Edmund Swynford12.

More than a decade prior to that debacle, Norman de Swynford was at the center of a suit pitting him against Edmund of Langely: Edmund states that he holds the lands that belonged to Earl Warenne beyond Trent of the gift of his king and father, but that Norman de Swyneford is attempting deceitfully to recover his wife's dower against the Countess Warenne in Sowerbyshire and Holmfirth, which are part of these lands, and assigned to the Countess as her dower, claiming that John de Brewes, his wife's late husband, was seised of these lands through the earl. If he recovers these lands, Edmund will lose them forever. He asks that the council might be ordered not to allow any assize to pass against him or the countess at the suit of Swyneford until the council is better advised, and he further requests that if anything has been begun in this matter that it be hastily repealed1.

Norman even attempted to impeded the delivery of the de Braose inheritance to his wife's son by claiming that the de Braose heir suffered from idiocy1 when in fact he did not2. Moreover, he was accused of stealing various church relics3 which had been assembled by his wife's first husband.

It would seem that Norman had at least one and possibly as many as three sons by Margaret Trehampton, namely, the aforementioned Edmund, who came into possession of the Lincolnshire manor of Harlaxton by 1340 (but seems to have lost it by 1341[4,] and possibly the Norman Swynford living through the end of the century, as well as the Thomas Swynford of Bedford5.

The scandalous Norman de Swynford appears to have died by 13681. Even though Edmund de Swynford and his wife appear to have lost Harlaxton Manor, it is later found in the possession of the Belesby family in 8 Henry VI[2]. This is interesting inasmuch as the family of Belesby [see entry concerning Luttrell monuments at Irnham] is said to have intermarried with that of Swynford3.

Later additions to this post will look at the Northampton Swynfords as well as perhaps correcting numerous typos and grammos.

Artifacts of Kettlethorpe

Pevsner, p. 413, describes the parish church of Ss Peter and Paul at Kettlethorpe thusly:

Small, unbuttressed W tower, the W doorway with Perp parts. Nave basically medieval, but mostly of 1840-5, with windows of 1896 by Herbert Kirk. Chancel of stone, also with Victorianized windows (E 1874, the others 1896). Bare interior, a N aisle formed by two iron rods. In the N wall of the chancel a reset C15 angel corbel with shield bearing the royal arms, supporting a moulded octagonal capital...

Visitors to Kettlethorpe may be disappointed to discover that the medieval-looking structure they are visiting is not in fact identical with the church in which Katherine heard services. In fact, the only medieval structure remaining at Kettlethorpe is a portion of its gatehouse:


Anthony Goodman has described the gatehouse as a hint of unexpected magnificence while Pevsner notes that Of the C14 house of the Swynford family only the gateway remains, of stone, with battlements and typically C14 sunk mouldings. The back later strengthened by brickwork. In the r. wall a blocked C14 archway in situ. I've read speculation somewhere that the arch may have been partially disassembled and reassembled, speculation being that the lower portions were reassembled with greater authenticity than the upper portion but I'm not easily finding that reference now.

The medieval Kettlethorpe manor, which also no longer exists, is said to have been typical of Lincolnshire manor houses in that it eventually was moated and guarded by its gateway entry like this example at Baddesley Clinton.

It probably didn't start out quite so impressive. To the left is a diagram of a typical 14th century manor house. You can see the reconstructed interior of a typical hall here. You'll notice there are no moats and no gatehouse-walled enclosure. The manor house that Katherine first came to inhabit was probably very much like the depiction above: it likely was composed of the main hall (the larger rectangular building) which served as the communal eating, sleeping, and interaction focus for those living on and working on the manor grounds. By Katherine's time, the main hall, constructed of brick or stone with a timbered roof, had an open fire, wooden tables behind which were curtained off rudimentary sleeping quarters (on straw beds), and one end was the raised dias where the lord of the manor and his family would eat and receive visitors. Off either end of the main hall were located the solar, which was the private living quarters for the lord of the manor and his family, and the kitchen and buttery, where food was provisioned and prepared. Oftentimes, there might be a small chapel as well, and some manor houses also included secondary private living spaces above the buttery.

However, becoming the Duke's mistress in the early 1370s brought its advantages for Katherine Swynford: John of Gaunt ordered the delivery of some 60 oaks to Kettlethorpe in 1375 (John of Gaunt's Register 1372-76, no. 1608) for the benefit of Katherine's apparent building programme, and Richard II later gave her permission to enclose a park of 300 acres in 1383 (Cal. Pat. Rolls 1381-85, 317).

The gatehouse is adorned with charming little gargoyles, seen in this close-up photo taken by Roger Joy (unless otherwise credited, the photos are (c) Roger Joy.) This particular gargoyle (there's a matching one on the other side) looks like he's about to fall off! Roger Joy has an interesting theory about this gargoyle -- that he was originally attached to the medieval parish church across the way, a theory made all the more plausible by an examination of a 1793 painting of the medieval church (before it was pulled down and reassembled):


(Sorry the image is so small; the original is not but Google/Blogger is resizing it I suppose; the painter is Claude Natts, who did a companion piece of Kettlethorpe Hall, but the Hall had unfortunately already been completely reconstructed unlike the church).

Here is an image Roger took of the Mavesyn Ridware Church tower adorned up top with, you guessed it, gargoyles! And the 1793 painting does appear to show little juts off the tower's edge, so perhaps Roger is correct about the gargoyles currently gracing Kettlethorpe Hall's gatehouse.

Both the Mavesyn Ridware Church image as well as the 1793 painting provide us with clues as to the appearance of Kettlethorpe's medieval church: both possessed a grand, dominating tower and stone tracery windows which no doubt held splendid medieval stained glass, none of which unfortunately remains at Kettlethorpe, but, fortunately for us, somebody thought enough of those window remnants to regift them to building efforts at the church at Messingham, where they can still be viewed today. All stained glass images below are (c) Gordon Plumb, are used with permission, and he says you're not to use them to any profit, as I am certainly not.


Here we have the window commemorating the story of Doubting Thomas before the risen Christ that originally graced Kettlethorpe's church. Much of this glass has been dated to ca. 1340-50 and thus you are looking at much of the same didactic windows that Katherine saw more than 600 years ago.

Here is a close-up of the Doubting Thomas scene; the next close-up is one of several delightful musician images that occur throughout many of the Kettlethorpe glass pieces:













Note the richness of the colors in the 600+ year old glass: gold-golds, cobalt blues; the care taken in depicting the manches or exaggerated sleeve-lengths then-fashionable on the musicians. Of particular interest is the process by which the yellow/gold color of glass was made:

Mr. Plumb tells me that the yellow to orange tones here were produced by ...using the stain to colour robes, hair etc. Yellow-stain became known in Europe from the early 14thC - its first dated use is in Normandy. It was used in a window in York Minster in the early 14thC and it rapidly became a tool of the glass painter since it obviated the need to cut a small piece of yellow pot-metal glass each time and it allowed even difficult shapes to be easily depicted



Here is another example of Kettlethorpe glass at Messingham -- the Harrowing of Hell, again featuring architectural motifs, musicians (fiddling whilst Hell burns?!) and vivid colours.

Detail from The Harrowing... with more musicians!





Finally, we have this image of St. John and his Eagle.

UPDATE: Below is a photo Roger took of what is apparently the sole remnant of interior carved decorative stonework from the medieval church at Kettlethorpe, as referenced above. It is a corbel of an angel holding a shield with the English royal arms and dates from the 15th century. Thus did Katherine's descendants work to remind everyone who entered the church just how closely allied were the Swynfords with the royal family.

Today is St. Catherine of Alexandria's Feastday!

15th c. Sarum Use Book of Hours
As G L Harriss noted in the opening page of his biography of Henry Beaufort, this fascination we have with our birthdays is a relatively recent phenomenon (Henry apparently not only knew his own but reportedly celebrated it as well, which is why Harriss brings up the point!). Instead, what people tended to celebrate was the feast day of their patron or namesake saint.

This post is about Katherine Roet's name-saint, Catherine of Alexandria, who was reportedly a noblewoman who converted to Christianity in the early years of the fourth century of the common era,and then made the bad move of converting others, including the Emperor's wife and the good pagan officials who tried to show her the error of her spiritual ways.

Things like this never augur well for the ancient martyrs of the church, some of whom may or may not have even existed. The author of the thesis which can be found at the above title link notes:

...the fictiveness of the legends is indicated by the numerous similarities within the genre. The biographies of numerous saints draw on a limited number of stock characters, standard plots, and conventional incidents. Violent confrontations, miraculous escapes, and inventive ways of inflicting pain and death are major features of the genre... This use of repetition, however, communicated a religious 'truth': that all saints are, indeed, the same in that they all live a life of holiness based on the example of Christ's life.

Indeed, if it's graphic depiction of sadistic violence that you're looking for, you needn't go any further than Jacob de Voragine's Golden Legend aka Lives of the Saints. Of Catherine's martyrdom, de Voragine has this to say, that the Emperor, after Catherine refuses to become his female #2,:

...commanded that she should be despoiled naked and beaten with scorpions, and so beaten to be put in a dark prison, and there was tormented by hunger by the space of twelve days...

When Catherine still won't submit to the Emperor's no doubt considerable personal charms (and this seems to be one of those running themes for female martyrs -- it's always that they won't submit sexually to some heathen), he threatens her with still more bodily harm, to which she reportedly replies:

Tarry not to do what torments thou wilt, for I desire to offer to God my blood and my flesh like as he offered for me; he is my God, my father, my friend and mine only spouse

This really did her in, and the Emperor commands that his chief henchman

make four wheels of iron, environed with sharp razors, cutting so that she might be horribly all detrenched and cut in that torment, so that he might fear the other christian people by ensample of that cruel torment. And then was ordained that two wheels should turn against the other two by great force, so that they should break all that should be between the wheels... then the sergeants brought her out of the city and erased off her paps with tongs of iron, and after smote off her head

Rape, sadistic violence, inventive use of razors and ordinary wheels, and crude mastectomies -- the inventive devices may well change but the rest is pretty standard fare for the stories of the early female martyrs.

14th c. Oxford Cathedral Lawrence OP photostream on Flickr
.Fast forward to medieval England. St. Catherine becomes an increasingly popular saint. By the mid-twelfth century she has a chapel dedicated to her at Bury St. Edmund's, and in the thirteenth century she has a manorial chapel in Whaplode (Lincs.) as well as a chapel in Lincoln Cathedral itself, which also boasted two relics of the saint: a finger kept in a long purse decorated with pearls as well as the curious relic of a section of chain with which Catherine is sometimes said to have bound the devil. (Walsh, Christine. The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007, pp. 123; 134-5).


By Katherine Swynford's time, Catherine of Alexandria, often identified in manuscripts and stained glass depictions by or with her signature symbol of a spiked wheel, had entered a super-pantheon of 14 I believe Catholic saints who were the subject of increasing entreaties by victims of the Black Death, which is said to have decimated Europe's population by at least one-third.


St Mary's Saxon Church, Deerhurst.

Catherine's wheel was further understood to associate with spinners (or, in the case of women, spinsters, as the -ster ending often denoted a female of a profession, whereas the -er ending indicated a male of the profession. From this we get our surnames of Brewer as well as Brewster; Webber as well as Webster, etc.), lace-makers, and wheel-wrights. She furthermore was a favorite saint of unmarried women 25 years of age or older (now we know where we get the term spinster, right?!), one of the few positive examples of an educated woman (medieval women could not attend the new universities that were popping up across medieval Europe), and I believe I've read that both in England as well as at Katherine Roet's sister's hometown of St. Waudru, Mons, St. Catherine's feast day was a day off for students attending school.

By Queen Catherine of Aragon's time (early/mid-16th Century), the Cult of St. Catherine had grown to encompass the making of Cattern Cakes (carroway-spiced things) and choir boys preaching sermons and begging for money.

How this relates to Katherine Swynford -- well, she may well have been born sometime in November of a year we don't have even a clue. Then there's the novelist Seton's portrayal of how Katherine Swynford came by her coat of arms... I'd quote it if I had the book handy, but it's a nice little moving scene in which John of Gaunt, already taken with La Swynford, invents the double canting coat idea of Catherine wheels for a Katherine Swynford -- doubly punning in that Roet = Wheel in Latin, Katherine's name being, well, Catherine, and St. Catherine's symbol being a spiked wheel.

Le Puy Cathedral, Auvergne, France, Sacred Destinations' Photo Stream on Flickr

A few other bits of trivia: the Church apparently liked playing a musical chairs sort of game in assigning the feast day for this particular St. Catherine (why??? I don't know...); also, poor St. Catherine of Alexandria is among those saints who received some sort of demotion in 1969 (but is in good company with the revered St. Christopher, who also got demoted) when her feast day was taken off the Church's calendar. Also, among the voices Jeanne d'Arc heard -- yup, St. Catherine of Alexandria (bonus points to anyone who knows that Henry Beaufort presided over her execution).

Oh, and by the way, there was at least one other St. Catherine -- that of Sienna, who was a contemporary of Katherine Swynford, who left rather alot of writings behind and who, at least to this modern and non-religious eye, had a most bizarre concept of the composition of her wedding ring with the Messiah figure. Or am I getting the two confused again???

Welcome to Kettlethorpe

For Coleby: the soil is hard and stony, and uncultivated because of its barrenness, and the dovecot and windmill are in ruins...

For Kettlethorpe: The Manor, the meadow of which is overflowed by the waters of Trent in ordinary years...

Katheryn Roet must surely have wondered what had she gotten herself into as her gaze wandered across the landscape of her new Lincolnshire home. The broad sweep of nearly uniformly flat and unkempt oat fields abutting against the perpetually clogged waters of the nominally navigatory river Trent and the Roman-constructed FossDyke was a far cry from the rich forests which encircled the urban lowlands cities that were home to her celebrated ancestors, the Lords of Roeulx.

The teenaged and likely orphaned new bride of Sir Hugh Swynford could at least console herself with remembrances of her family's proud history during the lengthy periods in which she found herself alone at Kettlethorpe, or away attending upon the Lady of her husband's Lord, the great John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, son of the king himself. At the time of Katherine's marriage, which occurred perhaps as early as 1363 or 1364,1 England and her residents had perhaps begun to feel a xenophobic resentment against the many Hainaulters whom their Queen, Philippa of Hainault, had brought with her and established in new careers in a foreign land upon her marriage to England's Edward III in 1327. Initially welcomed due to the strong political alliance advantage offered by Philippa's father, Count William of Hainault, and the willingness of Hainaulter knights to fight on England's behalf against her nuisance enemy to the north, Scotland, the native Hainaulters and their perhaps English-born offspring eventually became of considerably less usage to the English following William's death in 1337, the later death of his son, also named William, in 1345, and the perfidy of Philippa's uncle, John of Hainault, who turned on the English and refused to help Philippa obtain her rightful share of her father's titles and lands in favor of her sister, Marguerite.

While Philippa herself would forever enjoy the love of her adopted country, what were the English to do with Philippa's many, now relatively useless, Hainaulter transplants? Some, like the famous chronicler Jean Froissart, would leave England shortly before Philippa's death, changing political affiliations as well, never to return. Others, like Katherine's own father, Gilles du Roeulx dit Payne de Roet, would play the tricky game of serving multiple masters and mistresses, moving seemingly seamlessly between the English royal court, as the first cited King of Arms of Guyenne, and as the hereditary positionvii of Master of the Household for Marguerite of Bavaria (Philippa's sister). Still others, such as Walter Mauny and Lewis Robessart, would integrate entirely into English life, leaving their Hainaulter lives behind. The likely English-born Katherine found herself in a different category: forever remembered as a foreigner who likely never saw a land other than England.

As the new Lady of Kettlethorpe, Katherine would have found herself at the center of a small medieval village, dominated by the lord's manor house itself and the local church around which had sprung the ancient settlement of Kettlethorpe. Katherine and Hugh's manor home, sadly no longer extant, but doubtless located near to the spot of the present-day Kettlethorpe Hall, would have been but a short visual and walking distance from the parish Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, its grand main tower dominating the largely flat landscape, and from Kettlethorpe Katherine could see for miles around the largely agrarian Lincolnshire lands; so little has changed that, for the most part, today's Kettlethorpe landscape is much as it was in Katheryn's time.

(Aerial shot of Kettlethorpe)


(Kettlethorpe's Gatehouse Remnant)



© Copyright Richard Croft and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence.

Much of Lincolnshire was land reclaimed from the sea and such tidal rivers as the Trent, Witham, and others. As was the case with Nile delta lands, land reclaimed from Lincolnshire waters possessed areas rich in alluvial soil, which made the area ideal for settlement and farming. To do so required the construction of navigatory waterways, such as the Roman FossDyke, which allowed the transportation of locally-produced Lincolnshire goods, such as wool, grain and hides, to local ports such as that at Boston, and provided for the importing of such necessities as fish (fresh-salted as well as dried), wine, lead and ironxiv.


(Roger Joy's photo of the Foss Dyke)

Well, there goes THAT theory!

I've previously argued (somewhere here in the blog, no doubt, but, certainly in my FMG article) that the family of Roeulx adapted their arms from the comital house of Hainault to which they were related.

Perhaps not.

From the time of the signing of the Treaty of Peronne [1256], the arms of Hainaut had already, in fact, been altered from three chevrons to the rampant lion of Flanders to signify the claim of the Avesnes branch of the family. Then in 1280, in an act that singularly demonstrates the use of genealogy as a means of manipulating // collective memory, Jean II d'Avesnes, to affirm his rights as count of Flanders, exhumed his father's corpse, which he paraded from town to town throughout the territories. He had a new funeral monument constructed, with sculptured figures of his father and mother, each displaying their armorial shields (a rampion lion, sable, on gold for his father), which he setup in the middle of the choir of the Dominican church in Valenciennes...In 1289 an uneasy peace finally appears to have been concluded, and Jean II d'Avesnes went on to inherit the counties of Holland, Zeeland and Luxembourg. When his title passed to his son in 1304, three lions, one for each of his new counties, joined the lion of Hainaut-Flanders on the shield.



--Sealed in Parchment: Rereadings of Knighthood in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Chretien de Troyes. (Hindman, Sandra; 1994: University of Chicago Press).



This would seem to coincide with the finding of Roeulx arms of Or three lions rampant gules given for Eustache V du Roeulx (1221- 1283) in the Wijnbergen armourial (http://perso.numericable.fr/briantimms2/wijnbergen/wnhainault.htm). But, there goes the theory that the Roeulx family's arms were derivative of their ancient familial connection with the Counts of Hainault!

However, there's an interesting story behind all this dreary discussion of how many lions, what colors were they, and why lions should eventually trump chevrons -- while we may today, when thinking of medieval Hainault, consider it a pastoral backwater of European politics, the area seemed to be teeming with political disputes and back-stabbing relatives.

Baldwin of Flanders, Emperor of Constantinople, died in 1206, leaving two daughters: Jeanne (left), who took the title of Countess of both Flanders and Hainault, and Margaret (below), who was consigned to the care of, and eventually marriage to, one of her mother's relatives, Bossaert or Bouchard d'Avesnes. Margaret and Bouchard had two or three children, and the sisters Margaret and Jeanne seem to have had a falling-out over Jeanne's not sharing the inheritance (a situation that would be later repeated when Count William of Hainault ran out of male heirs which resulted in Philippa of Hainault eventually losing her part of the patrimony when her sister, Marguerite, grabbed it all). At some point, apparently, Jeanne tried to have her sister's marriage annulled on the grounds that Bouchard had received the subdiaconate of Tournai. Pope Innocent III, while condemning the marriage, is stated to have stopped just shy of annulling the marriage itself. Bouchard seems to have gone to Rome in an attempt to remedy the situation and, in his absence, Jeanne compelled her sister Margaret to marry William II of Dampierre, by whom she had sons William III and Guy Dampierre. Eventually, Jeanne dies, childless, after two marriages, and thereupon ensues a struggle for the lands of Flanders and Hainault, which had previously been united but now were separated by the warring factions of Margaret's eldest sons from her two marriages.



One would think that, after everything Margaret had been through (what with her parents going off on Crusade and never coming back, her sister meddling in her marital matters AND stealing her part of her inheritance), she would have felt a greater sense of justice and fair play with respect to her children from her first marriage; however, Margaret did everything she could to deny them any inheritance whatsoever. Indeed, when King Louis IX of France took it upon himself to be arbiter in the matter of the feuding half-brothers, decreeing that John d'Avesnes (son of the first marriage) should have Hainault while William III Dampierre would receive Flanders, Margaret promptly relinquished Flanders to William but refused to hand over Hainault to her first-born. The brothers went to war -- again -- only this time John d'Avesnes managed to convince William of Holland to enter the fray on his side; Hainault was seized and put under John d'Avesnes' control.

Margaret again tried to take Hainault away from her son, this time inviting the French king's brother, Charles of Anjou, to militarily press her preference for the line of her second husband. However, when the French king returned from Crusade, he persuaded his brother to butt out and control over Hainault was held once again by John d'Avesnes, and Flanders and Hainault remained separately ruled for a while.

One wonders what holiday get-togethers were like :-/ Somehow, a few scenes from The Lion in Winter come to mind...