Joan of Kent: The First Princess of Wales

by Penny Lawne

  Edward embarked on a general programme of vigorous reconciliation, showing mercy and generosity to his enemies. However, Mortimer’s fate was inevitable. He could not be allowed to survive. At his trial Edmund’s judicial murder was cited as one of the principal charges against Mortimer, and he admitted he had tricked Edmund, and staged the charade of his trial. Mortimer was executed, suffering the full penalty for treason of being hanged, drawn and quartered. Edward III took great care to immediately disassociate himself from his mother and Mortimer’s regime. He ordered that the county sheriffs publish a proclamation in all public places which stated that ‘the king’s affairs and the affairs of his realm have been directed until now to the damage and dishonour of him and his realm’.5 He restored to favour all of Edmund’s associates, and encouraged those who had fled abroad to return.6 A warrant for the protection of Margaret’s brother, Thomas Wake, was issued on 25 November, and in December he was formally pardoned and his lands, goods and offices restored.7 On 8 December Edward III ordered that all of Edmund’s lands should be taken back into the Crown’s hands.8 This, together with Mortimer’s admission that he had tricked Edmund, was an indication to Margaret that the way was now clear for her to secure the restoration of her husband’s title and estates, and look to her own, and her children’s, future.

  The circumstances of Edmund’s death and their close blood relationship ensured that both Edward III and Philippa took a considerable interest in the young Kent family. The king and queen were themselves very new parents and they are known to have been fond parents, having a strong and affectionate relationship with all their children throughout their lives.9 Although Prince Edward was awarded revenue from the earldom of Chester to maintain his own household from the age of three months, he remained in his mother’s care, with Philippa managing his revenues.10 Initially, Edmund, Joan and John would have been in the care of the queen’s household, joining the baby Prince Edward (John was the same age as the prince). Unfortunately, Edmund did not long survive his adoption into the royal household and he died within the year, in late September or early October of 1331.11 Meanwhile the royal nursery expanded. In April 1332 Philippa gave birth to a daughter, Isabella, and a year later to a second daughter, Joan. Princess Joan was probably named after her aunt Joan, Edward III’s younger sister, married to David Bruce, the Scottish king, but the choice of name may also have been prompted by the presence within the household of the four-year-old Joan. The princesses shared the household with their older brother Prince Edward.12 By 1334 Princess Isabella and Princess Joan had a household of their own in the Tower of London, which Joan probably shared with them, while her brother John remained with Prince Edward.13

  The admission of Joan and her brothers to the royal household may initially have been intended as a temporary measure, but it soon became permanent, a change which can only have been effected with their mother’s agreement. Having secured her children’s safety, Margaret threw her energies into restoring the family name and estates. Edmund had appointed her co-executor of his will with Adam Lyndburgh, the rector of Algarkirk (Lincs) and a canon of Lincoln Cathedral, and left the choice of his final resting place to her.14 Edmund had been buried in the Grey Friars church at Winchester, and Margaret decided that he should be given a more appropriate burial place in Westminster Abbey, where his father, Edward I, and others of his royal forebears were buried. She petitioned the Pope requesting the reburial, and in April 1331 Pope John XXII granted her request, ordering the bishops of Winchester, Coventry, Lichfield and London to cause Edmund’s body to be exhumed and reburied at Westminster.15 There is, however, no evidence that the order was ever carried out.16 There is no record of a monument or chantry chapel being founded for him at Westminster Abbey, which is unusual in the circumstances (one would have thought that his wife or later on his son and heir would do so), and it is curious that his son John later chose to be buried in the Grey Friars church at Winchester, when his only connection to it was his father’s burial there.17 There is no obvious reason why Margaret should have changed her mind, but she may well have done so, and certainly throughout 1331 her priorities became increasingly focussed on dealing with her family’s inheritance.

  On 18 December 1330 Edward III reversed and annulled his mother and Mortimer’s cavalier distribution of Edmund’s lands by ordering that they should all be taken into the king’s hands.18 Margaret might reasonably have expected her royal nephew to order full restoration of her husband’s title and estates to his heir, her oldest son, Edmund. Mortimer’s confession should have made this a priority, especially as this would be an obvious way for Edward III to disassociate himself from any complicity in his uncle’s execution, clearing the way for full restoration. But Edward III did not do so, for a very good reason. To restore stability to the political order he needed not just to placate his aunt, but to win over all those members of the nobility who had been alienated by his mother and her lover. As the bulk of Edmund’s estates comprised property which his mother and Mortimer had confiscated in 1327 from his father’s favourites, the Despensers, and the Earl of Arundel, Edward III wanted to take careful stock of the conflicting interests of their heirs and that of his young cousin before attempting full restoration. An additional and not insignificant complication was the sheer practical difficulty of identifying all the Kent estates. Isabella and Mortimer had parcelled out Edmund’s estates so rapidly between themselves and their supporters that it was difficult to determine who had been given what, resulting in inevitable confusion of ownership, and the inquisition post mortem itemising Edmund’s estates was not completed until January 1331.19

  Edward III’s understandably cautious approach did not suit Margaret, and her numerous petitions from December 1330 are evidence of her persistence and tenacity in appealing to her nephew. Her first concern was the family name. In early December 1330 Margaret wrote personally on behalf of the young Edmund to her nephew, as well as formally petitioning the king and Parliament, and she also wrote again separately for herself and her younger children, requesting a re-examination of Edmund’s trial on the basis of Mortimer’s confession, praying that ‘right might be done’.20 She then turned her attention to property, astutely starting with her own rights as a widow. Edward III found he could not ignore his aunt’s pleas, and in December 1330 he reluctantly granted her petition for her dower entitlement from Edmund’s estates, pointing out that this was a special concession as ‘he might have deferred the assignment by reason of certain claims, especially as the extent of the lands have not yet been returned to chancery according to custom’.21 Margaret was on firmer ground in pressing for the return of her Comyn dower, as this had been wrongfully taken from her in March 1330 and had become the subject of dispute between her stepson Richard Talbot and Talbot’s nephew David, who had become entitled to his share of the Comyn estates on coming of age in August 1330.22 In January 1331, Edward III conceded and ordered that the Comyn dower be returned to his aunt as ‘she has besought him to cause them to be restored to her’.23 Margaret’s appeal for her husband’s honours to be restored to her son closely followed, and was similarly successful. On 12 January 1331 an order was made that Edmund’s heir should be admitted to his inheritance, and ‘the possessions and blood of Edmund, Earl of Kent’ were formally restored to his heir on 8 February.24 On 14 February Margaret and her co-executor obtained the right to recover all the possessions Edmund had at the time of his arrest on 14 March 1330, notwithstanding the judgement passed on him.25 Writs were issued for the payment of rent to her.26 Her request that all goods and chattels from the Castle Donington estate and manors in Rutland, Surrey, Gloucester, Hampshire and Somerset should be appraised in her presence was granted on 1 March 1331 because ‘the king wishes to do what is just’.27 Edmund’s posthumous rehabilitation was completed when the judgement against him was annulled on 8 March 1331, a year after his death.28

  However, despite Margaret’s determination, and Edward III’s evident desire to assuage his aunt, she
was not able to persuade her nephew to restore all of Edmund’s estates. The order of 12 January 1331 restoring Edmund’s lands to his heir specifically excluded those which had formerly been held by Thomas Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, prior to his execution in 1327 for supporting Edward II.29 Edward III was determined to rehabilitate the earl’s heir, Richard Fitzalan, and he restored the Arundel estates in full to Richard, including those which had been granted to Edmund.30 To mollify his aunt Edward III granted her alternate rental income to compensate for the loss of her dower share from the Arundel estates, but he refused to award substitute property for his cousin.31 This was a heavy loss for the Kent inheritance, as the Arundel land had an annual rental income of around £700, and included Arundel Castle, the family’s home prior to Edmund’s arrest.32 Nevertheless, even without the Arundel property, the Kent earldom remained a significantly valuable one, comprising forty-three manors with the right to thirty advowsons as well as extensive annual rents and knight’s fees, with the most important individual property now being the extensive Castle Donington estate in Leicestershire. Edmund’s heir would still become one of the largest and wealthiest landholders in the country.

  Having restored his uncle’s name and his cousin’s inheritance, Edward III might well have kept management of the valuable Kent inheritance during his cousin’s minority in his own hands. He would then have had the advantage of being able to award stewardship of some or all of the estates to his supporters as rewards. However, Margaret was resolved to remain actively involved, and she lobbied her nephew to give her control of them as well. The experience of watching Edmund’s estates being dispersed among Isabella and Mortimer’s followers may have made Margaret more determined than otherwise to ensure that there was no repeat, albeit under the more paternal aegis of her nephew. Margaret was obviously extremely persuasive, as on 21 March 1331 she was awarded wardship of all her son’s inheritance during his minority, subject to an annual payment to the exchequer, and in May the king confirmed she would also receive the estates he had held and committed elsewhere.33 This was a significant victory for Margaret.

  Management of the estates would not have been an easy matter. There was the simple practical difficulty that Margaret was unlikely to have extensive or detailed knowledge of them. Despite the loss of the Arundel estates, the remaining Kent lands were spread over seventeen counties, with income due from fees payable in a further six counties. The bulk of Edmund’s holdings had only been granted to him in February 1327, and the sheer number of manors, with their disparate geographical locations, coupled with Edmund’s absence on military and diplomatic duties (including the six months he and Margaret spent abroad in 1329) made it unlikely that either of them had fully familiarised themselves with the estates by the time of his death in March 1330. The estates then changed hands three times in a year, forfeited from Edmund, dispersed by Isabella and Mortimer, taken back by the Crown in December 1330 and then restored to Edmund’s heir in March 1331. There was inevitable confusion among tenants regarding lordship rights, and some tenants took advantage of the situation to withhold payment of rent. Margaret had no hesitation in requesting her nephew’s assistance when she had difficulties. In February 1331 Edward III issued orders that rents due from Alton, Andover (Hants) and Droitwich (Worcs) in addition to the Stratford and Ramsey abbey rentals should be paid to his aunt.34 In March, he issued similar orders for the payment for rents due from Ormesby (Norfolk), Chichester (Sussex), Cheddar, Congresbury, Bath and Brampton (Somerset), Grimsby (Lincs) Cirencester and Gloucester (Gloucs).35 In August 1331 a writ was issued directing payment of the fee farm of £60 from the town of Aylesbury (Bucks) to Margaret, acknowledging that it had formed part of Edmund’s estates.36 Despite these orders, Margaret’s problems persisted, and in October Edward III confirmed that the issues from all the Kent estates from 21 March 1330 should be delivered to Margaret.37 The ecclesiastical tenants of the abbeys of Kirkstall (Yorkshire), Stratford (Essex) and Ramsey (Huntingdonshire) were particularly troublesome and had still not paid when young Edmund died. On 5 October 1331 the king reiterated his original order that the respective abbots pay their due rents to his aunt.38 Margaret also experienced problems with her own dower property; in December 1332 she was forced to obtain an order for the sheriff of Lincoln to assist her in recovering fealty and services due to her from her dower manor at Greetham in Lincolnshire.39 There were also Edmund’s debts to pay, and little available cash to hand. The London merchant John Pulteney, for example, was owed more than £400, and for repayment he was granted custody of one of the Kent estates with an annual rental income of £30, for the duration of Edmund’s minority.40

  Margaret had been in charge of her son’s affairs for barely six months when young Edmund died in the autumn of 1331, leaving John as the heir with the prospect of an even longer minority. Unfortunately for Margaret, on Edmund’s death her authority ceased and the Kent estates were returned to the Crown.41 The tragedy gave Edward III the opportunity to reappraise his approach, and by this time he was less susceptible to accommodating his aunt. Instead of giving her complete authority over John’s inheritance, Edward III gave his aunt a carefully selected number of estates to manage, and retained the rest himself. On 16 October Margaret was granted wardship during John’s minority of the largest and most valuable of the estates, Castle Donington in Leicestershire, and a further eight manors: Ollerton in Nottinghamshire; Ryhall in Rutland; Miserden in Gloucestershire; Lifton, Shebbear and Chettiscombe in Devon; Bagshot and Tolworth in Surrey; and rental from the town of Caistor in Lincolnshire.42 Edward III required his aunt to pay £180 a year for custody of the estates, and imposed on her an obligation to keep them in good order at her own cost, while reserving the rest of the estates to the Crown together with a substantial part of the cash income due. This came largely from knight’s fees (originally knights were obliged to provide their lord with one mounted soldier for combat; this was translated into an annual payment of 20s instead) and advowsons (rights of presentation to a church benefice).43 Undaunted by her nephew’s refusal to grant her outright wardship of her son’s inheritance, Margaret tried to take control where she could of the estates which remained in crown hands. In November she persuaded the king to grant her custody of the houses in Westminster to use and stay in at her will.44 She continued to remind the king of the injustice endured by her family and had some success in requesting compensation for the goods taken from Edmund’s estates after his death. On 12 August 1332 Edward III granted Margaret’s petition to be given an allowance of half the sum due for her wardship to the exchequer in recompense.45 Margaret continued to chip away at her nephew, and on 1 July 1333 persuaded the king to grant her the hundred of Barstable (Essex).46

  Edward III took the time-honoured traditional royal approach towards the estates held in trust, successively parcelling them out as rewards for service. In November 1331, for example, the king rewarded his brother and sisters’ nurses, Matilda de Pirye and Joan de Boys, with the rent from the farm of Chichester.47 Other beneficiaries included men close to the king: William and Edward Bohun, William Montague, Edmund Bacon and Thomas Bradeston.48 Edward III also used grants as a means of settling his own debts.49 Inevitably there was confusion in the handling of some of the Kent estates by the Crown, such as when the original grantees died and their grants were reallocated, resulting in some estates having a succession of temporary owners.50 Where mistakes by the Crown impinged on Margaret’s area of influence she was quick to defend her rights. When John Warenne, Earl of Surrey, was ordered to hand over Swanscombe manor to Margaret as part of her dower entitlement, he pleaded that he should retain it until after the harvest, as he had caused a great part of the manor to be tilled and wanted the corn and other issues during his ownership of it. Margaret refused to agree and the king was forced to intervene, formally requesting his aunt in March 1331 to agree to Warenne retaining the manor until September.51 In February 1331 Edward III granted the rentals from Ramsey and Stratford abbeys and rental due
from Ormesby (Norfolk) to his friend Edward Bohun, in effect restoring them to Bohun as they had originally been granted to him by Mortimer and Isabella after Edmund’s execution.52 Margaret immediately appealed, arguing that these valuable rentals should be granted to her, and forced her nephew to confirm the grant to her and give Bohun a substitute.53 Margaret also tried to extend her influence, and in May 1331 her nephew had to order her not to meddle with the three Gloucestershire manors he had given to Thomas Bradeston, and in June to reiterate his order that the Gloucester rent farm was due to Bradeston and not to Margaret.54