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Katharine might not have been born within half a dozen years thereafter. She became the mistress, or governess, of Blanche's two daughters, Philippa and Elizabeth, of whom Philippa was born in 1360.62 Froissart tells us (15. 238) that Katharine 'fut mise de sa jeunesse en l'ostel du duc et de la duchesse Blanche de Lancastre.'

The assumption of adultery with Katharine in Blanche's lifetime is confirmed by Froissart's account (15. 240) of the indignation expressed by the foremost ladies of England when John of Gaunt married her, for they referred to her as 'une telle duchesse qui vient de basse lignie, et qui a esté concubine du duc ung trop long temps en ses mariages.' Now mariages must refer to both his previous marriages, that to Blanche as well as that to Constance. An even more explicit statement is made in the Percy manuscript 78, quoted by Armitage-Smith (pp. 464-5):

Iste etiam Johannes Gaunt post mortem Constancie secunde uxoris sue adhuc superduxit dominam Katerinam de Swynfurth, de qua genuit in diebus domine Blanchie prime uxoris sue Johannem Bowfurth, comitem Somersissie; Johannam Bow furth, comitissam Westmorelandie; Henricum Bow furth, presbiterum, cardinalem, et episcopum Wyntonyensem; Thomam Bowfurth, ducem Exoniensem.

The comment of Armitage-Smith is (p. 462): 'No contemporary evidence supports the statement of Percy MS. 78, which places the birth of the Beauforts in the life of the Duchess Blanche. There is no doubt, however, that most historians have postdated the birth of the Beauforts, or at least of the eldest of them.' He quite ignores the testimony borne by Froissart, as quoted above, and asserts (p. 461): 'There is no evidence that any amour disturbed the married life of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster.'64

61

Exc. Hist., p. 152; Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies 1. 78; Armitage-Smith, p. 227.

62

63

Armitage-Smith, p. 94.

Translated in the plural by Johnes (4. 473). Cf. Jahrb. für Rom. und Engl. Lit. 8. 142 (Hertzberg).

"He ascribes, however, to 1358 or 1359 (p. 461) an amour with Marie de Saint Hilaire (like Katharine, a Hainauter), of which the issue was a daughter Blanche. May not this Blanche, like Katharine's own daughter (see p. 52, note 57), have been born after his marriage, and have

Another circumstance pointing to the birth of John Beaufort, at least, not only during the lifetime of Blanche, but even before

been named after his wife? She herself was no doubt named after her great-grandmother, Blanche of Artois, niece of St. Louis, through whom the lordship of Beaufort, near Troyes, came to the Lancasters (ArmitageSmith, p. 197). She, in turn, may have derived her name from her greataunt, Blanche of Castile, the mother of St. Louis. Chaucer's Blanche seems to have been very lenient toward Katharine, since in 1372 (May 15) John of Gaunt, in commuting a former grant of 20 marks a year, in recognition of the 'bone et greable service quelle avoit fait et ferroit a nostre tres chere compaigne, que Dieux assoille,' to a present 50 marks for life, alleges 'la tres grande affeccion que nostre dite compaigne avoit envers la dite Katerine' (John of Gaunt's Register 1. 169). No wonder John wished to be laid by Blanche; and no wonder Chaucer puts into his mouth these praises (Bk. Duch. 929-932, 937, 994-8):

I durste swere, thogh the Pope hit songe,
That ther was never through hir tonge
Man ne woman gretly harmed;

As for hir, [ther] was al harm hid.
Ne chyde she coude never a del.
Therto I saw never yet a lesse
Harmful than she was in doing-
I sey nat that she ne had knowing
What was harm, or elles she

Had coud no good, so thinketh me.

With certain obvious changes one might apply to Blanche and her mother-in-law, Philippa (cf. Dict. Nat. Biog. 45, 167), who died scarcely a month earlier, what I have elsewhere (Last Months, p. 110) quoted concerning the wife of John of Gaunt's brother, Lionel, and two women nearly related to her: 'She was a lady of sweet and honorable soul. It rarely happens that in one house are found three spirits so exquisite, so compassionate, and so swift to all goodness, as were Bianca of Savoy, Isabella of France, and Violante. . . They were noble souls in lovely bodies, and Heaven only knows what good they wrought in natures like those of Galeazzo and his son.'

Considering Blanche's goodness, it is not so surprising that she should have condoned Katharine's most grievous fault; but, notwithstanding the public acceptance of certain bastards, such as the Count de la Roche toward the end of the 15th century (see Exc. Hist., p. 172), and of the Beauforts themselves, we are not prepared to hear the following with regard to Katharine (Wylie 3. 258-9): 'During the lifetime of . . Constance, she and her daughter Joan were attached to the household of the Countess Mary (Henry's first wife), and received every Christmas their livery in scarlet and white silk furred with minever, with pieces of white damask bawdekin, and their presents of diamonds, gold rings, coral rosaries, and so forth each New Year's Day and Egg-Friday.'

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that of Henry IV (May 30, 1366), is the fact that when this monarch confirmed in 1407 the patent of legitimation granted ten years earlier by Richard II, he caused to be inserted the words, excepta dignitate regali, a phrase which might indeed have been intended to bar his illegitimate half-brother, or his descendants, in any case, but which would certainly have more point if John Beaufort had been born earlier than Henry himself; the case thus guarded against actually arose when the throne was claimed by Henry VII.07

Finally, such a reputation had Katharine acquired by the acts of her earlier life that doubts were cast, in her native country of Hainaut, upon the legitimacy of her lawful son Thomas Swynford (born, as we have seen, probably in 1367), for in October, 1411, Henry IV found it necessary, in order that he might inherit in that country, to certify that he was begotten in lawful wedlock.68 As Sir Harris Nicolas observes, 'the suspicion of his legitimacy may have arisen from his mother losing her reputation when she became the mistress of John of Gaunt, and from the idea that he was the Duke's child'; but this suspicion would have been all the more justified, had it been known that she had already borne a child or children to the Duke.

XII. SIR PAON DE RUET AND CHAUCER

Paon de Ruet was a Hainauter, who was the lineal ancestor, at the fifth remove, of Henry VII of England,1 and so, at the seventh remove, of Queen Elizabeth; he was also the ancestor, at the fifth remove, of that young Earl of Lincoln2 who was a

“Exc. Hist., pp. 157-9; Wylie 3. 260; Cokayne 7. 169.

'Paon had (1) daughter, Katharine, who had (2) son, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, who had (3) son, John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, who had (4) Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, who had (5) Henry VII.

'Paon had (1) daughter, Philippa, who had (2) son, Thomas Chaucer, who had (3) daughter, Alice, who had (4) son, John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, who had (5) son, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln (1464?-1487), chosen by Richard III as heir (Hist. Background, p. 178).

rival of Henry VII for the English throne, and who died in battle against the King at Stoke upon Trent in 1487, two years after Bosworth Field. The most comprehensive statement that we have about Paon de Ruet is this by Froissart (15. 238):

En ce temps [1396] se remaria le duc de Lancastre tiercement à une damoiselle, fils d'un chevalier de Haynnau, qui jadis s'appella messire Paon de Roet [var. Ruet], et fut en son temps des chevalliers à la noble et bonne reyne Philippe d'Angleterre, qui tant ayma les Haynnuras, car elle en fut de nation.

His relation to Philippa becomes clearer on comparison with Froissart's passage descriptive of the young queen's departure from Valenciennes to join her youthful husband in England at the close of 1327 (1. 195):

La jone roine Phelippe d'Engleterre, en l'eage entre trèse et quatorse ans, se départi de Valenchiennes en la compagnie de messire Jehan de Hainnau, son oncle, dou signeur de Fagnoelles, dou signeur de Ligne, dou signeur de Brifuel, dou signeur de Haverech, dou signeur de Wargni, et plus de quarante chevaliers et esquiers de Hainnau, et servoit devant lui adont uns jones esquiers qui se nommoit Watelès de Mauni, qui puis fu messires Watiers; . . . et se départirent de Hainnau pluissier jone esquier en entente que pour demorer en Engleterre avoecques la roine.

As the king was in the North, a number of the Flemings returned home without proceeding further than London, but Kervyn de Lettenhove assumes that Paon de Ruet was one of those who remained in England, and that he was already a knight (2. 513):

3

Nous voyons Édouard III, dès le commencement de son règne, combler de ses faveurs les barons de Hainaut, en même temps que la reine Philippe s'entoure de gentes damoiselles venues avec elle de ce bon et doux pays. Les chevaliers entrés au service du roi d'Angleterre sont Michel de Ligne, Robert de Fiennes, Nicolas d'Aubrecicourt, Guillaume de Saint-Omer, Wulfard de Ghistelles, Thierri de la Croix, Simon de Hale, plus connu sous le nom de Simon de Mirabel, et Paonnet de Roet, dont la fille fut plus tard duchesse de Lancastre

There seems no sufficient reason for assuming Ruet to have been a knight when he came to England. Froissart, writing three-quarters of a century later, calls him a knight of Philippa's (see above), but the context shows that the love for the Hainauters here spoken of belongs to a time when she was well established in her new home. His name does

et l'aïeule des Tudor. Parmi les écuyers on cite Watelet de Mauny,* Robert de Gagès, Robert de Maule.

If Paon de Ruet was, as Kervyn supposes, a knight in 1327, he may well have been born in the early years of the century. Kervyn conjectures (15. 399) him to have been the son of Jean de Ruet (†1305), himself a son of Huon de Ruet.

As to the name, Paon de Ruet, we find it as early as 1227 in a legal document, in the form Paganus de Rodio.

Now Rodium

is the medieval Latin form corresponding to the modern Roulx, or Le Roeulx, the name of a town of 3000 inhabitants, 8 miles north-east of Mons, on the highway leading from Mons to Nivelle. It stands upon a hill, 400 feet above sea-level, in the

6

not appear in the list of knights who accompanied the queen from Hainaut, and there is no ground for supposing that he occupied a higher status than Walter Mauny, who was not knighted till 1331 (Dict. Nat. Biog. 36. 76), though in high favor with Philippa from the first. He is more likely to have been one of the 'pluissier jone esquier' mentioned above.

'Another manuscript says, with reference to the departure of the Flemings (1. 194): 'Messires Jehans de Haynau prist congiet, et s'en parti o toute sa compagnie de Haynau, . . . et demora li jone royne Phelippe à petite compagnie de son pays, formis ung jeune damoisiel que on clamoit Watelet de Mauni, qui y demora pour servir et taillier devant li.' The Walter Mauny whose name will always be remembered in connection with Philippa's intercession for the burghers of Calais appears here as carving before his mistress at the table (cf. Prol. 100). He was not knighted till four years later (Dict. Nat. Biog. 36. 76).

*Monuments (see below, p. 58, note 8) 2. 834-5.

The representation of the Latin Paganus by Paon is not easy to understand; yet, though it is customary to cite the name of Katharine's father in modern books as Payne Roet, no form corresponding to Payne is found in the fourteenth-century texts which mention him, so far as I am aware. Such a form would of course be Païen (s), and this indeed occurs in Paiens de Maisières, designating a poet who flourished about 1200 (Hist. Litt. de la France 19. 722; 20. 68); the names of four crusading knights who appear in the earlier French epics (Langlois, Table des Noms Propres dans les Chansons de Geste, p. 512); and that of Payen d'Orléans (Geoffroi de Villehardouin, ed. Natalis de Wailly, pp. 6, 305, etc.).

*Not, as Kervyn de Lettenhove supposes, the French Roeulx, just north of Bouchain.