by Penny Lawne
With the king’s approval, Thomas took the opportunity during the long-drawn-out siege of Calais to return to England to attend to his personal affairs. Maud Holand must have been extremely relieved to see Thomas, delighted with her son’s newly won royal favour and hopeful that he would restore the family fortunes. Apart from his own marital situation, there were other pressing matters to claim his attention. First, there was his sister Isabella. She was living with the Earl of Surrey, a relationship which the king did not view with favour. The earl had obtained Edward III’s permission to leave property to Isabel, but in December 1346 revoked this at the request of the Earl of Arundel. Then, Thomas’ older brother Robert had incurred the king’s wrath. Edward III had appointed his second son, Lionel, to be keeper of the realm in his absence with Prince Edward. While Prince Lionel and some of the other royal children had been staying at Sir Gerard Lisle’s manor, at Beams in Berkshire, Robert Holand had forced an entry, threatened Sir Gerard and abducted and raped Lisle’s wife, Margery, ‘to the terror of the said keeper [Lionel] and the rest of the king’s children then with him there’.60 Thomas also had to decide what to do about Joan. He probably discussed his marriage with his mother and in March 1347 he and Maud obtained permission from the Pope to have portable altars, a sure sign that they envisaged taking a journey together.61 They may have returned to Ghent to gather the evidence of his marriage, or travelled to the papal court at Avignon to seek advice on how he could resolve the situation. It was probably during this time that Thomas made the decision to pursue his claim to Joan and determined how he would set about doing so. He had no time to do anything further, as in May he was ordered to rejoin the king at Calais, and when the town finally surrendered in August he was one of the English commanders involved in the negotiations.62
After the fall of Calais a large part of the army was released from service, including some of Edward III’s own household retinue and those of Prince Edward. The king and the remainder of the army returned to England in October 1347, and to celebrate the English successes the king embarked on a round of tournaments, held at Bury, Eltham and Windsor, with jousts held at Canterbury, Lichfield and Lincoln, culminating in a tournament at Windsor in June 1348. Thomas lost no time in putting his plan to regain Joan into action. The first payment from the king for the Count of Eu was due in September, and shortly afterwards, instead of applying to an English ecclesiastical court, Thomas submitted a petition to the Pope, requesting that Joan’s marriage to William Montague be annulled on the grounds of his own prior marriage.63 There was to be no more waiting, no more tentative negotiation. His action was clear and unequivocal; he wanted his wife back and could not be bought off, and he was not taking the risk that an English curial court might favour William, as an English peer. It provoked a furious reaction from William Montague. Up to this point, both parties had kept Joan’s marriage to Thomas secret, and few outside their immediate families (and the king and queen) were aware that there was any question of Joan not being legally married to William. She was publicly regarded, and treated, as the Countess of Salisbury. As the news of Thomas’ proceedings circulated, William was humiliated, but although he knew that Joan supported Thomas he was determined not to give her up. He was still under age and did not yet have access to his income, so he fought back in the only way he could, and took the drastic action of seizing Joan, and keeping her prisoner, preventing her from any contact with Thomas.64
William’s action was outrageous, but he was neither rebuked nor punished for it by the king. Instead, in November 1347 Edward III sent his old friend Elizabeth Montague, William’s grandmother, to Avignon, probably to ascertain Thomas’ chances of success, and in December, shortly after her return, he granted William a substantial part of his inheritance.65 The king could have chosen to grant William the whole of his inheritance outright, and it is odd that he did not do so. The effect of his action was to ensure that publicly, the king stayed aloof, but he had levelled the playing field by granting William sufficient funds to counter the papal proceedings Thomas had initiated, which William duly did. It is sad to note that none of Joan’s family, not her mother Margaret, her uncle Thomas Wake, or her brother John, made any attempt to intervene and indeed Margaret went out of her way to support William. Joan was probably taken to the Montague family seat of Donyatt in Somerset, perhaps accompanied by Margaret, and probably chaperoned by William’s mother, Catherine, and grandmother Elizabeth. Joan was given no opportunity to speak for herself.
Froissart’s later description of Joan as ‘the most beautiful lady in all the kingdom of England and the most loved’ could never have been more apt than at this time. In the series of tournaments held from October 1347 to June 1348 Thomas and William fought on opposite sides (Thomas for the prince and William for the king), and at the same time they were fighting for Joan’s hand through the papal courts. As their rivalry was at its height, Edward III inaugurated his chivalric order, the Order of the Garter, and Thomas and William were both among the founder members. Edward III had been considering an elite fraternity of knights for some time, based on the Arthurian ideal, and had announced his intention at the Windsor tournament in 1344, starting work shortly afterwards on the round tower which he planned would become the headquarters of his foundation. Flushed with the triumph of his victories in France in 1346 and 1347, the king finalised his plans when he returned to England, and put them into effect. The result was the Order of the Garter, which Edward III intended would reflect his ideals of chivalry and link him closely with his greatest knights.
The exact date the order was founded is unknown, but it is generally considered to have been first instituted at the Windsor tournament in June 1348, a fitting finale to the round of celebratory tournaments started on the king’s return from France in October 1347. The first formal meeting of the Knights of the Garter appears to have been held at the chapel of St George at Windsor on St George’s Day, 23 April 1349. The established pattern for the meeting became a Mass followed by a feast. For the ceremony members were expected to wear special robes: a white garter tunic trimmed with ermine and embroidered in blue, with a blue sash garter on which the motto was embroidered in silk and gold letters, worn diagonally across the body from shoulder to waist, a Garter mantle and cap. The king provided garters and robes from his wardrobe for certain favoured knights and in December 1348 Prince Edward paid for twenty-four garters for the knights of the companionship of the Garter.66 The early records of the order are incomplete and the derivation of the order’s symbol of the blue garter, and its motto, ‘honi soit qui mal y pense’, remain unclear. The Order of the Garter was deliberately elite and exclusive, comprising only twenty-six knights, including Edward III himself and his eldest son, Prince Edward. Each was allocated a stall in St George’s chapel, identified by a plate displaying their shield. Election as a member was a signal honour bestowed only on the king’s most trusted companions in arms. Apart from Edward III and the prince, the identity of the other twenty-four members suggests they were chosen for their military prowess rather than their status, as along with the king’s great war captains Henry, Earl of Lancaster, and Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, were ordinary knights such as Sir John Chandos, Sir Nigel Loring and Sir James Audley, all of whom fought with Prince Edward at Crécy. Also among the chosen elite were William Montague, Thomas Holand and his brother Otto Holand.
There has been considerable speculation about how and why the order was founded. The most popular and enduring story explaining its origins derives from Polydore Vergil’s History of England, which was written in the late sixteenth century. According to Vergil, Edward III held a ball at Calais to celebrate the fall of the town during which his young and beautiful dance partner, the Countess of Salisbury, dropped her garter. The king gallantly rescued her from embarrassment by picking it up and rebuked the titters of onlookers with the words ‘honi soit qui mal y pense’.67 The king then swore to honour the garter, and so set up the Order of the Garter. For most scholars th
is romantic tale is apocryphal as there is no contemporary evidence to substantiate it, and no subsequent research has been able to verify it; nevertheless it remains an appealing story. There are confused accounts by the chroniclers Jean le Bel and Froissart regarding the king and a love affair with a Countess of Salisbury, but these appear to amount to no more than rumour, with no clear identification of the woman concerned. Joan has become inextricably associated with the story simply because she was, at the time of the siege of Calais, the Countess of Salisbury (as William’s wife), and she was young and beautiful. If there was a ball, it is possible that Edward III danced with her, but it is extremely unlikely that she was wearing a garter, as this was not a usual item of clothing worn by women at that time. On the basis that Joan was his partner, the suggestion that the king was in love with, or desired, his beautiful partner, can be safely discounted. Edward III would never have seriously entertained any such thought in relation to Joan.
Thomas’ initiation of proceedings in the papal courts in October 1347 were the start of a long legal wrangle which dragged on for more than two years, with the court alternately sitting, adjourning and reconvening before two successive cardinals and involving more than five lawyers specialising in canon and civil law. At the start of the proceedings the Pope, Clement VI, appointed his nephew, Cardinal Adhemar Robert, to hear the case. Thomas’ lawyer, Magister Robert Siglesthorne Beverley, who acted for him throughout, had been in service with the queen and had previous experience acting for English litigants before the papal court at Avignon.68 Thomas’ argument was reasonably straightforward. He gave the date, place and names of those who had witnessed his marriage to Joan, argued that the contract had been made ‘per verba de praesenti’ (a spousal in front of witnesses), followed by physical consummation.69 Under medieval ecclesiastical law this was sufficient to create a valid marriage, even though it had been held in secrecy.70 The papal courts in Avignon were notoriously slow, and the requirements for each side to present their case and for witnesses to be heard involved inevitable delays. Cardinal Adhemar, having heard from Thomas, decided he needed to hear from William and Joan, either in person or via their attorney. He considered, but decided against, calling Margaret. William was desperate, and did everything he could to delay the proceedings, hoping against hope that Thomas would give up. He raised more cash by granting a licence to grant Sir John Wingfield and three other knights the reversion of four of his manors in Somerset.71 Keeping Joan in seclusion could only be a temporary strategy, as Thomas submitted a second petition to the Pope, appealing for papal intervention to free her. In May 1348 the Pope ordered the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of London and Norwich to secure Joan’s release so that she could appoint her own proctor to provide her evidence.72 Freed from imprisonment, but isolated from her family by her support of Thomas, Christmas that year with the royal family at Otford must have been a difficult occasion for Joan, perhaps lightened by the gift she received of a silver beaker from Prince Edward, addressed to her using her childhood diminutive of ‘Jeanette’. 73
Joan’s evidence was crucial to the proceedings, for without her confirmation of consent the court could not make a determination. Extraordinarily, even when she was freed to appoint her own attorney and present her evidence, she was unable to do so. Her first attorney, Magister Nicholas Heath, was in the queen’s service, but proved a poor choice as an order was issued for his arrest by Edward III in February 1349 on unrelated charges.74 His replacement, Magister David Martyn, inexplicably failed to submit anything on Joan’s behalf to the papal court on two successive occasions. Perhaps he had been persuaded or bribed not to do so, although there is no evidence to support this. The result was to stall the proceedings indefinitely, at which point the Pope intervened again, appointing another cardinal, Bernard d’Albi, to take over from Cardinal Adhemar. A new attorney was secured for Joan, Magister John Vyse, sub-dean of the diocese of Salisbury. On Joan’s instructions, Vyse confirmed that she had voluntarily married Thomas and consummated their marriage. In citing Joan’s evidence, he explained the great pressure Joan had been subjected to by her family to marry William, and that she had submitted out of fear of the consequences. William knew that it was just a matter of time before he lost Joan, but he continued to delay matters by ensuring his lawyer failed to appear at the next sitting of the papal court. Possibly he had lost faith in his representative, as a new attorney, Magister Reginald Bugwell, represented him at the court’s last sitting and heard the final pronouncement. Cardinal d’Albi judged that the marriage between William and Joan was null and void, found the marriage of Thomas and Joan to be valid, and indicated that Joan should be restored to Thomas and their union publicly solemnised.75 On 13 November 1349 the Pope confirmed d’Albi’s judgment, and ordered the papal nuncio in England and the bishops of Norwich and London to see that the finding of the papal court was carried out.76
As Thomas and William battled through their lawyers for Joan in Avignon a plague epidemic reached England, probably brought aboard two ships sailing from Gascony which arrived in Dorset in the early summer of 1348. The Black Death had already ravaged most of Europe, and its effects in England were devastating. It spread throughout the entire country within twelve months, with an alarmingly high mortality rate. The numbers of people who died are impossible to verify but it is generally accepted that probably between a third and a half of the population of England died. The economic effects of the plague were catastrophic, with whole villages abandoned and an acute shortage of labour which left crops uncollected and fields untilled. The human cost was appalling, with so many dying in some places that there was no one left to bury the dead. No family was immune, although the better housing and living conditions of the better off might explain why there was a lower level of mortality among the aristocracy. The court was plunged into mourning in the late summer of 1348 when it was learnt that Joan’s childhood companion, Princess Joan, had died en route for her marriage to the heir of King Alfonso of Castile, but she was the only member of the royal family to succumb. Thomas, William and Joan all lost relatives to the plague. In the spring of 1349 William’s mother, Catherine, died.77 Joan’s uncle Thomas Wake died on 31 May, and he was buried at the priory whose foundation he had financed at Haltemprice in Yorkshire.78 By June Thomas had lost his mother, Maud, as well as his sister, Margaret (who had married Sir John de la Warr) and in September Joan’s mother, Margaret, died.79 The tragic consequences of the spread of the plague meant that William had lost all his supporters, and with them his appetite for the battle to keep Joan. Indeed, he had accepted that he would lose Joan some months before Cardinal d’Albi made his final decision, and sensibly made alternative plans. As soon as the annulment of his marriage to Joan was publicly pronounced by Pope Clement VI he married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of John, Lord Mohun of Dunster.80
It is to be hoped that Joan was reconciled to her mother before she died, for relations between them must have been strained to the utmost during the course of the papal proceedings. They do not seem to have ever had a warm or close relationship, and it is sad to reflect that Joan never had her mother’s blessing for her marriage to Thomas. Margaret’s natural desire to see her daughter safely and securely established as the Countess of Salisbury cannot excuse her forcing Joan into a bigamous marriage and her failure to provide her daughter with moral and emotional support at such a crucial time. The fear and insecurity Margaret endured when Edmund was executed may explain her insistence on the Montague match, with the protection it offered her daughter, but it seems unlikely that Joan ever understood or accepted her mother’s views on her future. Similarly Joan may have had little cause to mourn the death of her uncle Thomas Wake whom she had probably seen very seldom in the last years of his life. Joan’s relationship with her brother John would have been much closer, as they had much in common, having spent their childhood together in the royal household. Being two years younger than Joan, John was hardly in a position to impose his views on h
is mother or uncle and so could do little to support his sister in her troubles initially. He became free to do so once he obtained independence from his mother, which he achieved in August 1347 when Edward III agreed to grant John his inheritance during his minority.81 There was no obvious reason for the king to permit his cousin to take his inheritance early, but it may reflect Edward III’s growing lack of patience with his aunt and her intransigence over Joan, at a time when his own sympathies lay with Thomas Holand. Edward III also arranged John’s marriage and in April 1348 papal dispensation was granted for John to marry Elizabeth, daughter of William, Marquess of Juliers, and Queen Philippa’s niece (her mother Joanna was Philippa’s younger sister).82 The terms of the dispensation indicated that one aim behind the marriage proposal was an intention to end the strife between Juliers and the Duke of Guelders. The marquess, subsidised by the English Crown, was one of Edward III’s chief allies in Flanders, supplying 1,000 men-at-arms towards the war, and the marriage between John and Elizabeth created a personal connection between the marquess and the king which would cement the alliance.83
The death toll and dreadful effects of the plague had disrupted all normal activities throughout 1349 but it must nevertheless have been a relief to everyone concerned when the papal court made its final determination on Joan’s marital status. Although the outcome had been expected for some months, it was an incredibly important moment for Joan. She had married Thomas when she was twelve and now she was a young woman of twenty. It is striking that throughout the eight-year period Joan had consistently supported Thomas, against all the odds. She had stood virtually alone in her refusal to deny their marriage. While the outcome of the papal proceedings was undoubtedly a victory for Thomas, it was surely a triumph for Joan, a vindication of her unswerving support for a man who had swept her off her feet when she was a child and yet left her unprotected and isolated with the burden of their secret marriage. Joan had hardly known Thomas when they married, and subsequently her meetings with him had been brief and fraught with the difficulties of their situation. She could never have been sure that she would be able to live as Thomas’ wife. He had consistently given his career priority over his duty towards his young wife, and Joan can hardly have been unaware of his ambivalent attitude towards their marriage and of his probable willingness to abandon her if the right price had been offered him by the Earl of Salisbury. In contrast, she knew William very well and he had made it abundantly clear that he cared for her and wanted to keep her as his wife. William, his family and Joan’s family had done everything they could to deter her from supporting Thomas, and it would have been so easy, and so convincing, for Joan to have told the court that she had not really understood what she was doing in the spring of 1340. In acknowledging her marriage to Thomas, and standing by him, she had turned away from her family – and from the life she could have had. The suggestion has been made that Joan was ambitious and chose Thomas because he was a rising star, but although Thomas had indeed gained fame and fortune by 1346, the fact remained that William was far wealthier and as an earl considerably outranked him in status.84 Joan’s motives in supporting Thomas over such a long period of time had little to do with ambition and more to do with her own attitude towards the commitment she had made when she exchanged marriage vows with Thomas in the spring of 1340.