The "Saracen Children" who were actually horses. Elizabeth Chadwick on the detail gremlins that change history.

 

I am working on a novel about Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt.  It's contracted but as yet untitled.  Currently I am editing the work and checking my historical details and it's proving to be very interesting, not least because double checks on some of the historical details in what appear on the surface to be solid academic works, turn out to be problematic when one digs deeper. 

I was reading Anthony Goodman's biography of John of Gaunt while writing my first draft and came across a mention dated to 1351 of clothing being provided for "Sigo and Nakok" who were two "Saracen children" attached to the household of either John of Gaunt or Edward of Woodstock when they were living in the same household.  "Saracen" covers a lot of ground and could refer to Iberian, Middle Eastern or North African children.  Such children were often regarded as exotic parts of the trappings of a late medieval household.  In 1351, John of Gaunt (who was never called that in his lifetime), was eleven years old.

I decided it would be interesting to include these Saracen children in the story and one in particular as a background character in John's household when he was older. 

Recently, during a coffee break, I began digging to see if I could find anything else about them beyond Goodman's quote, and that was when I had to stop and sit back. 

From what I have been able to glean:

Nowhere in primary sources are "Saracen children" mentioned and it would seem to be a modern error.  Checking Goodman's biography of John of Gaunt I was able to look up the two sources he cites as evidence for his statement. 
His first source is The Calendar of the Household of the King.  Yes, it absolutely does mention Sigo and Nakok, but it's on the account for the stables and makes very clear that the two named individuals are horses, not people!  Sigo is a destrier (warhorse) and Nakok a courser (hunting or fast horse).  The amounts of cloth cited are in keeping with the amounts required to trap out a destrier (Sigo gets the larger amount) and a slighter hunter or racer.  Both names appear on the accounts for the stables.

The other source cited by Goodman is Hoccleve, an 1897 version of a fifteenth century poetical text.  It contains no mention whatsoever of "Saracen children" and is a complete red herring and non-source.  It doesn't mention John of Gaunt at all.  Perhaps it's a late night error.

The name Sigo (Sayghu) can be traced to Magrehbi/Andalusian patterns of horse naming and means "Bright One/Fine One/Swift One.  It's not a classic Arabic human personal name. He is given the most cloth for his coverings. Nakok (Naquq) means a sound such as "Chatter", "Tap" or "Click" and could have been a reference to a sound the horse made, or perhaps the sound required to jolly him along. He receives less cloth for his trappings. 

The bottom line is that Sigo and Nakok were NOT children but horses - very likely swanky Iberian ones.  So now I have two horse names I can use in the narrative, but will now use other attendants whose names and roles are congruent with my second-dig research. 

I have said before that digging will give you one story and double-digging may lead in quite different directions.  Like the occasion I discovered that Eleanor of Aquitaine did not have a brother called Joscelin, who was in fact the illegitimate half brother of Adeliza of Louvain, second queen of Henry II, but historians have made assumptions and then copied each other and set the error in stone.
This is the post on my own website blog about that particular discovery. Eleanor of Aquitaine's non-brother

A hundred years of war and peace by Mary Hoffman

The 14th Century ends quite neatly with the usurpation of the English throne by Henry Bolingbroke, after forcing his cousin, Richard ll to abdicate. It begins quite raggedly, with Edward l hammering the Scots and his son Edward ll inheriting the crown. In between came some of the most noteworthy events and personalities of the Middle Ages.

Tackling this huge sweep of history is Helen Carr’s new book Sceptred Isle. Her first – The Red Prince: John of Gaunt – was an instant bestseller. He was one of those larger-than-life characters, the richest person after the king, the hated trigger for the people’s revolt, the effortlessly fertile magnate who married his mistress and legitimated their four children, from whom many kings of England are descended. 

 

But Gaunt belongs to the second half of the century. The first part is still dominated by the conflict with the Scots. That ongoing war and the relations with the other enemy, France, have to play a part in any book about the fourteenth century, but this is essentially a history of a hundred years in England.

This is the century of The Wife of Bath and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Black Death and the Great Famine; The Fair Maid of Kent and the Black Prince; the Order of the Garter and the People’s Revolt; the creation of dukes; the Wilton Diptych and the first Speaker of the House of Commons; two minority monarchs, two depositions; tournaments and single combat duels; magnates and favourites; retinues and livery - not to mention two rival Popes! Helen Carr had her work cut out. 

Edward l

 

Edward I was born in the middle of the previous century and became king in 1272 in his prime. Nicknamed “Longshanks” for his unusual height (6’ 2” was way above average for a medieval man), he conquered Wales, got to work building defensive castles on the Welsh/English border and aspired to quell the Scots.

In this he was less successful, when finally he came up against Robert Bruce and his own mortality. Carr characterises the transition to his son’s rule: “When Edward l cast himself in the image of the legendary King Arthur, who united the Britons, Edward ll was destined to do the opposite.”

The stage is set for a complete change of culture. The first Edward wanted his son to continue warring with Scotland but the new king was more interested in making friends with male contemporaries, prime among them Piers Gaveston, the son of a Gascon knight. The young handsome king had no full brothers, only two much younger half-brothers by his father’s second marriage, no close cousins and a need for men to play sports with. He wasn’t fussy about their social class.

Gaveston, also young and handsome, was clearly a bit of a lout, inventing insulting nicknames for the nobles at court and given free rein by the indulgent king. He was exiled three times, first by Edward I, who disapproved of his influence over his son and again in 1308 and 1311 at the wish of the nobles he had insulted. But Edward ii had him recalled and the relationship resumed.

Helen Carr discusses this relationship in some depth, concluding, in disagreement with most modern historians (apart from Pierre Chaplais whose book on Gaveston, is not acknowledged), it might not have been homosexual but a “ritual brotherhood.” King Edward was married and sired children within and outside of marriage but that is neither here nor there where same-sex relations are concerned. (Gaveston had a wife and daughter too). 

Edward ll

 

This “friendship” certainly enraged the nobles, as much because of Gaveston’s rebarbative nature as his sexual preferences. Edward revoked all of his favourite’s banishments and had previously made him Earl of Cornwall, an equal to the nobles who accused him of treason. The Earls drew up a list of grievances, saying that the king listened to “evil counsel” and did as he liked, which was not in accordance with Magna Carta. (Helen Carr reminds us that it had been re-issued in 1300).

The end was inevitable. Gaveston was captured by the earls and was first in the custody of the Earl of Pembroke. But Pembroke returned home that night to his wife and the much harsher Earl of Warwick took the prisoner over. He was marched to Blacklow Hill and run through and beheaded.

The devastated king regarded this as murder and vowed vengeance on the earls. It was some consolation to him that Queen Isabella presented him with a son and heir – the future Edward lll. This is such a fascinating part of the 14th century that Helen Carr might have written a whole book about it and perhaps will. But, to jump to the catastrophic end of Edward’s reign, she writes about the continued enmity with the Scots, the Battle of Bannockburn, the new “favourite,” High Despenser the younger, the estrangement of the royal couple in spite of three more children and Isabella’s affair with Roger Mortimer.

Edward felt threatened not just by the adultery but by the political implications of their liaison. Isabella and Mortimer had been in France for over a year, with young Edward, when they raised an army to invade England and get rid of Hugh Despenser. They landed in September 1326 and, so hated was Despenser and so popular the queen, that London was soon in the hands of the invaders.

It didn’t take them long to track down the king and his favourite. The latter was given a full traitor’s horrible death and the king was kept a prisoner in Berkeley Castle. But, as Carr puts it, “The former king, though incarcerated, cast an uncomfortable shadow over Westminster and it was whispered that something had to be done to be rid of it.”

Within weeks the fourteen-year-old Prince of Wales was crowned king in his father’s place, with Isabella effectively his Regent. Carr makes it clear that death of Edward ll by means of a red hot poker thrust into his bowels is a myth. It was likely that he was suffocated, thus having no mark of injury on his body as it was widely displayed after his death. For die he did, a year after his estranged wife’s invasion.

Mortimer, who took the title Earl of March, was now free to rule with Isabella as mistress and consort, even though he had no claim to the throne. But it was soon clear that the young king was a mere puppet and England had left the frying-pan only to fall into the fire. 

Edward lll

 

But young Edward lll was a stronger character than his father and soon found his mother’s hold over him irksome. By 1330 he had secretly written to the pope to support his freeing himself from Isabella and Mortimer’s coercion. Edward and a group of his young knights staged a coup while Mortimer and Isabella were together in Nottingham Castle together. The king let the armed conspirators in and Mortimer was taken. He was hanged naked like a common thief. Queen Isabella was held under house arrest, in very comfortable conditions for the rest of her life.

But we have reached only 116 pages of the main text’s 278 and there are seventy eventful years of the century left!

Edward lll ruled for forty years, he married Philippa of Hainault and they had twelve children, with five males living to adulthood, including the Black Prince and John of Gaunt. He was one of England’s most successful monarchs, in spite of the shaky beginning of his reign.

This review is in danger of being as long as Helen Carr’s comprehensive book, so I’ll just concentrate on the events that led to the second deposition of the fourteenth century. Edward lll’s older son is referred to throughout the book as the Black Prince, though this usage isn’t attested till over a hundred years later. He was first Edward of Woodstock, then Prince of Wales and was fully expected to be King Edward lV. And he had two sons, Edward and Richard. 

Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent

 

But things started to unravel when the Prince of Wales sickened with dysentery in Aquitaine. Then his older son died and he was left with the “spare.” He returned to England with his wife Joan (the Fair Maid of Kent) and his younger son but his health never recovered. He died before his father, the old king, leaving Richard of Bordeaux as the nine-year-old heir to the throne.

Edward lll, widowed and miserably treated by his mistress Alice Perrers, was a broken man and outlived his son by less than a year. So began the second minority rule of the century, with ten-year-old Richard ll on the throne. Like his grandfather, who had been a few years older, Richard had no official Regent, but John of Gaunt was his senior uncle and expected to advise him. It was the best Gaunt could hope for, as he was hated by the populace for his great wealth and the unwarranted belief that he wanted the throne for himself.

As Helen Carr says, “Richard was a child on his succession, and his boyish appearance, lack of an heir and impulsive behaviour kept him locked in a state of eternal youth.” This did not apply to his first cousin, John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. Born within months of each other and married only a few years apart, the two men couldn’t have been more different.

Henry was a champion jouster and soldier, Richard an effete lover of luxury; Henry sired four sons in as many years, Richard had no children. Henry had every quality to make a good king, except for one: he was not the heir. Richard had virtually none of such qualities – but he was the legitimate heir. As they grew older the two men kept out of each other’s way. But they had one tragic thing in common: they lost their wives in the same year, 1394.

Mary de Bohun had borne Henry two daughters after their four sons, dying in her last childbed. A week or so later Queen Anne died of the plague, having never even been pregnant. Both widowers were distraught. Though Henry’s loss is not mentioned in Helen Carr’s book; Mary doesn’t even get an entry in the index. Richard had the palace of Sheen, where his wife died, pulled down and Henry became even more restless than before; with the loss of his wife he had no permanent home. 

Henry Bolingbroke, lter Henry lV

 
The reign of Richard ll lasted twenty-two years but is hastily covered by Helen Carr, in comparison with her treatment of his greatgrandfather, Edward ll. It is difficult for the modern reader not to see these kings’ reigns and depositions through the prism of two great plays by Elizabethan playwrights, Marlowe and Shakespeare. Indeed, the book’s title is taken from the speech Shakespeare gives John of Gaunt in The Tragedy of Richard the Second.

Helen Carr suggests that Richard might have been suffering from “borderline personality disorder”: “the last Plantagenet king [sic] was a despot; when he could not command respect, he ruled with fear.”

There are a few strange statements in this ambitious book. For example, the author says that John of Gaunt was so distraught at the duel his son was to fight with Thomas Mowbray at Coventry in 1398, that he “stayed away.” She gives no source for this and Anthony Goodman, Gaunt’s biographer, states that he was in attendance. Helen Castor, thanked by Carr in the acknowledgements for her input, says he was seated next to the king; Carr herself in her earlier book writes “John of Gaunt was also present.”

Of course the new version may be correct but if you are going to contradict earlier accounts, including your own, you should surely cite some evidence?

The book is handsomely produced, with some elegant endpapers and comes with an index, which was lacking in the Gaunt biography. There is also an extensive bibliography, which readers will want to consult, to balance out some of Carr’s assertions.

The Red Prince by Mary Hoffman

Helen Carr's  The Red Prince: The Life of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster reviewed by Mary Hoffman

If you are a student of Medieval history, the Wars of the Roses or the Plantagenets, you will be familiar with John of Gaunt. If not, you might rely on memories of the king's dying uncle in Shakespeare's Richard ll, who is given the patriotic lyric speech about "This sceptr'd Isle."

What no-one quite appreciates is that English and British Monarchs from Henry lV up to George l - with a brief interlude from Yorkists Edward lV to Richard lll - have been descended from this extraordinary lord, at one time the richest and most hated man in England, against whom the people rose up in what used to be known as "the Peasants' Revolt."

The people feared that his immense power made him a second king behind the throne of his weak nephew, Richard ll, and he certainly tried hard to become King of Castile, through his second wife, but had to remain content with his dukedom and his riches. What would he have thought of three hundred years of British monarchs and descendants on the Portuguese and Spanish thrones too?

There hasn't been a full-length biography of Gaunt since Anthony Goodman's in 1992 so Helen Carr's is most welcome. (It's a shorter gap than the last one since Sydney Armitage-Smith's was in 1904!) It's not so much that Carr's book provides any new information but it is compulsively readable and turns the image of this fascinating man a few degrees to shine light on different facets of his complex life.

For example, I didn't know that from the age of ten John went to live with his ten years older brother the Black Prince (as he was not known in his lifetime) and modelled himself on him. That makes sense of his strict adherence to the promise his made his dying older brother that he would protect and support the young Richard when he came to the throne.

John of Gaunt was named, like his many siblings, for the place he was born: Ghent. His immediately older brother was Lionel of Antwerp and his younger brothers Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock. These names stuck, even when they later became dukes (of Clarence, York and Gloucester respectively). John was the third surviving son of Edward lll and Philippa of Hainault, who had at least fourteen children.

He became Duke of Lancaster through his first marriage, to Blanche of Lancaster, inheriting the title when his father-in-law died. When Blanche's sister also died, the vast wealth of the first Duke of Lancaster, Henry Grosmont, came to his son-in-law along with the title. Among the many properties included in that inheritance was the Savoy Palace, which became the most luxurious home in private hands in the land. It was on the Strand, facing the river Thames and today's Savoy Hotel stands on the same site.

This luxurious residence became the focus of the rage felt by the common people when the Crown declared itself broke in 1380 and a Poll Tax of three groats was to be levied on each male over fifteen years of age. They believed this idea to be the fault of John of Gaunt, living in his fancy palace, and by the spring of 1381, the people were in full revolt.

The uprising began in Kent and Essex and the rebels' main target was the Savoy Palace. John of Gaunt was not home and they entered easily, destroying "cloth, coverlets, books, beds, a valuable headboard ... napery and jewels." They threw silverware into the river and ripped up the gorgeous clothes they found in chests. Although Carr doesn't mention this we know from Juliet Barker's England, Arise! that they also destroyed all paper records and killed the clerks so that John of Gaunt's administrative and financial affairs, for which the Savoy was the hub, were still in disarray at least seven years later. He never again had a permanent base in London.

The owner was away in Scotland but had he been at home he would have been in danger of his life. As it was, the looters (although they were not allowed to keep anything for themselves) made a bonfire of his belongings and inadvertently rolled a couple of barrels of gunpowder into it. The resulting explosion and fire killed many rebels, including some who were sampling Gaunt's fine wines in his cellars, and the palace was burned to the ground.

It makes Trafalgar Square in 1990 look rather tame.

The story is vividly re-told by Helen Carr. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Treasurer and John of Gaunt's physician were all brutally killed by the mob. The future Henry lV, Gaunt's only legitimate son, survived only by hiding in a cupboard in the Tower of London.  But we are halfway through the book before we reach this pivotal clash between the great lord and the populace.

Before that we have heard of his military prowess alongside his oldest brother, the Black Prince, and his abortive attempts to become the King of Castile and Leon. Much of the resentment against him came because of the taxation to support this vanity project.

John's beloved first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, had died in 1368, either from the plague or complications of childbirth. Chaucer's Book of the Duchess commemorated this lady and if not commissioned by Gaunt was certainly written while Chaucer was in his service. There seems no doubt that the two were a loving couple and John was buried next to Blanche following the terms of his will. But it was important for him to re-marry and his second wife was Constance of Castile.

That was a dynastic choice and by the time of his second marriage, Gaunt was in a relationship with Kathryn Swynford, the long term mistress who bore him four children, later legitimated by his third marriage, after Constance's death. The personal and the political are both given weight in this well-balanced biography.

What we don't often hear is that John of Gaunt was fearful of returning to London after the uprising, in case the young king decided to scapegoat him  for the people's dissatisfaction with the nobility and possibly send him into exile. After several weeks, word came from Richard that his uncle was needed and Lancaster could breathe again. In less than a year he was walking at the side of Richard's young queen, Anne, the premier lord in the land, saving only the crown.

Temporarily, he separated from his mistress and appeared to devote himself to Constance. But his relations with the king were never so cordial as they had been during Richard's minority. Gaunt did not approve of Richard's close relationship with his favourite, Robert de Vere, the Earl of Oxford; he considered that de Vere and other favourites gave the king poor counsel and turned him against his wiser and more experienced uncle.

From now until his death, John of Gaunt maintained an uneasy relationship with Richard and there was also an hostility between the king and Gaunt's son Henry, Richard's cousin and ultimately his usurper. But Gaunt did better than some of Richard's uncles: the Duke of Gloucester, his youngest brother was killed by order of the king. 

John of Gaunt died in 1399, anticipating that his son would be robbed of his inheritance by the "volatile" king, who indeed expressed joy at his uncle's demise and did exactly that. Henry Bolingbroke was not prepared to put up with that and it began the chain of events that we know as the Wars of the Roses. Usurpation, even if understood, is not likely to be forgiven.

Helen Carr has given us a fine, fully-rounded portrait of a remarkable man, who was a soldier and a politician as well as a loyal son and brother, a lover and a patron of the arts. It's a "warts and all" depiction, not playing down his ruthlessness and ambition as well as his more chivalrous qualities.

All images from Wikimedia Commons

The House of Beaufort by Mary Hoffman

I can't remember when I first became interested in the Beauforts, the children conceived by Katherine Swynford by her lover, John of Gaunt, and later legitimised by their marriage.

Unlike many History Girls, I never read the novel "Katherine" by Anya Seton. It was published in 1954 and has remained popular ever since but somehow passed me by. (The only historical fiction I read before adulthood was the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer).

Perhaps it was the RSC's performances of Shakepeare's History Cycle, from Richard the Second to Richard the Third in Michael Boyd's exhilarating productions of a decade ago. We saw them as they came out, in Shakespeare's writing order and then plunged a terrifying amount of money on seeing all eight in their chronological, historical order in four days, named "The Glorious Moment," in Stratford in the spring of 2008. And there were many glorious moments in that long weekend at the Courtyard Theatre, from the astonishing appearances of Jonathan Slinger as both Richards, and Katy Stephens as both Joan of Arc and Margaret of Anjou, to John MacKay as the Dauphin, along with the rest of the French court in dazzling costumes on trapezes, while Geoffrey Streatfeild excelled on the ground as Henry the Fifth and Jonathan Slinger (again) popped up through a trapdoor as the Bastard of Orléans.

Thrilling stuff. But what of the Beauforts? Well, it all begins with John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward the Third. Which of us did not learn at school the "sceptred isle" speech from Richard the Second? I remember even singing it in the setting by Parry in school choral competitions.

But I didn't know then that the dying Duke of Lancaster, King Richard's uncle and father of the perplexingly named Bolingbroke, was the richest and most hated man in the England Shakespeare makes him praise so lyrically. The man whose most lavish home, the Savoy palace, was burned to the ground in the People's Revolt of 1371, the proud and arrogant lord who liked to be called king, by virtue of his second marriage, to Constance of Castile, the venal man whose sexual adventures might have caused him to die horribly of an STD and – mind-bogglingly – Chaucer's brother-in-law.

The wedding of Blanche of Lancaster and John of Gaunt

 Finding out all this was to come but in was in another of the History plays that I first encountered my first Beaufort, the Bishop of Winchester, who later became a Cardinal. He is the one who has the huge speech about Salic law in Henry the Sixth, part one, justifying the English right to the French throne.

And Shakespeare dramatises the cardinal's feud with Henry the Fifth's brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and his presiding over the trial of Joan of Arc in the next play.

This Beaufort was Henry, the second child of Katherine Swynford by John of Gaunt and brought up to go into the Church, like many second sons.

Shakespeare doesn't portray Katherine, or her daughter Joan. The only female Beaufort descendants we see on stage are – briefly –  Joan's daughter, Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, who was mother of Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third, and Anne Neville, Cecily's great-niece, who is so memorably seduced at the beginning of Richard the Third.

And yet, the more I researched this remarkable family, the more I became aware that it is the women who drive the story of the House of Beaufort, from Katherine Swynford to Margaret, the mother of Henry the Seventh. After all, Henry claimed the throne through his mother's line and his descent from John of Gaunt; without Margaret we'd have no House of Tudor.

Along comes Nathen Amin's The House of Beaufort: the Bastard Line that Captured the Crown (Amberley Publishing) a beautifully produced hardback that satisfying fills out the history of the women as well as the men who descended from John and Katherine's long-lasting relationship and provided the backbone of the house of Lancaster.

And yet, and yet ... Cecily Neville, Katherine and John's granddaughter, married Richard Duke of York, a possibility of uniting the houses of Lancaster and York long before Henry Tudor came along. It was not to be.

Amin reminds us of the entangled and complex relationships within the royal line of England.  John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster by virtue of his first marriage, to Blanche of Lancaster, who inherited her father's great wealth, was the third son of Edward the Third. The first was Edward the Black Prince who died before his father, leaving Richard the Second to inherit the throne when his grandfather died. The second was Lionel Duke of Clarence, who died without male heirs, but his daughter Philippa married Edmund Mortimer and their granddaughter Anne Mortimer married Richard, Earl of Cambridge. The fourth son of Edward the Third was Edmund, Duke of York and it was his second son that Anne Mortimer married.

So if you accept inheritance through the maternal line, as you must if you believe Henry Tudor had a legitimate claim to the throne, then the Yorks had the better case.

(If you find any of this confusing, I urge you to read John Julius Norwich's Shakespeare's Kings, which sorts it all out once and for all.)

Henry Tudor

 These are the amazing "history girls" of the Beaufort family:

Katherine Swynford

Born Katherine de Roet in Hainault, she came to England where her sister Philippa was lady in waiting to Blanche of Lancaster, John of Gaunt's first wife. Philippa married Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote The Book of the Duchess, to celebrate Blanche, at the request of his friend and almost exact contemporary, John of Gaunt. Katherine married Sir Hugh Swynford and bore him at least three children. He died in 1371 and Katherine must have started her affair with John soon afterwards, since their first child John was born a year or two later.

By then Blanche had died of the plague and John had married Constance of Castile, by whom he had one daughter and a son who died in infancy. But in the course of that marriage he fathered John, Henry, Thomas and Joan on Katherine Swynford, who had been governess to two of his daughters by his first wife.

Not laudable behaviour on either side and the medieval equivalent of the tabloids had a field day with the scandalous story. But what was remarkable was that two years after after Constance had died, John married his mistress. She brought no fortune to the marriage or any dynastic advantage, unlike his first two wives, so one must conclude it was a love match.

Whatever you think of Katherine's morals, she was clearly a remarkable person with a strong hold over the richest lord and most powerful person in England after the king.

Joan Beaufort

The children were all given the surname Beaufort, after a lost castle in France. After their parents married, Richard the Second declared them legitimate. Joan, like her three elder brothers, was cousin  to the king and there was clearly some contact between them.

When Bolingbroke deposed his cousin Richard, the Beauforts were now even closer kin to the throne, half-siblings to the new king. Like her mother, Joan married twice, first to  Robert Ferrers by whom she had two daughters before he died. Her second husband was Ralph, Earl of Westmorland, who had also been married before, He had twelve children by his first wife and went on to have fourteen more with Joan. (This is a story of fecundity; if Edward the Third and his wife Philippa hadn't had quite so many sons to war for the succession, history would have been very different).

Joan and Ralph made advantageous marriages for all their children, playing on their close relationship with the king. Their youngest child was Cecily Neville, famed for her beauty and nicknamed "the Rose of Raby." When Joan died she was buried with her mother in Lincoln Cathedral.

Katherine Swynford and Joan Neville's tomb

Cecily Neville

Married Richard, Duke of York, who so nearly became king and fathered two sons who did, Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third. Shakespeare portrays her as a strong matriarch, the Duchess of York, who rails against her youngest son as misshapen and evil.

She was a tenacious and fiercely loyal woman who fought for the rights of the house of York and believed she should have been queen.

 Margaret Beaufort

The granddaughter of John Beaufort and Edmund Tudor, Henry the Fifth's half-brother by his mother's second marriage. She gave birth to her only child, Henry, when she was only thirteen. Although Margaret married twice more, there were no more children and it is assumed that the difficult birth at such a young age damaged her physically. She was separated from her son for most of his childhood and youth, as the Wars of the Roses raged, but remained fanatically attached to her only child and devoted to the idea of his inheriting the throne.

This aspect of her was memorably portrayed by Amanda Hale in the television adaptation of Philippa Gregory's The White Queen, a somewhat fanciful re-imagination of what was known then as The Cousins' War.

Nathen Amin has done his research and filled in a lot of the gaps. No-one interested in the remarkable Beaufort line will want to be without it.

The House of Beaufort: the Bastard Line that Captured the Crown by Nathen Amin (Amberley Publishing 2017)
John of Gaunt by Anthony Goodman (Longman 1992)
Shakespeare's Kings by John Julius Norwich (Viking 1999)
A Pride of Bastards by Geoffrey Richardson (Baildon Books 2002)
Katherine Swynford: the Story of John of Gaunt and his Scandalous Duchess by Alison Weir (Jonathan Cape 2007)