An example of that well-known genre, the thesis worked up into a book. Kind of interesting for what it says about the status of medieval women, but very dry. TL:DR - nobody knows jack about Katherine Swynford herself, here's some ideas of what she *might* have been like. ( )

As I'm studying Women in the Later Middle Ages, I thought this book would come in useful. I had seen some negative reviews of Alison Weir's book, so (perhaps unfairly) avioded it and opted for this one which has a more academic tone.

I knew of Katherine of course as the long term mistress, and later wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and the mother of his Beaufort children, and so ultimately, a progenitor of Henry Tudor. After reading this, I think it could be said I have a newfound- admiration (though perhaps not respect) for Katherine- though her position as is mistress engaged in long-term adulterous relationship cannot be ignored, and can scarcely be admired.
Yet other aspects of Katherine's life and career are explored, revealing many things about the expectations of the Medieval noblewoman and female courtier, and also as a wife and mother. The details of her background as well as she and her reatives 'connections' prove interesting- her sister was married to Geoffrey Chaucher for instance.

The later chapters on Image management and piety and saintly approprations are probably of more specialized interest, but do help to set Katherine in context. It appears that what was controversial was not her having been a mistress (as many noblemen kept mistresses) but that the Duke of Lancaster married her, and officially raised her to the status of Duchess- and that this was accepted by the King and other relatives.

This books does present quite a sympathetic view of Gaunt, as loyal, a generous patron, and the epitome of 'Good Lordship' to his retainers, as well as genuinely caring for Katherine and her children. Gaunt has I believe been subject to some bad press for his negative traits. On top of the wave of the recent resurgance of interest in the Yorkists, particualrly Richard III, he is in danger of being cast as 'the enemy' as the progentior of the Lancastrian Dynasty.
This would be a savage irony indeed, as the Yorkist Kings were, in fact, also descended from him and Katherine through their Maternal grandmother, Joan Beaufort.

Her brothers also get a mention. The first generation of Beauforts were an interesing lot- one was know for his generosity and pious bequests- but later generations have an unfortunate historical reputation as the 'baddies' and enemies of the Yorkists. Perhaps this book can go some way towards challenging that.


A short, but informative book, well worth a read- (even if one questions the reason for the inclusion of the last chapter largely devoted to recounting Saint's lives, and with whom said said was popular) if you don't mind the more adademic style. As with any history book, one does not have to agree with everthing the author says, but most points seem to be well argued and evidenced- and the intention revealing the figure of Katherine as she was seen by her contemporaries seems to have been achieved. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2149871.html

A fairly short book, with a bit of a sense of PhD thesis pushed into book form, looking at the life and historical treatment of Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt's lover and later his wife in the late 14th century. The core facts are interesting enough - her father appears to have been a Flemish mercenary, but she moved comfortably in royal circles and her sister married Geoffrey Chaucer, and her love affair with Gaunt was publicly acknowledged while his second wife was still living. Lucraft dwells on the scandalised treatment of the Gaunt household arrangements by later monastic chroniclers, but carefully dissects them to demonstrate that there may really have been general acceptance of the situation, with the most negative comments written some time afterwards, politically motivated and inaccurate on the facts. Indeed I wish she had gone a bit further and explicitly looked at the John of Gaunt / Katherine Swynford / Isabella of Castile relationship as a stable triad, terminated only by Isabella's death; there are plenty of historical, literary and contemporary examples to draw from. (One favourite of mine is Peter Dickinson's alternate twentieth-century British Royals in King and Joker.)

Lucraft then offers an interpretation of Katherine's personal worldview as having been inspired by St Catherine of Alexandria. Here she makes a very good case for the fact of Katherine's devotion based on the surviving iconography, but falls down a bit in interpreting what this might have meant to her subject: Catherine of Alexandria was, famously, a virgin, and Katherine Swynford, also fairly famously, was not (Swynford was the surname of her first husband, by whom she had had three children before the four she had with John of Gaunt). I think that there must be something in St Catherine's facility in helping her devotees to overcome suffering, and also possibly her personal devotion to learning, but Lucraft disappointingly strays off the specifics into a general discussion of godly women (though I did find the parallels with Margery Kempe interesting).

This was an interesting example of what you can learn about a person, and about history, when they were moderately important in their won right but can only be reconstructed from physical artefacts and from what other people said about them. ( )

Katherine Swynford is familiar to a lot of people thanks to Katherine by Anya Seton, a highly fictionalised account of the story of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt. Katherine Swynford is an attempt to make clear what we do and don't know about her.

Unfortunately, as a woman of fairly low status (she was the daughter of a knight) in 14th Century England, the information that is available is pretty scant. However, rather than try and use that information to write a more standard biography, Jeannette Lucraft chose instead to try and examine all of the existing evidence in an effort to judge what is accurate, what is more likely slander as well as ways of interpreting less direct evidence.

For me, this was a pretty unusual approach to a biography, however probably the best approach for someone with so little records left. I'm not sure how much new information I learned from it. What I have a better idea of is what it is possible to know about Katherine Swynford and how much is simply guesswork on someone's part.

Why I picked up: I have been reading a lot of fiction set in the 14th/15th Century, and wanted to understand what was true and was poetic license. ( )

I probably would have enjoyed this more if I had known what to expect. This is NOT a biography of Katherine, but rather a book about why such a biography can't be written, and an attempt to try to show what conclusions can be drawn from the meager records available. ( )