Barry Aveyard

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  • Katherine and Joan: Tombs, Memory, and the Responsibilities of Interpretation

    My photos from this morning: To get remotely decent images involves standing on tip toe ( I am over six feet tall) and sticking my camera through the railings!

    I am currently undertaking research into the tombs of Katherine and her daughter Joan, with the aim of better understanding both their original form and the subsequent history of alteration, movement, and interpretation. In the course of this work, I have identified nineteenth-century correspondence in the Lincolnshire Archives relating to proposals to “restore” the tombs. In practice, these proposals amounted to a speculative recreation in a highly ornamental neo-Gothic style which, even by contemporary standards, risked imposing a visually intrusive and historically misleading narrative onto the monuments.

    What survives today, however, raises a different set of concerns. The tombs as presently displayed are poorly labelled and difficult to view, and they do little to communicate the historic and cultural significance of two women who were central to both the story of Lincoln Cathedral and the wider dynastic history of England. Their importance is not immediately legible to visitors, and the current presentation offers little sense of context, biography, or continuity.

    Issues of access and interpretation further undermine the visitor experience. A chair permanently obstructs the view of the tombs, a frequent and avoidable frustration for those wishing to engage with the monuments, while the associated interpretative material is sparse, visually unengaging, and of limited explanatory value. From a heritage perspective, this represents a missed opportunity to support informed understanding and meaningful engagement with the site.

    It is well established that the chantry itself has undergone significant alteration. The canopy visible today is not original, and documentary and visual evidence confirms that the tombs, which were originally positioned side by side, are now arranged end to end. The precise date and circumstances of this reconfiguration remain unclear.

    What can be stated with confidence is that as late as 1640 the tombs still occupied their original positions. This is demonstrated by the drawings produced by William Dugdale during his systematic recording of English ecclesiastical monuments in the years immediately preceding the Civil War (Dugdale, 1656). Dugdale’s work was undertaken in anticipation of iconoclastic damage and has long been recognised as a vital source for monuments that were later altered, displaced, or destroyed.

    The subsequent relocation of Katherine’s and Joan’s tombs appears to be undocumented. By 1809, however, an illustration by the architectural draughtsman John Buckler shows the tombs already arranged in their current end-to-end configuration (Buckler, 1809). This suggests that the alteration took place sometime between the mid-seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, representing a substantial intervention in the spatial and visual coherence of the chantry for which no explanatory record has yet been identified.

    Taken together, this raises important questions about curatorial responsibility, interpretative transparency, and commemorative intent. I feel strongly that there is a compelling case for the cathedral to do more to recognise and present these monuments appropriately: to acknowledge their complex material history; to make visible the changes they have undergone; and to tell the stories of Katherine and Joan in a way that reflects their historical significance. These are not marginal figures, and their memorials should be interpreted and displayed accordingly.

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    References (Harvard style)

    Buckler, J. (1809) Views of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln. London.

    Dugdale, W. (1656) The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated. London: Thomas Warren.

    Further reading this afternoon has proved fruitful, The Monasticom vol iii of 1672 shows the tombs in their current position. This is likely as a result of clearing up the mess created in 1644.

    This appears to confirm that the tombs have been in this position from at least this date.

    The next question being were the bodies moved with the tombs!

       The Monasticon Anglicanum is a seventeenth-century record of England’s religious buildings, compiled by William Dugdale

       It preserves early descriptions and images of churches and monuments that were already changing or disappearing.


    Interior of Lincoln Cathedral (Angel Choir) as recorded in the seventeenth century. The image shows the cathedral interior by the time of Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum and provides general context for the later position of the Swynford tombs.

    Image: Wikimedia Commons (after Wenceslaus Hollar).




  • What Happened to the Jewels of the Lancaster Women?



    Medieval gold posy ring, England, late 14th–15th century (Portable Antiquities Scheme). Rings inscribed with brief phrases invoking love, loyalty, or fate were widely worn in later medieval England. While such rings are sometimes associated—by tradition rather than evidence—with named historical figures, most survive without identifiable owners, illustrating how personal jewellery circulated and lost attribution over time.


    Licence: Creative Commons (PAS / British Museum via Wikimedia Commons)

    Medieval gold finger ring set with a sapphire, England, 14th century (Portable Antiquities Scheme). Gem-set rings of this type were fashionable among the gentry and nobility during the period associated with the Lancastrian household. Comparable in form to the ring traditionally attributed to Katherine Swynford, this example demonstrates the style and materials without implying personal ownership.


    Licence: Creative Commons (PAS / British Museum via Wikimedia Commons)




    I have often asked myself the seemingly deceptively simple question: where are their jewels? When we imagine Lancastrian women, we tend to picture necklaces heavy with sapphires, rings bright with heraldry, crowns worked in gold. Such objects feel as though they ought to have survived. And yet, when we look for jewellery that can be securely associated with women such as Blanche of Lancaster, Katherine Swynford, or Joan Beaufort, we find almost nothing at all.


    This absence is not accidental. It is itself historical evidence.

    In the later Middle Ages, jewellery was not cherished as a personal keepsake or preserved as an heirloom in the modern sense. It was power made portable: worn to display rank, exchanged to secure loyalty, pawned to fund households or wars, reset to suit a new marriage or a changing political moment. For women in particular, jewellery functioned less as private adornment than as a visible marker of marital status, legitimacy, and dynastic position. It belonged to the lineage as much as to the woman who wore it (Cherry, 1992; Laynesmith, 2004).

    Blanche of Lancaster brought immense wealth into her marriage with John of Gaunt, and contemporary inventories leave no doubt about the richness of her possessions (Walker, 1994). Yet nothing identifiable as Blanche’s jewellery survives. On her death, such items passed swiftly back into the Lancastrian sphere: to her husband, to her children, or into the wider circulation of the ducal household. Her jewels did their work and then dissolved into continuity. The woman remains visible in record and memory; the objects do not.

    Katherine Swynford presents a similar, and in some ways more striking, case. Her life is unusually well documented in terms of landholding, household position, and later commemoration, yet her personal material culture has almost entirely vanished. If Katherine owned jewellery—and it would be extraordinary if she did not—it was used, redistributed, or transformed long before anyone thought to preserve it as evidence of a remarkable life. As with her lost tomb brass at Lincoln Cathedral, we are left not with survivals but with traces and absences. Here too, loss becomes part of the story (Binski, 1996).



    So where are the jewels now?

    Women’s jewellery was especially vulnerable to change. Stones were removed and reset for daughters or daughters-in-law; heraldry was altered to reflect remarriage; gold was melted to support households or finance marriage portions. A jewel might survive for centuries, but rarely as a stable, named object. The materials endured. The woman did not (Cherry, 2008).

    Even burial offers little comfort. Noblewomen’s effigies frequently depict elaborate necklaces, rings, and crowns, but by the later Middle Ages these were largely symbolic. Valuable jewellery was removed before burial, replaced in stone or brass by an image of splendour rather than the thing itself. What we see on tombs is an idea of wealth, not its physical reality—a distinction familiar from the wider problems of medieval commemoration and memory (Binski, 1996; Saul, 2016).

    Any remaining medieval regalia associated with royal and ducal families faced a final reckoning in the seventeenth century. Political upheaval completed what everyday use had already begun. Objects that had survived by chance were seized, dismantled, melted, or sold, erasing much of England’s medieval royal material culture (Keay, 2011).

    So the question is not really where are their jewels? It is what were jewels for? For Lancastrian women, jewellery marked moments—marriage, alliance, legitimacy—rather than memories. It moved on, just as their influence did: reshaped, unnamed, absorbed into the next generation.

    In that sense, these women are not absent from the record at all. They are everywhere—in lineage, in land, in political consequence—even if the gold itself no longer glitters.


    A Ring Attributed to Katherine Swynford?

    One object is frequently cited as an exception to this pattern: a late-fourteenth-century gold posy ring set with a sapphire and inscribed with the motto “alas for fayte”. This ring has appeared in modern auction catalogues and dealer listings described as the “Duchess of Lancaster” ring and is often associated, by tradition, with Katherine Swynford. Its form and date—c.1360–1400—are consistent with the period of her relationship with John of Gaunt, and the inscription sits comfortably within the language of medieval posy rings, which commonly bore brief phrases invoking love, fate, or loyalty (Cherry, 2008).

    However, there is no surviving medieval documentary evidence that securely links this ring to Katherine herself. No inventory, gift record, or contemporary description identifies it as hers. The association rests instead on later provenance, stylistic dating, and modern tradition rather than on primary medieval sources (Keay, 2011). As such, the ring cannot be treated as firm evidence of personal ownership.

    Its significance lies elsewhere. The very plausibility of the claim reminds us how little survives of women’s personal material culture, and how strongly later generations wish to anchor remarkable lives to tangible objects. Whether or not this ring ever touched Katherine Swynford’s hand, it reflects the kind of jewellery she may have worn—and the difficulty of attaching certainty to objects that were never intended to remain fixed in time.

    References 



    Binski, P. (1996) Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation. London: British Museum Press.


    Cherry, J. (1992) Goldsmiths. London: British Museum Press.


    Cherry, J. (2008) ‘Jewels and Plate’, in Saul, N. (ed.) The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 211–227.


    Keay, A. (2011) The Crown Jewels. London: Thames & Hudson.


    Laynesmith, J. (2004) The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


    Saul, N. (2016) Lordship and Faith: The English Gentry and the Parish Church in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


    Walker, S. (1994) The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399. Oxford: Clarendon Press.


  • Where Was Katherine Swynford Born?

     

    Evidence, Assumption, and the Comfort of a Good Story

    One of the most frequently repeated statements about Katherine Swynford is that she was born in Hainault. It appears with reassuring confidence in popular histories, encyclopaedia entries, guided tours, and the occasional throwaway sentence that sounds as though it has never caused anyone the slightest trouble. It has the neatness of a fact. The problem is that it isn’t one.

    No contemporary source states this. No medieval document places Katherine’s birth in Hainaut — or anywhere else. What survives instead is a familiar story, often told because it has been told before.

    The question of Katherine’s birthplace remains unresolved. And once we stop treating repetition as evidence, England begins to look at least as plausible as the Continent.


    What We Actually Know (Which Is Less Than We’d Like)

    There is no surviving record of Katherine Swynford’s birth. No baptismal entry. No household roll. No chronicle aside. This is not unusual. Fourteenth-century women — unless royal — rarely leave such tidy traces (Walker, 1990).

    Her mother is also entirely unknown. Not unnamed. Unknown. No record identifies her, places her, or even confirms where she lived. This matters more than is usually acknowledged. Any confident statement about Katherine’s birthplace quietly assumes not only where her father was, but where her mother was too — and on that point the sources are completely silent.

    The commonly cited birthplace of “Hainault” refers to the medieval County of Hainaut in the Low Countries. This attribution is inferred from her father’s origin and from long-standing biographical convention, not from documentary proof. In short, the birthplace has been borrowed from the father and handed to the daughter without ever being properly checked (ODNB).

    The Timeline That Refuses to Sit Quietly

    Katherine Swynford is generally dated to around c.1350. Her father had entered English royal service in 1327, accompanying Queen Philippa to England, and by the 1330s and 1340s he was firmly embedded in English court life. His career, offices, and family connections point to sustained residence in England across several decades (Saul, 1997; Given-Wilson, 2016).

    To place Katherine’s birth in the Low Countries therefore requires an undocumented return journey by her parents in the late 1340s, followed by a later return to England. This may have happened — medieval lives are full of unrecorded movement — but it has to be assumed.

    An English birth, by contrast, requires no additional explanation at all. It fits the known chronology without adjustment.

    This does not prove Katherine was born in England. But it does expose an imbalance: the explanation requiring more assumptions has become the default.

    Upbringing Is Doing More Work Than It Should ?

    Katherine’s early life unfolded entirely within English noble and royal households. Over time, this English upbringing has been quietly merged with continental origin, helped along by the fact that her father came from Hainaut and Queen Philippa herself was born there. The associations are neat. Perhaps too neat.

    Yet medieval identity was not a simple matter of parental origin. Children of continental retainers were frequently born in England and raised at court without being described as foreign-born. Where individuals were known to have arrived from overseas, this was sometimes noted. No such note survives for Katherine (Allmand, 1998).

    The silence does not prove anything — but it removes one of the few ways a continental birth might otherwise have been supported.

    Why This Keeps Getting Repeated

    Part of the appeal of a Hainaut birthplace is that it feels comfortably explanatory. It links Katherine neatly to Queen Philippa, reinforces her father’s origins, and gives her a pleasingly continental backstory. Once introduced into early biographies, the idea passed smoothly into later works and gradually acquired the weight of fact.

    Repetition does the rest. Each retelling borrows confidence from the last. Probability hardens into certainty. Eventually, the question stops being asked at all.

    But repetition is not evidence. It is simply familiarity wearing authority.

    A Note on Method (and Why This Is Not Pedantry)

    When dealing with medieval women’s lives, historians often work with fragments: a property grant here, a household reference there. Birthplaces are especially elusive. In such cases, inference is unavoidable — but it should remain visible as inference.

    Where one explanation requires undocumented journeys by two people whose movements are otherwise traceable, and another requires none, the balance of probability deserves to be reconsidered. This is not about replacing one certainty with another. It is about resisting certainty where the evidence does not warrant it.

    Uncertainty, in this case, is not a failure of research. It is the most honest conclusion available.

    What Can Be Said — Carefully

    Katherine Swynford’s birthplace is undocumented. A birth in Hainaut remains possible, but it is not proven. Given her father’s long residence in England before her birth, and the complete absence of evidence for a return to the Low Countries — coupled with the total anonymity of her mother — an English birthplace is at least equally plausible.

    A careful formulation would therefore be:

    Although Katherine Swynford is often said to have been born in Hainaut, this rests on assumption rather than documentary proof. Her father had been settled in England for over twenty years by the time of her birth, and nothing is known of her mother’s location. An English birth cannot be ruled out and may be the simpler explanation.


    In the end, the most important distinction is not between England and Hainaut, but between what the sources tell us and what we have grown used to saying.

  • The Katherine Swynford Film That Never Happened

    Charlton Heston 1952 (image public domain)
    Susan Haywood 1953 ( image public domain)

    It comes as a surprise to many readers that Katherine Swynford very nearly became the subject of a major Hollywood film, or maybe more of a surpise she didntIn the mid-1950s, at the height of the costume-drama boom, her story entered serious development at 20th Century-Fox — and then quietly disappeared. What survives is a small but telling paper trail that reveals much about Hollywood’s limits when faced with a woman like Katharine 


    Hollywood takes notice

    In October 1954, the American trade paper Boxoffice reported that 20th Century-Fox had acquired the screen rights to Katherine, Anya Seton’s bestselling novel. The project was assigned to Philip Dunne as producer and director, with a screenplay treatment being prepared by Alfred Hayes (Boxoffice, 1954). This was not casual optioning. Fox named senior creative figures, suggesting that Katherine Swynford’s story was being taken seriously as a prestige historical film.

    Philip Dunne: a revealing appointment

    Philip Dunne was a thoughtful and significant choice. By the early 1950s he was known for films that handled emotional restraint and moral ambiguity with care, including How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947), and David and Bathsheba (1951). His work repeatedly explored private loyalties, forbidden attachments, and women negotiating restrictive moral worlds (Dunne, 1974).

    That Dunne was entrusted with Katherine strongly suggests the project was not intended as a simple romantic spectacle. His sensibility aligned closely with the emotional reality of Katherine’s life: long endurance, quiet resilience, and love lived largely out of sight.

    Alfred Hayes and the limits of adaptation

    The screenplay treatment was assigned to Alfred Hayes, a novelist and screenwriter admired for his psychological subtlety. Hayes’s fiction and screen work frequently examine desire, guilt, and ethical compromise — themes well suited to Katherine’s story (Hayes, 1950; Hayes, 1958).

    Yet this was precisely where the difficulty lay. Katherine’s long relationship with John of Gaunt was openly adulterous for decades, produced children before marriage, and ended not in disgrace but in legitimacy, honour, and dynastic success. This moral trajectory was deeply uncomfortable for mid-century cinema.

    Why the film stalled

    Despite the calibre of those involved, the project went no further. No casting announcements followed, and no production dates were set. The most likely explanation lies in the moral constraints of the period. In the early 1950s Hollywood was still governed by the Hays Code, which strictly regulated how sexuality, marriage, and morality could be portrayed on screen (Black, 1994). Adultery could be shown only if clearly condemned or punished; illicit relationships were not permitted to end in reward or rehabilitation.

    Katherine Swynford’s life simply did not fit this framework. Her story could not easily be reshaped to demonstrate moral failure. Instead, it concluded with lawful marriage, restored honour, and lasting dynastic consequence. In that context, the film’s abandonment looks less like a loss of interest and more like a quiet recognition that Katherine’s life was unfilmable on 1950s terms. There is a precedent for this, Hebert Wilcox film Nell Gwynn starring Anna Neagle was only  shown in America on the condition that the final scene in the film showed Nell dead in a gutter, with the caption she lived as se chose and died as she must. Completely untrue as Nell prospered in later life.

    Rumoured casting — and what it tells us

    Later commentators have suggested that Charlton Heston and Susan Hayward were considered as potential leads. The pairing makes contextual sense: both were Fox stars, and they had recently appeared together in The President’s Lady (1953), another historical romance involving an unconventional relationship.

    However, it is important to be clear. No contemporary trade publication has been found that formally attaches either actor to the Katherine project. These suggestions appear to be retrospective speculation rather than documented fact, revealing how later audiences imagined the film rather than what was contractually planned.


    The unmade Katherine Swynford film is as revealing as any finished production. Hollywood was drawn to her story, assembled serious creative talent, and then recoiled from its implications. Katherine challenged the idea that virtue must be immediate, visible, and socially sanctioned.

    In the end, she proved too complex for 1950s cinema.

    Perhaps she was simply ahead of her time.



    References



    • Boxoffice (1954) ‘Philip Dunne to Produce, Direct “Katherine” for Fox’, Boxoffice, 30 October, p.26.
    • Black, G.D. (1994) Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Dunne, P. (1974) Take Two: Life in Movies and Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill.
    • Hayes, A. (1950) All Thy Conquests. London: Secker & Warburg.
    • Hayes, A. (1958) My Face for the World to See. New York: Simon & Schuster.
    • Seton, A. (1954) Katherine. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

  • Seeing Katherine Swynford: A Method-Led Visual Interpretation

    Evelyn circa 1930

    Tomb effigy of John Beaufort Wimborne Minster 

    William Dugdales record of Katherine’s tomb prior to English civil war

     

    Joan Beaufort/Neville 1430 Neville Book of Hours

    Katherine Swynford in 1396

    This image is a method-led visual interpretation informed by the Dugdale drawing of her tomb brass, Beaufort family imagery, and forensic methodology. It does not claim to show her true appearance, but to test how far a credible image can be produced from fragmentary evidence.

    Clearly, we cannot — and never will — know what Katherine Swynford looked like. That uncertainty is absolute. The question behind this project was therefore not how to recover a lost face, but whether AI could be used in a disciplined way to produce an image that might offer something credible, cautious, and intellectually interesting from a handful of fragmentary sources.

    The starting point was limited, and intentionally so: a seventeenth-century drawing of Katherine’s tomb brass recorded by William Dugdale; verified representations of her daughter, Joan Beaufort; the tomb effigy of her son, John Beaufort; and, as a final comparative check, a photograph of my grandmother Evelyn, Katherine’s eighteenth great-granddaughter. None of these sources can provide a likeness. Taken together, however, they offered a framework within which questions of proportion, restraint, and plausibility could be explored.

    Using AI in this way required far more constraint than freedom. Considerable effort went into pushing the process away from aesthetic guesswork and towards method. The system was repeatedly challenged to engage with current forensic and anthropological approaches, to respect clear evidential boundaries, and to refuse the temptation to resolve uncertainty through invention. The methodology came first; the image followed.

    The temporal focus of the image is Katherine Swynford in 1396, the year of her marriage to John of Gaunt. This moment was chosen carefully. It places Katherine late in life, newly elevated in status, and acutely conscious of scrutiny. The image does not attempt to represent youth or idealised beauty, but a mature woman at a precise historical juncture, shaped by experience rather than symbolism.

    One strand informing this interpretation derives from the broader late medieval effigial tradition. This does not imply the existence of a surviving effigy of Katherine Swynford — none exists — nor does it provide facial detail. Instead, it establishes a visual discipline. High-status female commemoration in the later fourteenth century prioritised composure, symmetry, and recognisable social identity over individual likeness (Binski 1996; Saul 2011). Faces were generalised, expressions neutral, and emotional display deliberately suppressed. These conventions inform the tone of the image — its stillness, proportional balance, and restraint — rather than any specific features.

    A second strand comes from comparative family imagery, most importantly the surviving representations of Katherine’s daughter, Joan Beaufort. These images are not treated as portraits to be copied. Rather, they provide a framework within which familial plausibility can be considered. Medieval family commemoration often relied on repeated proportional relationships rather than individual likeness (Camille 1992). Joan’s representations therefore allow broad facial relationships — such as facial width, eye spacing, and jaw proportion — to be tested without collapsing mother and daughter into the same face.

    The tomb effigy of John Beaufort constitutes a third, separate strand. As a male effigy, it cannot inform soft-tissue detail or female facial structure. Its value lies elsewhere. It reinforces a family visual language characterised by restraint, symmetry, and structural clarity, typical of high-status Beaufort commemoration (Binski 1996). In this project, John Beaufort’s effigy functions as a control rather than a source, supporting proportional coherence while explicitly refusing to dictate appearance.

    Distinct from these historical strands is the cautious use of a known female descendant. This element was introduced not to assert resemblance, but to test facial balance, asymmetry, and structural plausibility across generations. In forensic and anthropological practice, modern relatives are sometimes consulted not to predict likeness, but to explore the range within which features may plausibly fall (Wilkinson 2004). The descendant’s photograph was therefore used analytically rather than illustratively: as a means of checking proportion, facial harmony, and the interaction of features, rather than as a template to be reproduced.

    This strand carries no historical authority, and its limitations are acknowledged openly. Its role is preventative rather than generative. It resists over-smoothing, idealisation, and abstraction, ensuring that the image remains recognisably human and individual while stopping well short of claiming genealogical certainty.

    Throughout, the project was guided by the discipline demonstrated by the Richard III facial reconstruction, not as a technical model but as an intellectual one. That reconstruction showed how powerful an image can be when it privileges method over spectacle and transparency over resolution (Buckley et al. 2013; Appleby et al. 2014). The influence here lies in the attitude adopted: a willingness to stop short of certainty and to allow ambiguity to remain visible.

    Equally important are the constraints that shape what this image refuses to do. There is no crown or coronet, because Katherine Swynford was a duchess by marriage, not a queen. There is no later medieval fashion, no symbolic regalia, and no attempt at idealisation. Age is allowed to register. Dress is restricted to a simple linen veil and wimple appropriate to elite women in the 1390s, consistent with manuscript and effigial evidence (Scott 2007). The image avoids drama because drama is not evidence.

    What emerges is not an answer to the question “What did Katherine Swynford look like?” but a more modest and more honest proposition: what a responsible image might look like if it takes its cue from evidence, method, and refusal rather than invention.

    If the image feels understated, even austere, that is intentional. It reflects an approach in which historical responsibility is valued over visual appeal — the opposite of what is often produced by unstructured, speculative AI image generation.

    In that sense, Dugdale’s illustration remains central to the project. Not as a source of facial detail, but as a reminder of how easily images acquire authority, and how carefully they must be handled. The image presented here is not intended to replace Dugdale’s drawing, but to sit alongside it: a transparent, method-led response to its presence and its limits.

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    References

    Appleby, J., et al. (2014).

    The reconstruction of Richard III: anatomical, archaeological and historical perspectives. Antiquity, 88.

    Binski, P. (1996).

    Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation. London: British Museum Press.

    Buckley, R., et al. (2013).

    The King in the Car Park: New Light on the Death and Burial of Richard III. Antiquity, 87.

    Camille, M. (1992).

    Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. London: Reaktion Books.

    Saul, N. (2011).

    English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Scott, M. (2007).

    Medieval Dress and Fashion. London: British Library.

    Wilkinson, C. (2004).

    Forensic Facial Reconstruction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • John Bokyngham and the Quiet Authority of Record

    John Bokyngham served as Bishop of Lincoln from 1363 until his death in 1398, presiding over the largest diocese in medieval England. Stretching from the Humber to the Thames, the Diocese of Lincoln was vast, populous, and administratively demanding. Governing it required far more than ceremonial authority. It required organisation, legal knowledge, and constant oversight. Bokyngham was, above all, a working bishop. However his comprehensive careful records of the administration of his diocese are key to us being able to locate Katherine in both time and place.

    When Katherine Swynford appears in the register of Bishop John Bokyngham, the reference is brief, unadorned, and easy to overlook. Yet that small administrative trace sits within one of the most substantial episcopal record-keeping enterprises of fourteenth-century England. To understand why it matters, we must first understand the man whose name the register bears.

    His episcopate spanned a period of profound instability and change. He governed through the later years of Edward III’s reign, the entirety of Richard II’s troubled kingship, and the long aftershocks of the Black Death. These were decades marked by labour shortages, social tension, legal complexity, and heightened scrutiny of ecclesiastical authority. Bishops were not merely spiritual leaders; they were administrators, judges, landlords, and political actors.

    John Bokyngham served as Bishop of Lincoln from 1363 until his death in 1398, presiding over the largest diocese in medieval England. Stretching from the Humber to the Thames, the Diocese of Lincoln was vast, populous, and administratively demanding. Governing it required far more than ceremonial authority. It required organisation, legal knowledge, and constant oversight. Bokyngham was, above all, a working bishop. he took this role seriously. The register that survives from his episcopate is extensive, systematic, and functional. It records licences, permissions, appointments, dispensations, and the countless routine acts of diocesan governance. It was not written to tell stories or shape reputations. It was written because business had to be recorded. That is precisely why historians trust it.

    Episcopal registers differ enormously in quality and survival. Some are fragmentary, others perfunctory. Bokyngham’s is neither. It reflects a bishop who expected his administration to be documented properly and consistently. Entries are brief, formulaic, and neutral in tone. People appear in them not because they are interesting, but because they are involved in some piece of ecclesiastical business that requires formal acknowledgement.

    This matters when we encounter Katherine Swynford in the register. Her appearance, dating to the mid-1360s, names her plainly as Katherine Swynford. There is no explanation of who she is, no reference to John of Gaunt, no commentary on her status or character. In modern terms, it feels frustratingly sparse. In medieval terms, it is exactly what we should expect — and exactly why it matters.

    Episcopal registers do not name people casually. To be recorded, an individual had to have legal capacity, recognised status, and a reason to intersect with diocesan authority. Women appear when they are landholders, patrons, or otherwise entitled to be treated as responsible actors within institutional frameworks. Katherine’s inclusion places her firmly within that world.

    Crucially, this reference is independent of John of Gaunt’s household and administration. Much of what we know about Katherine comes through Lancastrian records — Gaunt’s register, Duchy of Lancaster material, and royal enrolments connected to his affinity. Bokyngham’s register stands apart from all of that. It is ecclesiastical rather than ducal, diocesan rather than household-based, and routine rather than exceptional. Katherine appears here not because she is attached to power, but because she herself is recognised.

    The register also anchors her geographically. Bokyngham’s jurisdiction situates Katherine within the ecclesiastical life of Lincolnshire, reinforcing the continuity that later culminates in her commemoration at Lincoln Cathedral after her death in 1403. Lincoln is not a sentimental choice. It is the logical endpoint of a long-standing regional connection visible in the records.

    Bokyngham himself knew conflict and political pressure. In the early 1380s he clashed with royal authority over episcopal rights and jurisdiction, and in 1381, amid the turmoil following the Peasants’ Revolt, he was temporarily deprived of his temporalities. He survived this crisis and remained bishop until his death, a testament to his resilience and administrative competence. These experiences only strengthen the evidential value of his register. This was not a man inclined to careless record-keeping.

    What Bokyngham’s register does not do is just as important as what it does. It does not narrate Katherine’s life. It does not mention her children, her later title as Duchess of Lancaster, or her relationship with John of Gaunt. Any attempt to make it say those things would be a distortion. Its value lies elsewhere — in confirmation, not storytelling.

    For historians, this makes the register an anchoring source. It fixes Katherine Swynford securely in time, place, and institutional context, decades before her marriage to Gaunt in January 1396, and entirely outside the framework of later romantic or moralising narratives. It shows her not as a retrospective creation of Lancastrian power, but as a named, recognised individual moving within the ordinary structures of medieval society.

    John Bokyngham did not set out to preserve Katherine Swynford’s story. He set out to run a diocese properly. The fact that his careful administration leaves us with one of the earliest independent references to her is an accident of record — but a valuable one.

    In the end, Bokyngham’s importance to our understanding of Katherine lies in his ordinariness as an administrator. His register reminds us that medieval history is not built only from chronicles and legend, but from the quiet authority of paperwork. And sometimes, that quiet evidence is the most revealing of all.

    After retiring he moved to Canterbury. Records suggest he has a flagstone grave within the cathedral with an effigy of him in bishops robes. This did not survive the Reformation and or the Civil War. All that remains is a commemorative stone within the cathedral floor.

  • Grandma Evelyn

    Evelyn photographed in c1930 carved tree sculpture of Katherine at Kettlethorpe 
    the similar hairstyle amuses me

        My connection to Katherine Swynford comes through my grandmother, Evelyn. Her family line descends from the Huddlestons of Millom Castle in Cumbria. From the Huddlestons, the descent passes through a succession of significant English families before reaching the Percy family of Northumberland.

       Through the Percys, the line connects to Eleanor Neville, the second daughter of Joan Beaufort and Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland. Joan Beaufort, in turn, was the daughter of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt. It is through this Beaufort–Neville–Percy lineage that my own family history ultimately leads back to Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt.


  • The Priory, Lincoln: Katherine Swynford’s Last Home and Its Long Afterlife

    The Priory today: note proximity to close wall

    For me not enough attention is paid to Katherine’s final home in Lincoln. It is symbolic of her status and her place within the community of the cathedral close.

    Tucked within the quiet dignity of Lincoln Cathedral Close, the building long known as The Priory occupies a distinctive place in the city’s historical imagination. Traditionally identified as the final home of Katherine Swynford, Dowager Duchess of Lancaster, it stands not only as a reminder of one woman’s extraordinary life, but also as an example of how elite medieval houses in the Close have continually adapted to new purposes over more than six centuries. It is, I feel, an underrated and often overlooked part of Katherine’s story.

    After the death of John of Gaunt in 1399, Katherine sought a new home in Lincoln. The choice was likely shaped by familiarity, security, and a renewed spiritual focus

    . In her final years she is traditionally associated with residence in a substantial Close house later known as The Priory.[^1]

    A House in the Cathedral Close — Not a Monastery

    Despite its name, The Priory was never a religious house. It should not be confused with St Katherine’s Priory, the medieval hospital and monastic foundation located outside Lincoln’s south walls.[^2] The Priory within the Close was a private residence, one of several large houses owned or controlled by the Cathedral and leased to high-status occupants. Such houses were designed for elite domestic life: spacious, well situated, and in close proximity to the Cathedral itself. For Katherine Swynford, now Dowager Duchess of Lancaster, this was a fitting final residence — dignified, secure, and closely connected to the spiritual heart of the city.

    From Medieval Residence to School

    Following Katherine’s death, The Priory passed through many hands and phases of use, reflecting wider changes within the Cathedral Close. As the medieval period gave way to the early modern era, large Close houses were increasingly repurposed for clerical, administrative, or educational functions.[^3]

    By the nineteenth century, The Priory is recorded in local historical accounts as having been used as a private girls’ school. Photographic evidence confirms its use as a school by around c.1870, by which time the building had acquired the name The Priory—perhaps to lend it an additional air of antiquity and respectability.[^4] This was a common fate for former elite residences: their size, layout, and proximity to ecclesiastical authority made them well suited to education.

    This educational phase inevitably altered the building. Domestic rooms were subdivided, interiors adapted, and fittings replaced, contributing to the limited survival of identifiable medieval domestic fabric today.The later history of the building warrants further investigation. Evidence suggests that the Church Schools Foundation retained some involvement with the property as late as 1996, when it appears in records An interesting read 

    The Priory Today

    Today, The Priory (2 Minster Yard) is a Grade I listed building, a designation reflecting its exceptional architectural and historical importance.[^6] It forms part of Lincoln Cathedral’s working estate and is currently used for Cathedral administrative and operational purposes connected with the care and maintenance of the Close.

    Little survives of the medieval building in its original form. Essentially, only the tower, later incorporated into the Close wall, remains from the medieval phase. Yet this structure carries particular resonance, as it is believed to have contained Katherine Swynford’s solar, her private upper chamber.

    Why The Priory Matters

    The importance of The Priory lies not solely in surviving medieval fabric, but in association and continuity. It anchors Katherine Swynford firmly within Lincoln’s physical landscape and allows her story to be understood spatially as well as historically — from Close houses, to Cathedral, to tomb.

    In the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral, The Priory stands as a reminder that history does not end with death. Buildings, like people, have afterlives — and in this case, one that began with one of medieval England’s most remarkable women.


    Diagram of the tower and Solar as it may have looked in Katherine’s time

    The Priory as a school 1870 or thereabouts 

  • Katherine, imagined

     

     

    The Accolade (1901) by Edmund Blair Leighton

    Used in current paperback edition .

    Crop of Veronica Veronese (1872) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

    Chicago Review Press edition published in 2004. 

    I tend to imagine quite erroneously Katherine Swynford as a Pre-Raphaelite stunner.I know, of course, that this tells us far more about me — and about Victorian painters — than it ever can about the real Katherine, born in the 1340s into a very different visual world. Yet images have a way of lodging themselves in the mind, quietly shaping how we picture the past.

    Two paintings in particular have always hovered at the edge of my imagination.The first is Edmund Blair Leighton’s The Accolade (1901), so often reproduced on editions of Anya Seton’s Katherine. It is an unapologetically romantic, late-Victorian vision of the Middle Ages: ritualised, ceremonial, drenched in chivalric nostalgia. Historically it tells us nothing about Katherine Swynford, it is almost certain Katherine never ‘knighted’ anyone, its armour, costume and even the act it depicts are centuries out of place — yet emotionally it has proved remarkably persuasive. It offers a medieval world softened, ennobled, and lit by idealised love.

    The second image is far more intimate: a cropped detail from Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Veronica Veronese (1872), also used on later covers of Seton’s novel. This is unmistakably Pre-Raphaelite — heavy-lidded eyes, copper-red hair, parted lips, a sense of interior life just beyond reach. The model was Alexa Wilding, one of Rossetti’s most recognisable sitters, whose features recur across his late work. It is her face, rather than any documented description, that has come to stand in for Katherine in the popular imagination.

    That influence is personal as well as cultural. A large print of Alexa Wilding as La Ghirlandata has hung in my hall for many years. Day after day, I pass that unmistakable Rossettian profile: the cascade of hair, the absorbed stillness, the quiet authority of beauty rendered as something almost spiritual. It would be disingenuous to pretend that this has not seeped into how I picture Katherine — not as a documentary likeness, but asNone of this, of course, is evidence. The real Katherine Swynford left us no portrait, no physical description we can rely upon. She was not a Pre-Raphaelite muse, not a Victorian fantasy of medieval womanhood. She was a fourteenth-century gentlewoman who lived a long, complex life shaped by politics, motherhood, loss, and survival.

    La Ghirlandata (1873) modelled by Alexa Wilding, by Dante Gabriel



    And yet, when we imagine her, we do so through the visual language available to us. For many of us, that language has been shaped by Rossetti’s women and by the romantic medievalism of the nineteenth century. The danger lies not in acknowledging this influence, but in forgetting that it is an influence — a lens, not a window.


    So yes, in my mind’s eye Katherine is still a Pre-Raphaelite stunner. I hold that image lightly, aware of its artifice, even as I recognise how powerfully it has framed my emotional connection to her

  • Why Lincoln Needs to Celebrate Katherine Swynford

    Information about Katherine’s tomb fastened with cable ties



    When most people think of Lincoln’s medieval heritage, their minds leap to soaring cathedral spires, crusading bishops, and royal pageantry. Yet embedded within that extraordinary setting is a woman whose life and legacy shaped the course of English history — Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster — and whose presence in Lincoln today is surprisingly muted.

    Katherine was not a marginal figure. Through her long relationship and later marriage to John of Gaunt, she became matriarch of the Beaufort line, from whom both the Yorkist and Tudor dynasties would descend. Few individuals so firmly connect Lincoln to the national story of monarchy, power, and succession — and yet her story remains largely unexplained to those who encounter it.

    A Woman with National Impact

    Katherine’s story is firmly rooted in Lincolnshire. Her family connections, early life, and later benefactions tied her closely to the region and to Lincoln Cathedral itself. She was not merely “associated” with great events — she stood at their centre.

    Her life challenges simplistic labels. She was a household servant, a long-term partner in a politically sensitive relationship, a mother of dynastically crucial children, and finally a duchess in her own right. That trajectory — rare, complex, and deeply human — is exactly the sort of story that can bring medieval history alive for modern audiences.

    The Problem of Silence and Confusion in the Cathedral

    Despite this significance, the information available to visitors about Katherine Swynford within Lincoln Cathedral is limited, unclear, and at times misleading.

    Visitors encounter her tomb without adequate explanation of:

    • who she was,
    • why she mattered nationally,
    • how her burial relates to the Cathedral’s wider history,
    • or why the monument appears as it does today.

    Outdated assumptions — particularly about the nature of her tomb, its form, and the disposition of her remains — still circulate in popular descriptions, despite decades of scholarly revision. The absence of clear, up-to-date interpretation means that many visitors leave without understanding that they have stood before the resting place of one of medieval England’s most influential women.

    This is not a question of blame, but of missed opportunity. In a building rightly celebrated for its learning and scholarship, Katherine’s story deserves interpretation grounded in current historical understanding rather than inherited simplifications.

    Why This Matters

    Public history shapes public memory. When interpretation is sparse or inaccurate, it quietly diminishes the importance of the person being commemorated.

    Katherine’s story offers:

    • a rare female narrative of power and agency in medieval England,
    • a tangible link between Lincoln and the Wars of the Roses,
    • and an opportunity to explain how monuments, tombs, and memory change over time.

    Better interpretation — whether through improved signage, guide material, or digital resources — would not only honour Katherine more fully but also enrich the visitor experience of the Cathedral itself.

    Raising Katherine’s Profile in Lincoln

    Lincoln already embraces its Roman, Norman, and medieval past with confidence. Raising Katherine Swynford’s profile would sit naturally within that tradition.

    This could include:

    • clearer and historically accurate interpretation at her tomb,
    • inclusion in guided walks and heritage trails,
    • public talks, exhibitions, or online resources,
    • and greater acknowledgment of her role as a Lincolnshire woman whose descendants reshaped England.

    This is not about elevating one figure at the expense of others. It is about completing the story.

    A Legacy Worth Understanding

    Katherine Swynford’s life was extraordinary not because it was romanticised, but because it was real, complex, and consequential. Her influence is written into England’s royal DNA — yet her presence in Lincoln remains understated.

    If Lincoln is to tell its medieval story honestly and fully, Katherine Swynford cannot remain a footnote. She deserves clarity, context, and visibility — not only in scholarship, but in the very place where her memory resides.


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