Katherine Swynford’s Children: How Four Beauforts Put Her Blood on Two Thrones

Near the high altar of Lincoln Cathedral, there’s a stone tomb that lost its brasses centuries ago. Katherine Swynford lies in it, beside her only daughter, Joan. She was married to John of Gaunt in that same cathedral in January 1396, after more than 20 years as his mistress.

Her four children by Gaunt were born out of wedlock. One became a cardinal and another a duke. A granddaughter became Queen of Scots, and a great-granddaughter, Margaret Beaufort, was the mother of Henry VII. 

Every English king and queen since Edward IV has carried Katherine’s blood, and so has every Scottish monarch since James II. Not bad for a knight’s daughter from Hainaut.

Katherine Swynford by Alison Weir

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Who Was Katherine Swynford?

Katherine was born around 1350, the daughter of Paon de Roet, a knight from Hainaut who came to England to serve in Queen Philippa’s household. Her sister Philippa married Geoffrey Chaucer, so the author of The Canterbury Tales was her brother-in-law.

She married a Lincolnshire knight, Sir Hugh Swynford, and became governess to the daughters of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Hugh died on campaign in 1371. By about 1372, Katherine and Gaunt were lovers, while he was married to his second wife, Constance of Castile.

Their affair lasted on and off for more than two decades. When Constance died in 1394, Gaunt did something no royal duke was expected to do. He married his mistress.

How Were the Beaufort Children Made Legitimate?

It took a pope, a king, and Parliament, and then a fourth hand nobody can quite identify. The children took the surname Beaufort, from a French lordship Gaunt had once held. 

In 1396, after the wedding, Pope Boniface IX issued a bull declaring them legitimate in the eyes of the Church. 

That didn’t count under English law, so in February 1397 Gaunt took the case to Parliament. With Richard II’s backing, Parliament passed an act declaring John, Henry, Thomas and Joan legitimate. On the same day, Richard made the eldest, John, Earl of Somerset.

Nothing in the 1397 act barred them from the throne. That came ten years later.

In February 1407, John Beaufort asked his half-brother, now King Henry IV, to confirm the family’s legitimacy. Henry did. But in the copy of the confirmation, three words had been squeezed in: excepta dignitate regali, “except the royal dignity.” 

The historian A. F. Pollard noted they were written in a different hand. They don’t appear in the official Parliament Rolls version of the 1397 act.

So were the Beauforts barred from the crown or not? Lawyers and historians still argue about it. Parliament never amended the 1397 Act, and a royal letter couldn’t easily overrule Parliament. But those three words were enough for the Yorkists to sneer at the Tudors’ claim 80 years later.

John Beaufort: The Crusader Earl

John was the eldest, born around 1373 at Kettlethorpe, Katherine’s manor in Lincolnshire. As a young man, he went on crusade to North Africa in 1390, on the expedition to Mahdia, in what’s now Tunisia.

Richard II made him Earl of Somerset in 1397 and Marquess of Dorset a few months later. When Richard was deposed in 1399, the new regime stripped the marquessate, and John went back to being an earl. 

He made his peace with his half-brother Henry IV, became Captain of Calais, and died in 1410, still in his late thirties.

His sons became the Dukes of Somerset, who fought on the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses. His granddaughter was Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII. And his daughter Joan became Queen of Scots.

Henry Beaufort: The Richest Man in the English Church

The second son went into the Church and rose like a rocket. By 1398, he was Bishop of Lincoln; in 1403, Lord Chancellor; and in 1404, Bishop of Winchester, the richest see in England. In 1427 he became a cardinal.

Henry Beaufort was so rich that he lent huge sums to the crown, especially to pay for the war in France. He clashed for years with Henry V’s brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, over who really ran the country during the boyhood of Henry VI.

He was in Rouen in 1431, the year Joan of Arc was tried and burned there. That December, at Notre-Dame in Paris, he crowned the ten-year-old Henry VI king of France.

He died at Winchester on April 11, 1447, the last surviving grandson of Edward III. Shakespeare gave him one of the grimmest death scenes in Henry VI, Part 2, as he raves on his deathbed. There’s no evidence he went that way, but it’s a memorable scene.

Thomas Beaufort: The Duke Shakespeare Put at Agincourt

If you’ve seen Henry V, you’ve met Thomas Beaufort. He’s the Duke of Exeter, Henry’s loyal uncle, standing beside him at Agincourt.

He wasn’t there. After Henry V took Harfleur in September 1415, he left Thomas behind as captain of the town to hold it while the army marched on. So Thomas missed the most famous battle of the age while guarding a half-ruined port on the Normandy coast.

He more than made up for it. He’d already served as Admiral and as Lord Chancellor, from 1410 to 1412. Henry V made him Duke of Exeter in 1416, and Thomas spent the next few years fighting through Normandy. In 1419 he took Château Gaillard, Richard the Lionheart’s great castle above the Seine, after a long siege. After Henry V died in 1422, Thomas was one of the men trusted to watch over the baby Henry VI.

He died at Greenwich at the end of December 1426 and was buried at Bury St Edmunds Abbey. His only son had died young, so the dukedom died with him.

Joan Beaufort: The Mother of the Wars of the Roses

Joan was Katherine’s only daughter, born around 1377. Her first husband, Robert Ferrers, died young and left her with two little girls. Her second husband, Ralph Neville, was soon made Earl of Westmorland, and together they had 14 children.

Joan married her Neville children into almost every great English family. Her youngest daughter, Cecily Neville, married Richard, Duke of York, and became the mother of Edward IV and Richard III. Her grandson was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker.

brother John’s were on the other. Katherine’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren spent 30 years killing each other.

Joan died on November 13, 1440. She chose to be buried at Lincoln, next to her mother, and that’s where they still lie.

The Queen of Scots Who Was Katherine’s Granddaughter

In 1406, English sailors captured the young heir to the Scottish throne, James, at sea on his way to France. He was handed over to Henry IV and held in England for 18 years. 

Somewhere in those years, James saw John Beaufort’s daughter, also called Joan, in a garden from his window. He wrote a long poem about falling in love with her, The Kingis Quair, the “king’s book.”

They married on February 2, 1424, at St Mary Overie in Southwark, now Southwark Cathedral. The wedding feast was held next door, at the London house of the bride’s uncle, Bishop Henry Beaufort. That spring, Joan was crowned Queen of Scots at Scone.

It didn’t end happily. In February 1437, assassins broke into the Blackfriars at Perth, where the royal couple was staying. James hid in a drain beneath the floor, but the far end was blocked, trapping him. They dragged him out and stabbed him to death. Joan was wounded trying to protect him.

Their son became James II. Every Scottish monarch after him, and every British monarch since 1603 through the Stuarts, descends from that marriage.

How Did Katherine Swynford’s Bloodline Reach the Throne?

By two roads, which met at Bosworth. The Lancastrian road ran from John Beaufort to his granddaughter Margaret Beaufort, and from Margaret to her son, Henry Tudor. Henry’s claim to the throne came almost entirely through the Beauforts, the very line those three words of 1407 had tried to block. He took the crown at Bosworth in 1485.

The Yorkist road ran from Joan Beaufort to Cecily Neville and on to Edward IV, who became king in 1461. His daughter, Elizabeth of York, married Henry VII in 1486. Both bride and groom were Katherine’s great-great-grandchildren.

So the marriage that ended the Wars of the Roses was, in a way, a family reunion. Katherine’s descendants had fought each other for a generation and finally married each other to stop.

She’s buried a few steps from the spot where she married Gaunt. If you’re in Lincoln, go and stand by her tomb.

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