Katherine Swynford was the longtime mistress and later the third wife of John of Gaunt, third surviving son of Edward III.
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Weir reconstructs her subject's history through entries in court and municipal records, the descriptions of chroniclers, including Thomas Walsingham and Froissart, and other sources.
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Margaret Swynford (born c. 1369), became a nun at the prestigious Barking Abbey in 1377 with help from her future stepfather John of Gaunt, where she lived the religious life with her cousin Elizabeth Chaucer, daughter of the famous Geoffrey Chaucer and Katherine's sister Philippa de Roet.
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On 13 January 1396, two years after the death of the Duke's second wife, Infanta Constance of Castile, Katherine and John of Gaunt married in Lincoln Cathedral.
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Their four children had been given the surname "Beaufort" and with the approval of King Richard and the Pope were legitimated as adults by their parents' marriage in 1396.
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In about 1366, at St Clement Danes Church, Westminster, Katherine married "Hugh" Ottes Swynford, a knight from the manor of Kettlethorpe in Lincolnshire, the son of Thomas Swynford by his marriage to Nicole Druel.
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She had the following children by him: Blanche (born 1 May 1367), Thomas (21 September 1368 – 1432), and possibly Margaret Swynford (born about 1369), later recorded as a nun of the prestigious Barking Abbey nominated by command of King Richard II.