On September 20th 2007, David and I went to Alison Weir's house to talk about her book Katherine Swynford. We both thoroughly enjoyed meeting her and hearing how she came to write about an historical  person with so little information to work on. Alison's mind is full of wonderful facts about English Royalty that is second to none! A wonderful writer who makes history come alive.

We hope you enjoy this transcript.

VW Alison Weir, welcome to the Bookfiend's Kingdom to talk about your book Katherine Swynford.

AW Yes that is correct - it should be Katherine de Swynford, but traditionally everybody calls her Katherine Swynford so I follow that like everyone else.

VW. You have a tremendous interest in Royal history.......

AW. Thank you

VW This book has so much information, but I have to say, I kept on flicking backwards and forward a lot to the genealogy maps at the end because I got so lost!

AW There are so many characters, a lot of names are duplicated and the past is a foreign country as well (laughter)! I have a passion for history and dare I say this book has been inside of me for 40 years!

VW That's extraordinary! Why Katherine Swynford? What was it about her?

AW I read her story when I was about 15, in a famous novel by Anya Seton called Katherine, that's never been out of print since 1954 and it came 95th in the top 100 books voted by the nation in the BBC Big Read in 2003, re-published after that year!

VW Really that's not bad!

AW I was captivated by this wonderful hero, which Anya based partly on Clarke Gable and partly on 19th Century perceptions' of John of Gaunt. So he is a very, very romantic hero; theirs was this bitter love affair; she was his mistress, and a friend for the best part of 25years, before he married her, and that caused even more scandal! She was thought to be immoral and far below him in rank! They thought he was wasting himself on such a woman. She won through in the end. It has a very poignant ending as you know, because you have read the book; they didn't have very long together.

It just grabbed me this love story, but the thing that got me, and has always got me,
is over the years that we only have fragments of information of the real Katherine and it's a challenge to piece these fragments together and make them into a book or a biography. Until very, very recently, no publisher would have ever commissioned the biography of someone like Katherine Swynford.

VW I mean it is a fascinating story to tell, all the different characters that you bring in. I was truly sitting there and thinking - now how does this one marry up with that one, and why does this one have to be a relative of that person over there, who may soon become a wife or a husband of someone over here, who may actually produce a king or queen somewhere down there!

AW Because the court was one big family! All the nobility were inter-related and I have been studying aristocratic genealogy since 1970 and have tables of all the families. The trouble is you get so near to that you don't realise (laughter) about the moralities of other people.

VW Did you not get confused by all the characters?

AW No! I've known them over the years, you get to live with them as you research over the years, and I am fascinated. I've read everything I can get and I knew this story when I was a teenager, so it goes back a long way. And what I wanted to do was get or delve to the truth, because I have actually written a biography where my subject has not one quote, or one letter surviving!

VW How extraordinary, and you had to read other peoples poetry, writings and diaries.

AW Definitely, yes.

VW Chaucer?

AW Yes. And there's a real thing; but you have to be very careful with Geoffrey Chaucer because writers do trawl through all his writings to see if there is something that refers to Katherine and John of Gaunt. There is very little as appears in this book. In fact there is more about John of Gaunt and his first wife Blanche of Lancaster which is very interesting stuff I personally feel that is built on reality, obviously allowing for literary conceit. But yes and no there are chronicles that are very biased.

The best evidence are the things like, John of Gaunt's register - very dry entries - but of course it charts the affair, but it ends abruptly in 1382, the year after he renounced her and all these years after, when they were apart. We have only got one reference in 1391 to her where it says that she rescued 12 horses and his household, as he was abroad for 3 years. But would there have been any grants, given to her? If we knew about this perhaps there would be more information about the relationship within the gap.

VW It is really quite fascinating about all of that lot, but this is a woman who was a strong catholic - but I presume everybody was. But she really was!

AW She was very pious.

VW But why then did she have an affair?

AW I think her heart over-ruled her head and her religious convictions. I think she was in a destitute condition,, I think he was very charismatic and very sexy and powerful too - perhaps she was quite young - he was ten years older than her - perhaps she didn't like to resist him initially. No we don't know anything about that. Clearly she thought highly off him, clearly there relationship endured, she lent him money when he was in need, they remained friends, and they eventually married so obviously, this is some relationship.

Lots of people over rode their religious convictions all through the medieval period, where a lot of devout catholic's, who had mistresses, bastards and that kind of thing, (laughter) It was pretty much the norm among the clergy.

VW They did didn't they (laughter) But she married Hugh Swynford and had four children with him!

AW That's right! No 3 children; No four, and one of the daughter's, there is a question mark over! Yes the one called Dorothy, but I think she existed, but historians on the internet have said there were no girls called Dorothy, the name Dorothy was unknown before Tudor times. But in fact I have found records of a church dedicated to St. Dorothy in England in the 14th and 25th centuries, but it's a rarity. But the unusual choice of name suggests to me that, she was born on St. Dorothy's day!

VW Oh how interesting! And she went on to have four more!

AW Yes, with John of Gaunt, there is a gap, so she could possibly have lost one. The first ones she had every two years and then there is a four year gap. So there is a possibility she lost one.

VW So she would have been, let me think she had 4 before the age of 22 didn't she?

AW No 21! she probably had the first one when she was 13 because 12 was the minimum age that girls could marry, and 12 was when they could co-habit when the girl was 12 and the boy 14.

VW My goodness!

AW Yes things have changed - just a bit! You only have to look at her daughter Margaret who became a nun. She would have had to have been an adolescent at the time, so probably born around 1363, not much later. And then there is another daughter, Blanche who becomes a companion to the children of the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster, and she must have been about 4 at the time at most, and you have to allow that these dates of birth are probably about 1363-4, because Blanche died in 1368, and she records this in her account book that she is a companion. So therefore we have got to look at this, that Katherine must have married in 1362 and have been about 12 if you look at the entire evidence for her date of birth as being about 1352!

VW That's horrific!

AW Yes it is.

VW (laughter) Horrendous!

AW Yes, but it's the norm in those days. So she pushed her own daughters into adult hood as she was. Life was much shorter for women the average age was about 29-30, because of the high mortality rate in child birth. Children were regarded as little adults to be civilised and not to have a separate time of childhood.

VW Isn't that interesting!

AW Yes it is, and boys go into battle at 11 years old. - adult responsibilities came early!

VW That's actually quite shocking, we read..........

AW ...to us! But now we are battling about the age of consent at 16!

VW ......Yes that's true, the first thing that was coming to my mind, was Dickens and his books, he writes, about what is done to children, and here we are talking about it!

AW Life is the society as it is excepted, is condoned by the Church and yet supported by the Church, then there again it is an era when life is much shorter.

VW So what kind of person was Katherine?

AW Well, I think she was possibly a very charming person, a warmth comes through, kindness and integrity as well, with great diplomacy and tack. She may have been an adulteress, but she did not exploit her position as a royal mistress. She wasn't an Alice Ferrell as Edward III's mistress, vivacious and demanding, milking the government of thousands of pounds or the King rather, but she or rather we only have two incidents of her using her influence in extending her favour to Leicester - the Mayor of Leicester gave her gifts for her patronage, had there been more there would be records of it I am sure, because we do have the crucial years of when they were together until John of Gaunt renounced her.

VW Why did he renounce her?

AW He renounced her in the wake of the peasants revolt. Because he was unpopular, he was perceived to be the author of all the evils that were befalling the country, because of the failures of the 100 years war- and the revolt against taxes!

VW He was a scapegoat?

AW He was the scapegoat and he was the man who was deemed to be in charge, but there were other people involved, it wasn't just him. If you read about John of Gaunt, and there is a very little in my research that disabused my notions that I had of him, and from Amanda Seaton's book. He was a true knight of chivalry, there is much to admire in him. So anyway the peasants revolt happens in 1381, when they revolted against the then poll tax and the oppression the war and everything. They marched on London and they set on fire John's great palace which was on the Strand and stretched from Waterloo Bridge up to Downing Street as we know it now in present terms. It was magnificent and was supposed to be the most beautiful palace in England if not Europe. It was burnt to the ground while he was up in Scotland at the time negotiating a truce to the Scots who were very sympathetic but did not use this to their advantage. He was so shocked when he got the news of it. He had listened to his confessors and the officers of his household warning of his relationship with Katherine. It was doing her inordinarily bad reputation, that it was like a road to Damascus experience for him; that he publicly denounced her in front of his peers. He repented of hid former life in front of God and he made his peace with her and saved her personally and it seems that she too was quite shocked and she too had gone into hiding - and she concurred with this.

Now he had to do this to prevent further blood shed, and further attacks on himself and his household and his servants, which had happened. And also to protect Katherine and their children. Because she was a forgiver, she was perceived as a foreigner and this is one of the reasons she was not very popular. Also the English were very insular at that time and within the revolt they behead many peasants, and Flemish people just slaughtered them in the street. She wasn't Flemish, but she was an interloper, but they would not have understood the distinction, and it looks as though Katherine concurred. When John began plans to conquer the Castile, which was his right by the church, declared a crusade, then Katherine sent him money and then the church said all those who gave him money would be granted immunity. Did she concur? This suggests that was her way of reparation, it was her thing. I think that things were off because 9 years later things were so much in the past that he and his wife separated and he did not get the kingdom; so he and Katherine got back together! There again you could explain that by their mutual interest in their family group!

VW Well absolutely!

AW Well she lived with him, but saving 12 horses in the household!

VW Very interesting, to say the least. But, what was your starting point when you started to do this research. It was almost a DNA for you?

AW It was. Oh Gosh well what was my starting point. Probably I started with Sydney Armitage - Smith's monumental biography of John of Gaunt came out in 1904, but it is very dated, the first really objective biography which was exhaustive. The idea was that I used that, and Professor Anthony Goodman's ‘Essays of John of Gaunt' that came out in 1991. Then I went back to John of Gaunt's registers and then expanded through the Chronicles and loads and loads of books on the 14th century and that sort of thing. I didn't re read the novel a few years previously. I've got to write this novel, but if I do read it, it is going to bend me, I'm going to be swayed by it, so I didn't and of course there is a lot that is different!

VW (laughter) The novel is very romanticised and incredible inverted!

AW But they were inverted!

VW Have you re-read the novel since you've finished the book?

AW No I haven't, I haven't had the time!

VW/AW Laughter

AW I am on the next book but one, the second book after it - I've written.

VW Life in those times is quite extraordinary in the courts, it felt very incestuous in the way of all the relationships.

AW Yes, Yes it was and also there were bonds created not only by kingship but also by good lordship. A lord like John of Gaunt would have all his retainers, not part of his familiar. So there again you've got this sense of family I'ts not essentially his family it is his retinue, his retainers. They give him, rather he pays them and he gives them grants, he pays them, gives them pensions and that sort of thing. They work for him in time of war and they are there to support him in his train to demonstrate his grandeur and that kind of thing. It was a two way relationship, that's why Katherine went to John of Gaunt when she was left in penury, when she was a widow because she had every right to do so, because she was her husband's and her overlord because they had joint tenure and he was the one she would go to if she was in financial straits.

VW Very interesting. I don't think you would have that these days!

AW I don't think you would, but all things were based on personal relationships because people did know each other and the court. The aristocracy, they were incredible inter-related: Royals you try and draw up a family tree!

Both (laughter)

AW That was over simplified, incredibly simplified family tree. Do you want to see the real one?

VW Well yes" It is extraordinary but Katherine's father was...

AW Paon de Roet. He came from Hainault with Philippa of Hainault who married Edward III in 1328. He was in her train in her household, and she obviously thought highly of him. He was only on of two servants that Edward III allowed to stay beyond his marriage. This suggests to me that there were quite close ties. It is possible that his wife may have been a member of the house, then the ruling house of Avon and Philippa was a distant kinswoman I've tried to trace. No one has been able to trace Katherine's mother. But there was a suggestion on the internet that this is what put into my mind that she came from this house of Avon, and there were some wild claims as to who she was. She could not have been any of the people they claimed - if she was, they didn't exist. A tie there, would explain a lot of things, it explains Queen Philippa's care for his daughters and explains also her sister Margaret's care for his children as well; and the patronage from both the Royal families of Avon and England. And Paon de Roet was related to the court of Hainault through his own ancestry, He was a distant relation of the Lords of Roet, and they were centred near Mons.

VW But what happens to all the children, there doesn't seem to be a real stigmatisation of them!

AW Oh no their wasn't! I think that they had the Royal Blood, which was more important than their bastardies;. Do you see what I mean, although they couldn't inherit property, they were certainly found roles within the kingdom. Nothing so good as they had, as when they were legitimised, as they could have been not a shameful birth, but an honourable birth because their father was John of Gaunt.

VW How extraordinary!

AW And his charisma was such, that anyone who was connected to him had this protective shield around them, you know. In fact they were both known for their own qualities and earned respect.

VW How extraordinary , that personality and charisma was everything.

AE It was not just that, but who he was! He was the Duke of Lancaster. He had an income of £12,000.00 a year, and the next noble down had £4,000.00. Put it like that!

VW But £12,000.00 a year was millions of pounds!

AW Oh yes well they were wealthy, people and power, were sexy!

VW Well that hasn't changes has it!

AW Yes, and he had to have the largest retinue the largest landed estate in England. He had in parts of the country the same autonomy as the King. The palaces of Lancaster, he had authority there. Edward III gave it to him. So he was a great magnet, he was very, very influential.

VW And yet he came to such an awful end.

AW Possibly. Well we are not sure about that. But there are indications.....

VW Yes very graphic!

AW Yes my editors' threatened me that the details are too graphic to be described if I was to do a reading of the book!

VW/AW Laughter.!

AW They all go what page?

VW I think the moral of the story is "you don't spread it around"

AW I think unfortunately it looks as though he did, for the Romantic Readers of Katherine.

Both. Laughter

AW He said it himself. He confessed it.

VW But do you think she was a charitable woman, a warm woman, she looked after other people's children.

AW Yes she was, and she did look after them. This is the key that did give it to me she started off very young in her teens perhaps even younger than that at the age of 10, at the rocker in the nursery of the Duchess of Lancaster with her first baby. That was what the little girls did in the nursery, and perhaps they played with the children, and that. Then perhaps she graduated on. She stayed on looking after the children of the Duke and the Duchess of Lancaster right until she was eighteen - Then she disappears - but then she's having her own children and then later in the next decade she had these 4 children by John of Gaunt!

VW What happens to her ordinary Children?

AW Her ordinary children, were companions. She was having to do what any modern woman would, juggle career, home life and childcare. She would take them with her that was what was normal. Noble households would place a child in normal households that was the norm. A noble household for them to grow up, because it was supposed that parents would be to soft. So it was better that they learnt. The boys were made pages and the girls were made damsels, made companions to the little girls in the household. So it was always the family feeling about it is everything, so she would take them with her. That's not a problem. And Sir Thomas Swynford her son by Sir Hugh Swynford won huge favour from John of Gaunt and Henry IV. He was the one who was partly responsible for the murder of Richard II and he was given custody of Richard II in 1400. But, going back to Katherine and her relationships to children; if you look at the cohesion between these children, there is, the legitimate heirs of Lancaster - John of Gaunt, there's the Swynfords, there is the Beaufonts, and also the young Chaucers, Katherine's nephews and nieces and all these are very close and they all look out for each other; their friendly, their going out and about together. Their going on crusades together and so who is that Duke? The probably, the powerful one - ie in the charter was to Katherine. But the enormous lack that would surmount the barriers, by rank, by legitimacy and adultery and that kind of thing. But no, its one cohesive family. Which could otherwise have been incredible dysfunctional if you think about it.

VW Yes it could have been in today's terms it probably would have been.

AW The only one that was outside that, was the Duchess Constance child and she was John of Gaunt's second wife. And it's probably six months after he married her that he began the affair with Katherine. The evidence suggests that they were not close, if they had any chance of being close. At six months after the marriage he was having an affair with Katherine. John would not have looked at Katherine. I don't think the marriage was a particularly good one. I think it was more political.

VW Was she hell bent on revenge for reclaiming the crown of her father.

AW Yes gaining the crown of her father in Castile. That's right and she bore John of Gaunt's one surviving daughter. This daughter was kept apart from all the other Lancastrian children. She was the heiress to Castile and she married the heiress to Castile without usurping it and the heavens came to peace! I think Constance was more concerned by or rather obsessed by reclaiming the crown with the power of John of Gaunt. He wanted a kingdom and so that was the reason for the marriage. I think she was quite happy as long as Katherine was discreet, and didn't flaunt the relationship, and clearly for some years Katherine didn't but John of Gaunt did!

VW It is, it is, quite extraordinary because they are hopping across the channel at the time and almost as if...

AW You think about today - there were nor cars or planes

AW/VW Laughter!

VW They go on sail boats.

AW You think of the remains of the Argent empire, right from the Scottish Borders right down to the Pyrenees, Bordeaux and beyond. What was the former Aquitaine which was being slowly eroded in John's time? It's an incredible amount, an incredible distance to maintain the authority of the English Crown. Think about it!

VW Jolly hard work I have to say!

AW Yes it was, but that is how they knew it . Kings had been itinerant for years. That's why Edward III had this incredible idea of the supportive family, which was an incredible idea for a Plantagenet. Because they were fighting against each other, because Henry II and his sons war red - No Edward II bound his sons to him by natural because he and Phillipa gave his sons estates, in England and made them Dukes. Then they were on his side, so there was a very close bond. He could delegate the government of Ireland to them and of Aquitaine, of you know these places they could do his work for him.

VW And coming in to be as you say a cohesive factor was Katherine de Swynford.

AW She was absolutely, and it is clear that she was highly regarded at court by three kings in succession by Edward III who jumped with John of Gaunt to succour her financially with her in her widowhood and that ties in with the affair, because you can date that from the probable birth of John Beaufont and the pattern of grants in John's register. Then Richard II who thought very highly of her and then Henry IV who had called her the king's mother in different documents even though she was his stepmother.

VW (Laughter)

AW He had been close to her, she had served his wife, she had gone into the household of Mary De Boone when she was very young and then she had been amongst guests at Christmas. She and her daughter Joan Beaufont, it was a very close but overt. I feel Constance and her daughter Catalane were outside the circle by choice.

VW It is extraordinary story, and when you think of the hugeness and the largeness of the family of the Royal Family and the smallness of the Royal family in today's terms.

AW Yes we're thinking, fortunately George VI didn't have 13 children!

VW Well no!

AW But some of them died young, some of them aren't even in the book because they are just not relevant, this some of his daughters. But yes you've got the Black Prince, Lionel of Antwerp. Then you've got John of Gaunt and Langley Thomas of Gloucester. All these branches of the Royal Family all had children. And John of Gaunt marries three times. The family tree there is pretty horrendous believe me and tracing the descendants. I've got one on computer paper that goes straight across the room.

VW Really!

AW That goes right down the house of York, to work out the heirs really and the heirs general.

VW There are two houses of York?

AW Yes there are - one comes from Lionel Duke of Clarence so his daughter Philippa of Clarence married Edward Mortimer. Their descendent was Anne Mortimer,then you've got John of Gaunt's younger brother Edmund Duke of York and his son Richard Earl of Cambridge and their son is Richard Plantagenet who marries Anne Mortimer. Now... there was a dispute because the House of York claims it's senior descent goes through the female line. Then the House of Lancaster, through the younger brother Edmund, the male line and this is where the dispute came about and the War of The Roses. Was the Crown an inheritable property like other properties, in which case it would have gone down through the male heirs?

VW Do you know what, I hate to say this but that has to be the end of our conversation. Alison thank you so much.

AW Thank you so much , I've very much enjoyed it. Thank you, Vicky.