heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

400 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
was the second son of John of Gaunt, by Catherine Swinford, eventually
his third wife. The match was not very creditable to him, and was
"highly disdained," Sandford tells us, "by the Duchess of Gloucester and
" Countess of Derby and Arundel, and other ladies of the blood royal."
Catherine was the daughter of Sir Page Roet (alias Guyen), king-ofarms,
and widow of Sir Ottes Swinford, knight, and had been familiarly
acquainted with the Duke of Lancaster in the time of his former wives,
being guardianess to his daughters the ladies Philipe and Elizabeth, in
their minority. As a recognition of her care in their education, the Duke
granted her, by patent dated 27th December, 3 Richard II., the wardship
of Bertrand de Sanneby's heir. He calls her " Our most deare and
beloved Dame Catherine Swinford," and three years later granted her an
annuity of 700 marks. This was a valuable recompense at those times
for such a service ;
but two years after the death of his second wife,
Constance, daughter of Pedro the cruel, viz., 1396, he married her, and
acknowledged his four children by her, viz., John,
afterwards Earl of
Somerset; Henry, of whom more by-and-bye; Thomas, afterwards Duke
of Exeter ;
and Joan, who married, first, Thomas Ferrers, Lord of Wem,
and second, Ralph Nevill, first Earl of Westmoreland. The year following
he obtained an Act of Parliament by which they were made legitimate,
and rendered capable of all ecclesiastical and civil honours and employments,
the royal dignity excepted, being called therein Beaufort, from the
Duke's castle in Anjou, the place of their birth, which came to the house
of Lancaster with Blanche of Artois, Queen of Navarre, wife
of Edmond,
first Earl of Lancaster. Margaret, the mother of Henry VII., was granddaughter
of John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, the eldest son of Catherine
Swynford. Hence the portcullis on the King's tomb at Westminster, the
badge of the family, supposed to represent the portcullis of the castle
gate at Beaufort, with this motto "
: Altera securitas," which, true of the
portcullis itself, was the plea, no doubt, of John of Gaunt, in days when the
succession to the throne was most important, for legitimatising the children
of his illicit intercourse.
Henry de Beaufort was appointed Prebendary of Thame, 1389; then
of Riccall in this Minster, August 22nd, 1390; and next of Sutton, 1391,
in Lincoln Cathedral ;
Dean of Wells, 1397; Chancellor of Oxford, 1397;
Bishop of Lincoln, 1398; and he succeeded William of Wykeham as
Bishop of Winchester, 1404.
Shakespeare, in his two plays of Henry VI., has given us anything
but an agreeable representation of his character, and a terrible account of
his death, which Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Chancellors, defends.
Subsequent examination, however, of contemporary records has shewn this
to be in a great measure exaggerated and without foundation ;
and Bishop