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Birth:          25 Nov 1350 of Picardy, Somme, France
Death:          10 May 1403 Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England
Burial:         Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England

Notes
her sister Philippa married Geoffrey Chaucer
she was mistress to John of Gaunt long before the marraige. She was his third wife 
(and the third wife of Thomas Swynford)
all issue legitimized by charter of Richard II in 1397
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Swynford
Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster (November 25, 1350 – May 10, 1403) (also 
spelled Katharine or Catherine),[2] was the third wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of 
Lancaster, a son of King Edward III. She had been the Duke's lover for many years 
before their marriage. The couple's children, born before the marriage, were later 
legitimated during the reign of the Duke's nephew, Richard II. When the Duke's son 
from his first[3] marriage overthrew Richard, becoming Henry IV, he introduced a 
provision that neither they nor their descendants could ever claim the throne of 
England.

Their descendants were members of the Beaufort family, which played a major role in 
the Wars of the Roses. Henry VII, who became King of England in 1485, derived his 
claim to the throne from his mother Margaret Beaufort, who was a great-granddaughter 
of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford. His legal claim to the throne, however, was through 
a matrilineal and previously illegitimate line and Henry's first action was to declare 
himself king "by right of conquest" retroactively from 21 August 1485, the day before 
his army defeated King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth.[4]
Family[edit]

Katherine was the daughter of Paon de Roet, a herald, and later knight, who was 
"probably christened as Gilles".[5] She had two sisters, Philippa and Isabel (also 
called Elizabeth) de Roet, and a brother, Walter. Isabel later became Canoness of the 
convent of St. Waudru's, Mons, c. 1366. Katherine is generally held to have been his 
youngest child. However, Alison Weir argues that Philippa was the junior and that 
both were children of a second marriage.[5] Katherine's sister Philippa, a lady in the 
royal household of Philippa of Hainault, married the poet Geoffrey Chaucer.

Life[edit]

She was probably born in Hainaut in 1349 or 1350. Katherine's birth date may have 
been 25 November, as that is the feast day of her patron, St. Catherine of Alexandria.
[citation needed]

In about 1366, at St Clement Danes Church, Westminster, Katherine, aged sixteen or 
seventeen, contracted an advantageous marriage with "Hugh" Ottes Swynford, a 
knight from the manor of Kettlethorpe in Lincolnshire, the son of Thomas Swynford by 
his marriage to Nicole Druel. She had the following children by him: Blanche (born 1 
May 1367), Thomas (21 September 1368 – 1432), and possibly Margaret Swynford 
(born about 1369), later recorded as a nun of the prestigious Barking Abbey nominated 
by command of King Richard II.

Katherine became attached to the household of John of Gaunt as governess to his 
daughters Philippa of Lancaster and Elizabeth of Lancaster. The ailing duchess 
Blanche had Katherine's daughter Blanche (her namesake) placed within her own 
daughters' chambers and afforded the same luxuries as her daughters; additionally, 
John of Gaunt stood as godfather to the child.

Some time after Blanche's death in 1368 and the birth of their first son in 1373, 
Katherine and John of Gaunt entered into a love affair that would produce four 
children for the couple, born out of wedlock but legitimized upon their parents' 
eventual marriage; the adulterous relationship endured until 1381 when it was 
truncated out of political necessity[5] and ruined Katherine's reputation. On 13 
January 1396, two years after the death of the Duke's second wife, Infanta Constance 
of Castile, Katherine and John of Gaunt married in Lincoln Cathedral. Records of their 
marriage kept in the Tower and elsewhere list: 'John of Ghaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 
married Katharine daughter of Guyon King of Armes in the time of K. Edward the 3, 
and Geffrey Chaucer her sister'. On John of Gaunt's death, Katherine became known 
as dowager Duchess of Lancaster. She outlived him by four years, dying on 10 May 
1403, in her early fifties.

Tomb[edit]

Katherine's tomb and that of her daughter, Joan Beaufort, are under a carved-stone 
canopy in the sanctuary of Lincoln Cathedral. Joan's is the smaller of the two tombs; 
both were decorated with brass plates — full-length representations of them on the 
tops, and small shields bearing coats of arms around the sides and on the top — but 
those were damaged or destroyed in 1644 during the English Civil War. A hurried 
drawing by William Dugdale records their appearance.

Children and descendants[edit]

Katherine's children by Hugh Swynford were:
Margaret Swynford (born c. 1369), became a nun at the prestigious Barking Abbey in 
1377 with help from her future stepfather John of Gaunt, where she lived the religious 
life with her cousin Elizabeth Chaucer, daughter of the famous Geoffrey Chaucer and 
Katherine's sister Philippa de Roet.[5]
Sir Thomas Swynford (1367–1432), born in Lincoln while his father Sir Hugh Swynford 
was away on a campaign with the Duke of Lancaster in Castile fighting for Peter of 
Castile.[5][6]
Blanche Swynford, named after the Duchess of Lancaster and a godchild of John of 
Gaunt. (If, as suggested, she was born after 1375, this date is too late for her to have 
been fathered by Hugh Swynford, who died in 1371/2. However, since John of Gaunt 
obtained a dispensation for his marriage to Katherine for being Blanche Swynford's 
godfather, this theory can be discarded).[5]

In 1846 Thomas Stapleton suggested that there was a further daughter named Dorothy 
Swynford, born c. 1366, who married Thomas Thimelby of Poolham near Horncastle, 
Lincolnshire, Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1380, but there is no current evidence to 
support this claim.[7]

Katherine's children by John of Gaunt were:

John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset (1373–1410)
Henry, Cardinal Beaufort (1375–1447)
Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter (1377–1426)
Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland (1379–1440)

The descendants of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt are significant in English 
and Scottish history. Their four children had been given the surname "Beaufort" and 
with the approval of King Richard II and the Pope were legitimated as adults by their 
parents' marriage in 1396. Despite this, the Beauforts were barred from inheriting the 
throne of England by a clause in the legitimation act inserted by their half-brother, 
Henry IV, although modern scholarship disputes the authority of a monarch to alter an 
existing parliamentary statute on his own authority, without the further approval of 
Parliament. This provision was later revoked by Edward VI, placing Katherine's 
descendants (including himself) back within the legitimate line of inheritance; the 
Tudor dynasty was directly descended from John and Katherine's eldest child, John 
Beaufort, great-grandfather of Henry VII, who based his claim to the throne on his 
mother's descent from John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III. John Beaufort also had a 
daughter named Joan Beaufort, who married James I of Scotland and thus was an 
ancestress of the House of Stuart.[8] John and Katherine's daughter, Joan Beaufort, 
was grandmother of the English kings Edward IV and Richard III, the latter of whom 
Henry Tudor (thus becoming by conquest Henry VII) defeated at the Battle of 
Bosworth Field; Henry's claim was strengthened by marrying Elizabeth of York, eldest 
daughter of Edward IV. It was also through Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmoreland 
that the sixth queen of Henry VIII, Catherine Parr, descended.[9] John of Gaunt's son 
— Katherine's stepson Henry of Bolingbroke — became Henry IV after deposing Richard 
II (who was imprisoned and died in Pontefract Castle, where Katherine's son, Thomas 
Swynford, was constable and is said to have starved Richard to death for his step-
brother). John of Gaunt's daughter by his first marriage to Blanche of Lancaster, 
Philippa of Lancaster, was great-great-grandmother to Catherine of Aragon, first wife 
of Henry VIII and mother of Mary I of England. John of Gaunt's child by his second 
wife Constance, Catherine (or Catalina), was great-grandmother of Catherine of Aragon 
as well.

In literature[edit]

Katherine Swynford is the subject of numerous novels, including Anya Seton's 
Katherine, published in 1954. Swynford is also the subject of non-fiction work, such as 
Alison Weir's 2008 biography Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and his 
Scandalous Duchess (ISBN 0-224-06321-9) and Jeannette Lucraft's historical 
biography Katherine Swynford: The History of a Medieval Mistress. Lucraft's book 
seeks to establish Swynford as a powerful figure in the politics of 14th-century 
England and an example of a woman's ability to manipulate contemporary social mores 
for her own interests.


Parents
DE ROET Payn (ABT 1310 - 1380)
----- ----- ()

Siblings
DE ROET Katherine (25 Nov 1350 - 10 May 1403)

Marriage To SWYNFORD Hugh Ottes (ABT 1340 - ABT 1371)
    m.  

Notes

Parents
SWYNFORD Thomas (ABT 1310 - 3 Nov 1361)
DE ARDERNE Nicola (ABT 1315 - )

Children by SWYNFORD Hugh Ottes ABT 1340 - ABT 1371
SWYNFORD Thomas (21 Sep 1368 - 1432)

Marriage To OF GAUNT John (Mar 1340 - 3 Feb 1399)
    m. 13 Jan 1396 Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln, England

Notes
longtime mistress, married after child born

Parents
____ Edward III (13 Nov 1312 - 21 Jun 1377)
OF HAINAULT Philippa (24 Jun 1311 - 15 Aug 1369)

Children by OF GAUNT John Mar 1340 - 3 Feb 1399
DE BEAUFORT Joan (ABT 1372 - 13 Nov 1440)

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