Indomitable Countesses. Katherine Swynford, Alice de Lacy and the Earldom of Lincoln

This event is cosponsored by the Lincoln Record Society (LRS). You can register for this talk on our Eventbrite site: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/287931309297.

Speaker: David Stocker, MA (Cantab & York), DLitt, FSA, MCIfA

This paper, which was first offered to a conference convened by Nicholas and Carol Bennett at Lincoln Cathedral in 2015, looks in detail at the final four years of the life of Katherine Swynford, third and last wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, between her husband’s death in 1399 and her own, at Lincoln, in 1403. This period in her life has been largely ignored by previous writers about this controversial, compelling and successful woman, but similarities between the final years of Katherine’s life and those of Alice de Lacy, an earlier controversial and successful holder of the Earldom of Lincoln in her own right (between 1322 and 1348) demand attention. Brought up within the Lincolnshire gentry, and presented with similar – hostile – political challenges at the end of her life, this paper asks the question: did Katherine look back to the actions of her famous forbear for inspiration to guide her own actions two generations later?

Bio:

David worked for archaeological charities in York and Lincolnshire (1978-1986) before English Heritage (1987-2012). Subsequently a member of the Heritage Lottery Fund’s East Midland Committee, he became a Trustee of the National Heritage Memorial Fund in 2018, and he is currently CBA nominee to the Council of the National Trust. In addition to many honorary and administrative roles within British archaeology, he has been an Honorary Fellow in Archaeology at University of York, and a Research Associate of St John’s College Cambridge, and is currently Honorary Visiting Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds. David’s research interests and lie mostly within Medieval archaeology, especially in buildings, settlement and landscape. He has published some 150 contributions to reports and academic papers and is the author/co-author of 15 books. A substantial sub-group amongst these publications have arisen from a fruitful long-term academic collaboration with Paul Everson; for example, his two most recent papers (‘The Late-Saxon Graveyard at Cambridge Castle and the Origins of Urbanism in Cambridge’, and ‘A ‘coffin’ for St Audrey. Some misunderstandings about Middle-Saxon Cambridge?’, both published this month in Art, Architecture and Archaeology in the City of Cambridge (eds. G. Byng and H Lunnon) and his 2011 volume, Custodians of Continuity. The Premonstratensian Abbey at Barlings and the landscape of ritual (English Heritage/HTL, London and Heckington).

Story submitted by Renee Ward
rward@lincoln.ac.uk