Joan of Kent: The First Princess of Wales

by Penny Lawne

  While Edmund was working out what to do, opposition to Isabella and Mortimer was becoming more pronounced under Henry of Lancaster’s leadership, and in the autumn of 1328 matters came to a head with a direct armed confrontation between the parties. It is possible that Edmund had already approached Henry of Lancaster, as any plan he might have to help Edward II would obviously be to Isabella and Mortimer’s detriment. In November the Earl of Lancaster had written to the mayor and citizens of London saying that he had news from Edmund which he dared not put in writing.82 However, if he was referring to Edward II’s survival, it was soon evident that Henry had no intention of doing anything himself, perhaps not surprisingly given Lancaster’s earlier implacable hostility towards the king. Edmund and Henry were not natural allies either, as Henry would not have forgotten Edmund’s involvement in the defeat and execution of his brother Thomas in 1322. Edmund would have confided in his own brother, but it is clear that Thomas Brotherton was not prepared to take the lead on this. In the crisis the brothers were careful to appear neutral, and acted in a mediatory capacity, issuing a joint letter, probably sent to all the bishops, summoning them to a meeting in London on 19 December, and in January they accompanied the archbishop and the Bishop of London to the king as intermediaries to negotiate peace.83 Before they could start to discuss a settlement, Mortimer seized the initiative, advancing on Lancaster, and by mid-January 1329 he had gained the advantage and Lancaster had conceded defeat. In the aftermath Lancaster and his followers were fined and many, including Thomas Wake, fled abroad. The neutral stance Edmund and Thomas had taken ensured they suffered no repercussions, but they won few admirers, with one chronicler blaming Lancaster’s defeat on their failure to support him.

  Almost immediately after Lancaster’s defeat, Edmund made preparations to go abroad, appointing attorneys in April 1329, and he crossed to France in June with Margaret.84 His ostensible purpose was to carry out official duties in Gascony, probably initially accompanying Edward III to Amiens to pay homage to the new French king, Philip VI. However, it appears that he had made up his mind to find and free Edward II, and had decided that he needed to find support. It is probable that Margaret and Edmund visited her exiled brother, with Edmund hoping for sympathy and assistance from Thomas Wake which, as a previous opponent of Edward II, he was unlikely to have given. While in Paris Edmund had discussions with exiled supporters of the king, Sir Henry Beaumont and Sir Thomas Rosslyn, and he also visited the Pope in Avignon to take his advice, later claiming that the Pope had commanded him to do what he could to secure Edward II’s release.85 Appealing for support in this way was risky, and Edmund received news from England warning him that there was a plot against him. He had planned to undertake a pilgrimage to Santiago in Spain with Margaret to fulfil a vow his mother had made, but once he heard of the plot he abandoned the trip and returned to England in the late autumn.86 On their return to England Edmund and Margaret outwardly resumed normal court and family life, yet, despite the obvious danger, he continued with his plans in secret, buoyed by the support he now had, which included the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London. With Thomas of Brotherton also in his confidence, Edmund had no hesitation in involving his wife, and Margaret, perhaps surprisingly given her experience of Edward II, was supportive. In February 1330 Edmund and Thomas escorted Queen Philippa to Westminster Abbey for her coronation, and it is probable that Edmund took the opportunity at such a gathering to discuss his plans with others. By now Edmund was fairly certain that Edward II was being held at Corfe Castle, and after he had returned to Arundel to join Margaret and their children she assisted him in writing to John Deveril, the castle commander at Corfe Castle, to ascertain if it was indeed his brother’s prison.87

  Unfortunately, Edmund did not keep his intentions sufficiently secret, and he unwittingly played right into Mortimer’s hands. When he attended Parliament at Winchester, Mortimer sprung the trap he had set. On 14 March 1330, shortly after Edmund arrived at the Winchester parliament, Isabella and Mortimer arranged for his arrest, and accused him of plotting to rescue Edward II and restore him to the throne.88 On 16 March, to the consternation of the gathered assembly, Edmund’s confession was read out. He admitted that he had indeed planned to rescue Edward II. This, Mortimer claimed, was treason – and the penalty for treason was death. Edmund’s confession was recorded and has survived.89 A curious mixture of fact and fiction, it was probably altered for effect by Mortimer. Nevertheless, in essence Edmund admitted that he believed his brother was being kept captive in Corfe Castle, that he had been ordered by the Pope to obtain support and rescue the imprisoned king, and that he had been planning to do so. Edmund appears to have wanted to protect, as far as he could, the others involved, and in particular his sources, and he did so by undermining his own credibility with a bizarre story that a friar had conjured up the devil and revealed to him that Edward II was still alive, a patent nonsense described as ‘fantastic and false’ by at least one chronicler.90 Although he named some of his supporters, including the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London, it was a short and far from comprehensive list, and Mortimer later admitted that he had already known about those Edmund did name. Most of those named in his confession had been loyal to Edward II. The most striking thing about Edmund’s confession is that his stated aim was simply and solely to rescue Edward II and help him escape abroad. There appears to have been no serious intention of restoring Edward II to the throne or of threatening Edward III’s position, and the only evidence of Edmund’s rescue plan, apart from his confession, was the letters he and Margaret had written to the garrison of Corfe Castle.91

  Nevertheless, appalled and paralysed, no one, not even Edward III, dared speak in Edmund’s defence. It is notable that Thomas Brotherton, who might reasonably have been expected to defend Edmund, made no attempt to help him. Isolated and deserted, Edmund realised the danger he was in and tried to save himself. He begged his nephew for forgiveness, and offered to abase himself by going barefoot wherever the king wanted, with a rope around his neck. The Brut Chronicle records that Edmund wept as he knelt before his nephew.92 Edward III either could not, or dared not, help him, and sentenced his uncle to death. In the early morning of the 19 March Edmund was escorted outside the walls of Winchester castle to be beheaded. The Anonimalle Chronicle records that, out of pity, no one wanted to behead him, and that Edmund was forced to wait all day until vespers around three o’clock in the afternoon, until at last a menial retainer of the king’s marshalsea was persuaded to act as executioner.93 It is doubtful if the reluctant recruit was skilful with the axe.

  Edmund’s execution greatly shocked his contemporaries. When Edward II was deposed the revolution had been largely bloodless, other than the trials and executions of the king’s favourites, the Despensers, whose deaths were widely considered to be well deserved. But Edmund’s death was different. The chroniclers unanimously condemned the dubious legality of the proceedings, suggesting that even if Edmund’s confession was true, the punishment was too severe.94 Nothing like this had happened since Edward II wreaked vengeance on his enemies at Boroughbridge in 1322 and had executed his cousin, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. Edmund’s judicial murder showed breathtaking ruthlessness by Mortimer and Isabella. Edward III was known to be fond of his uncle (evidenced by his affectionate address to Edmund in letters in contrast to his neutral greetings to his other uncle, Thomas Brotherton). Aside from his close relationship to the king, Edmund was Isabella’s cousin as well as her brother-in-law, and his wife Margaret was Roger Mortimer’s first cousin as well as having been one of Isabella’s attendants.95 But there was a rational purpose behind Mortimer and Isabella’s action. However incredible his belief that Edward II was still alive, Edmund’s actions in seeking support for his rescue plan jeopardised Isabella and Mortimer’s position. By his own admission Edmund had obtained a respectable body of support, and Isabella and Mortimer treated his plan as a serious threat. Edmund’s fate was an intentional act of terror designed
to quash opposition, and he proved an easy target. Edmund may have been liked, and even regarded with respect because of his birth, but he was not a forceful, charismatic personality and Isabella and Mortimer gambled – correctly – that none of the nobility would be prepared to risk their own careers in defending him.

  Isabella and Mortimer were swift to capitalise on Edmund’s execution. Between 18 and 22 March orders were issued in the king’s name to arrest forty-one named associates of Edmund, with a number of more minor implicated figures in the following months, and Edmund’s friends and associates fled, some abroad.96 Thomas Wake was condemned to death in the Winchester parliament for sedition; he also managed to leave the country.97 Thomas Brotherton surprisingly escaped any reprisal, probably because his son Edward had married Mortimer’s daughter Beatrice the previous year, but in April he took the precaution of absenting himself on official business in Gascony.98 The Pope disassociated himself from Edmund and several months later expressed surprise to Isabella that anyone could assert that he would have believed Edmund’s ‘incredible’ story.99 For the time being, at least, Isabella and Mortimer had succeeded in their plans.

  Edmund’s Bereaved Family

  Edmund’s execution had dire consequences for his family. Margaret had every reason to fear for her own future and that of her children. She was complicit in her husband’s offence, and could have no confidence she would be shown mercy. The queen and Mortimer were insecure in their hold on power, and in their weakness sought to impose their will by terrifying the aristocracy. In the civil war of 1321, nine years earlier, Edward II had shown little mercy to the families of his defeated opponents, and the wives and children of most of the Contrariants were subjected to long periods of detention. Roger Mortimer’s own wife, Joan Mortimer, had been imprisoned in the Tower and their children placed in different priories scattered around the country. Lady Badlesmere and her children had suffered similar treatment after the execution of her husband in November 1321, and even the Earl of Lancaster’s elderly mother-in-law, the Countess of Lincoln, had been imprisoned.100 There was no one to whom Margaret could turn for help. Her husband’s family had already shown their incapacity to aid Edmund, and Margaret’s closest relative, her brother, Thomas Wake, had fled abroad as soon as the orders for the arrest of Edmund’s confederates had been issued.101

  Margaret did not have long to wait. The king’s yeomen, Nicholas Langeford and John Payn, arrived within days of Edmund’s arrest with orders to escort Margaret and her children from Arundel Castle into the custody of the sheriff of Wiltshire at Salisbury Castle.102 Her advanced pregnancy gave Margaret temporary respite, but she was immediately placed under house arrest, deprived of all but two of her women and restricted to an allowance of 13s 4d for her daily expenses, while her jewels and other goods were to be taken away and delivered to the king’s clerk, William Holyns, and Arundel Castle was placed in the hands of the king’s yeoman Roger Ashe.103 Edmund’s title, estates and moveable property were all forfeit. By an order dated 5 April Edmund’s goods and possessions were to be sold without delay and the proceeds sent to the Treasury.104 Margaret lost her own dower property from her first marriage, and within days of Edmund’s execution her stepson by her first husband, John Comyn, demanded her dower lands as his right on the grounds that it had exceeded her entitlement and he should have it because he had been awarded custody of his father-in-law’s estate.105

  Under house arrest, deprived of her servants and all contact with the outside world, Margaret was completely on her own, with no female companions other than the two attendants left to her, and her only male companions other than her guards was the Prior and his community. Margaret’s loss of her husband, her position, the family’s wealth and possessions and the uncertainty of her own future were compounded by a deep sense of personal betrayal. Edmund’s fate had been engineered by Queen Isabella, whom she had served for many years, and by her own cousin, Roger Mortimer.106 Margaret’s own fate, and that of her children, was now at the whim of the queen and her lover, and she was helpless to prevent the disposal of her husband’s estates, goods and chattels; her children’s inheritance. Isabella and Mortimer could not resist the opportunity to enrich themselves from Edmund’s estates, and because there were so many, they took care to reward their own supporters as well. Isabella took Edmund’s houses in Westminster, the rental income from the towns of Gloucester and Cirencester, and Barnsley manor in Gloucestershire.107 Mortimer’s son Geoffrey was awarded a handsome share: Castle Donington in Leicestershire, two manors in Gloucestershire, the manor of Woking in Surrey, two manors in Derbyshire and one each in Nottinghamshire, Rutland and Wiltshire.108 Isabella and Mortimer divided the remainder of Edmund’s sixty manors, fourteen farms and assorted income sources between their supporters.109 The indecent haste with which they parcelled out Edmund’s property was such that it had not been possible for the king’s officers to complete the assessment and valuation usually done of forfeited estates, and less than eight weeks after Edmund’s death Isabella and Mortimer found it necessary to appoint commissioners to ascertain exactly what Edmund had owned, and who now had that property.110

  It is not clear what Isabella and Mortimer planned to do with Margaret and her children, but incarceration for Margaret and the placing of her children into religious establishments was an obvious possibility. Although Edmund’s family hardly represented a threat to the queen and her lover, they may well have wished to make an example of his widow and children, and the orders to move them to detention at Salisbury Castle were merely an interim measure before transferring them to the Tower. John’s birth had given Margaret breathing space, as she would have been allowed to remain at Arundel Castle for at least six weeks afterwards until she was churched. This proved fortuitous, as with no record of Margaret being moved into the custody of the sheriff of Wiltshire at Salisbury Castle it appears that Isabella and Mortimer were content to leave the family at Arundel indefinitely. Probably they had not yet decided what to do with her. Luckily for Margaret, Isabella and Mortimer never got the chance to do so.

  2

  The Changing Fortunes of the Kent Family

  1330

  The wheel is come full circle.

  King Lear

  Within seven months of Edmund’s execution, the fortunes of Margaret and her children changed radically when the seventeen-year-old Edward III seized power in a dramatic coup in October 1330. With the aid of a small group of friends led by William Montague, and the cooperation of the castle constable, the young king arrested Mortimer in Nottingham Castle and took his mother into custody. The events that led to this are obscure and the chroniclers have little to say about it. Secrecy was obviously vital as the ruthlessness Mortimer had displayed with such compelling force over Edmund would have made it extremely dangerous for any hint of such plans to become known. It is probable that very few people knew of the king’s plans or of the details. The king’s motivation in taking such drastic action is easier to interpret. Mortimer and Isabella had known that it was only a matter of time before Edward III asserted himself, and their attempts to quash his independence merely exacerbated the personal humiliation they inflicted on him by denying him any say in government, and keeping him on such a restricted income that he was personally embarrassed for money. The birth of his son and heir, Edward of Woodstock, on 6 June 1330, is generally considered to be the impetus which impelled Edward III to act, but Edmund’s murder was also a significant factor. Within weeks of the coup, Margaret and her children had been taken into the royal household.1 Margaret can only have been relieved at this reprieve after six months at the mercy of Isabella and Mortimer.

  Many years later the chronicler Froissart credited the transformation of their lives to the young Queen Philippa, recounting how she had taken pity on Joan, adopted her as a member of her household and taken responsibility for her upbringing.2 Froissart was in a good position to have discovered this kind act, as he spent much of the 1350s and 1360s at court as a member of
Queen Philippa’s household. Writing more than twenty years later, Froissart omitted all mention of Margaret, Edmund and John, and cites Joan’s age incorrectly as seven; but as Joan’s mother and brothers had all died by this time, these oversights are understandable. However, if Philippa initiated the invitation to Margaret and her children, it was with her husband’s encouragement and support. Edward was motivated by more than a sense of family responsibility. Now that power lay firmly with him, he needed to reassure the nobility that in asserting his own authority he brought stability and peace, and in the process re-establish respect for himself and for the Crown, damaged by the long, divisive years of his father’s reign and by the greed and aggression of Mortimer and Isabella’s two-year rule. Edmund’s execution was widely regarded as judicial murder and, as it had been carried out in Edward III’s name, remained a damaging and potentially divisive issue. To obtain, and retain, the confidence of his nobility, it was vital that the king disassociated himself from responsibility for his uncle’s death. The most public statement he could make was to take Margaret and her children into his household, so distancing himself from the actions of his mother and Mortimer, and, even more importantly, demonstrating that he was now willing and able to protect his own family. It was in the king’s interest to arrange for his aunt and his three cousins to be escorted from Arundel Castle to join him and the queen as soon as he could arrange it. As a public statement of his new persona, he gathered his family around him at Windsor for Christmas, pointedly including his mother as a symbol of domestic harmony (although Queen Isabella was given little choice, as the king sent an escort, including Joan’s uncle, Thomas Wake, to accompany his mother from Berkhamsted Castle).3

  Suddenly released from their isolation at Arundel and transported to join the bustling, privileged circle around the king and queen, Joan and Edmund must have found the change bewildering (John was only six months old). They were taken into the queen’s household, and Philippa took responsibility for them. The young queen had a kind heart and generous nature, and had known Edmund well (he and Thomas Brotherton had attended on her at her coronation). Some months younger than her husband, and still barely more than a teenager herself, she had been overshadowed by her forceful mother-in-law. Now independent, Philippa lost no time in demonstrating her good nature in her concern for others. Apart from the Kent family, she also showed generosity towards others, such as the Mautravers family. John Mautravers was a Mortimer supporter, and had been closely involved with Edward II’s death and Mortimer’s conspiracy to trap Edmund in March 1330. Shortly after seizing power in October Edward III ordered a warrant to be issued for Mautravers’ arrest, and forfeited his possessions. Mautravers fled, leaving his wife and children behind, without means. When Philippa heard of Agnes Mautravers’ plight, she intervened with her husband to ensure that Agnes secured at least her dower from her first husband.4 Philippa’s kindness to Agnes, the wife of her husband’s enemy, would hardly have exceeded her concern for Margaret and her children, a family so much more closely related to her own and deserving of her help. Her natural sympathies as a new mother would have been drawn to Margaret, also with a new baby, and her fatherless family. Offering the family a home within the royal household would have been an instinctive act of compassion and practical support while the family’s affairs were sorted out, as well as suiting her husband’s purposes.