Katherine Haute Introduction

My name is Katherine Haute.


My story is lost to time: there is no known record of my family, whether Haute was my maiden name or married, how many children I had, when my birthday was, even when I died. Many authors and history lovers have theorised that I was married to one John Green, or that my husband was named Matthew. That my father was a farmer, and I seduced the Duke of Gloucester with my singing. Some have even speculated that I was deranged, obsessed even with my former paramour. None of this is true of me: some falsehoods, others attributed to another woman of the same name. Historians, however, agree that I was probably the mother of Richard’s illegitimate daughter, Catherine; that she was born before his 1472 marriage to Anne Neville, and that our relationship probably ceased before 1470.

All that is left of me is a footnote from an expense record from 1477, showing that I received an annuity of £10 for life.

I am an enigma: reduced to a footnote in the history of a King of England. Yet, hundreds of years ago, I was a real person, with dreams, likes, and dislikes of my own. I pray that, in the near future, more might be known of me, so that I might live again in the annals of history- this time on my own.

Whether I loved Richard, or Richard loved me is only known by myself and him, now: such is the secret we both took to the grave. Yet, even if there was no love lost, there was much more to me than the annuity, or the word “mistress.”