The Life of Katherine Swynford by Weir Alison

Author:Weir, Alison
Language: eng
Format: epub

The Life of Katherine Swynford

SEVEN

Turning Away the Wrath of God

At the beginning of June 1381, as John of Gaunt lay at Knaresbor-​ough, an army of yeomen and peasants was amassing in Kent and Essex, bent on the overthrow of a government that had imposed the cruelly oppressive poll tax and forced restrictive wage and price controls on laboring men whose services were in high demand after the depredations of the Black Death. The rebels had chosen for their leader--their “idol,” it was said--a man named Wat Tyler, and for their spokesmen Jack Straw and John Ball, an excommunicate priest, who was going about the country preaching inflammatory and subversive sermons calling for the abolition of serfdom 1 and posing the question:

When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman?

On June 10 the insurgents occupied Canterbury, then began their march on London, new recruits swelling their forces along the way, until they were at least fifty thousand strong. 2 It was as well that the chief object of their venom, the Duke of Lancaster, was by then nearing Berwick, because it was he, above all, whom they were determined to destroy--for was he not the most powerful man in the realm, and therefore the man responsible for all the woes that had befallen it? As soon as they reached the eastern approaches of the City of London and set up their camp at Blackheath on June 12, the rebel leaders sent a petition to Richard II demanding the heads of men they deemed traitors. John of Gaunt's name was at the top of the list.

We do not know where Katherine was during this Peasants Revolt. If she had indeed traveled north with John, parted from him at Leicester around May 20, and then ridden home to Kettlethorpe, she would surely have heard of the march, because there were associated risings in other parts of the country, including East Anglia. Katherine was no fool: She would have realized that her notorious relationship with the duke made her especially vulnerable, and that her very life might be in danger--a fear that was to prove justified in the coming days. So, the author of the Anonimalle Chronicle tells us, she “went into hiding where no one knew where to find her for a long time,” no doubt taking her children with her; given that she had a new baby, she probably felt especially vulnerable. 3 Philippa of Lancaster may have gone with them, for there is no record of Philippa's whereabouts during the coming crisis, and Katherine was responsible for her.

It is unlikely that Katherine went to Kettlethorpe or Lincoln, for she was too well- known in those places and could easily be found. Nor would it have been wise to go to any of the duke's properties in the threatened areas, and she was almost certainly not at the Savoy. It is possible, but not probable, that she sought refuge at Wesenham Place, a house in King's Lynn that the duke gave

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