Editing Katherine Swynford (section)

===Last years===
Immediately after the death of the Duke, the royal escheators unlawfully took into custody all the possessions belonging to Katherine, as well as the Lancaster estates. As a result, she had to make a request to King Richard II, who on 9 March 1399 ordered the estates to be returned. Also, the sovereign confirmed to the Dowager Duchess the annual annuity of £1,000, levied on the lands of the [[Duchy of Lancaster]], which her husband assigned to her. At the same time, on 18 March, without any legal pretext, the King announced that he was replacing the 10-year exile of Henry Bolingbroke with a life sentence, and would confiscate those possessions that he was supposed to inherit. Although King Richard II did not grieve very much about the death of his uncle, he allowed Katherine to keep the lands she received as a dowry, and in May, when his royal escheators seized the lands that belonged to her before her marriage, he ordered them to be returned. After that, the Dowager Duchess tried to keep aloof and did not protest against the confiscation of the Lancastrian inheritance. Not wanting to live on one of her estates, Katherine left for Lincoln. She passed custody of Kettlethorpe and Colby to her son, Thomas Swynford, and for housing she rented a house in Minster Yard, which she rented until her death.{{sfn|Weir|2007|pp=254–255}}

There are few references to Katherine in the last years of her life. In the autumn of 1399, Henry Bolingbroke invaded England and deposed King Richard II, crowned himself as Henry IV. Katherine's children, the Beauforts and Thomas Swynford, and her son-in-law Ralph Neville supported the usurpation of the throne. The new king officially began to call his stepmother "the Mother of the King." However, apparently, Katherine led a quiet life in Lincoln, not taking any part in the political life of the Kingdom.{{sfn|Weir|2007|pp=257–259}}

On 12 February 1400, King Henry IV granted Katherine the estate of [[Laughton en le Morthen]] near [[Tickhill]] in Yorkshire. Around this time he also gave her £200 per year from the lands of [[Huntingdonshire]] and an annual income of 700 marks from the estate of Lincolnshire, and confirmed the annuity of £1,000 assigned to her by his father. As a result, she became quite a rich woman. It is also known that Katherine owned houses in Lincoln, Boston, [[Grantham]] and [[King's Lynn]] and had business dealings with merchants from some of these cities. It is possible that the Dowager Duchess had long-standing commercial interests in the wool trade, as it is known that she had property inherited from her father in Hainaut, a major center for the wool trade. Alison Weir believes that, perhaps, by investing money in such enterprises, Katherine tried to expand the Swynford inheritance.{{sfn|Weir|2007|pp=261–262}}