by Penny Lawne
This highly romantic story is unsupported by any evidence, and it is notable that the source is French and uncorroborated by any of the English chroniclers. The tale was probably a propaganda exercise, with the chronicler mixing fact and fiction in an attempt to discredit the prince, as the story subtly undermines the prince’s reputation by presenting Joan as a clever and scheming woman who was able to entrap the most renowned knight of the day by her beauty and guile. In reality it was the other way round. The quick and businesslike way in which the prince wooed and won his cousin indicates that he was the driving force in their love affair from start to finish. Prince Edward had only returned to England from the Rheims campaign in France in November 1360, just a few weeks before Thomas Holand died at the end of December, and yet by the spring of 1361, barely three months later, the prince had not only persuaded Joan to marry him but had also secured his father’s approval for their marriage. There is no doubt that the prince’s affections were deeply engaged. Froissart and Chandos Herald, both contemporaries who knew the prince and Joan personally, record the prince’s great love for Joan, the latter succinctly stating that ‘he loved her greatly’.22 His fondness for his cousin was long-standing, as is evident from the gift noted in his accounts in 1348 where she is described in affectionate terms as ‘Jeanette’, and the strength of his love is evident from the letter he wrote to her in 1367 after six years of marriage, addressing her as ‘my dearest and truest sweetheart and well beloved companion’.23
It is much more difficult to determine Joan’s feelings for the prince. Her love for Thomas Holand was apparent throughout their relationship from her steadfast loyalty and commitment to him, and his early death was a real tragedy for Joan. It is hard to imagine that she felt as strongly about the prince within a few weeks of Thomas’ death. It is far more likely that she was genuinely fond of her cousin, even loved him, but was not in love with him. Joan did not have to marry the prince. Her independent wealth and her widowed status gave her a choice in deciding her own future in a way she had not had before, and the prince could not have coerced her into agreement. The long wrangle over her marriage to Thomas Holand had shown that she was not ambitious and there is no evidence that she became either forceful or calculating during their marriage. However, it seems probable that as a widow she was concerned for the future of her four children now that they were left fatherless. She had lost her father at an early age and the subsequent problems she had endured over her marriage, combined with her knowledge of the challenges Thomas Holand had experienced due to his father’s disgrace, followed by her husband’s early demise, would have made her acutely aware of the potential difficulties her own children might now face. The prince, like Thomas Holand, was a strong and forceful person, and with the combined attractions of his undoubted genuine ardour for her and his status, her agreement to wed him was both sensible and intelligent. As his wife she would not only be brought back within the fold of the royal circle, she would enjoy a prestigious and protected position as Princess of Wales and she could be sure that her children’s futures would be secure. Nevertheless, the picture painted by the French chronicler of Joan as a scheming temptress does not fit with her personality. When the prince made his feelings known, it is clear that Joan agreed willingly; her affection for him together with the undeniable material advantages that marriage to him would bring made his proposal more than welcome, but this was a personal choice, rather than being planned and calculated.
Many historians consider the marriage surprising, and have concluded not only that Joan was an unsuitable bride for the prince but also that he married her in defiance of his parents’ wishes, after harbouring a secret love for his cousin for years, having confided his hopeless passion to his friend Lady Elizabeth de Burgh, in the twenty-three visits he made to Elizabeth between December 1357 and August 1359 (Elizabeth died a month before Thomas Holand).24 Froissart must be held partly responsible for this view, as he claimed that the marriage was made without the king’s knowledge (‘sans le sceu dou roy son pere’).25 This is simply incorrect. Prince Edward may have been in love, but he was still heir to the throne and well aware of what was expected of him. He was every inch his father’s son. He was also, unlike his father and grandfather, fortunate in having a close and genuinely fond relationship with his father. Contrary to the idea that Edward III did not approve of the match, he not only endorsed his son’s choice but was involved right from the beginning in the arrangements which were needed to ensure the marriage could take place. In fact, it was the plans for the prince’s future which necessitated a speedy courtship and wedding rather than the strength of the prince’s ardour.
The peace treaty with France, signed at Brétigny on 24 October 1360, had given Edward III territory which greatly expanded the Gascony of his father’s day to include the land more recently conquered and occupied by the English forces, to be held in full sovereignty from the French Crown. This new, politically constructed landmass was described as the duchy of Aquitaine and closely resembled the old Angevin duchy. As soon as the treaty was signed the king and his council debated the issue of how to manage Aquitaine and almost immediately the idea of it being an independent principality with the prince at its head was put forward. This suggestion had two immensely practical points in its favour. It gave the adult prince a job and a focus for his energies in the peace, and it solved the dilemma for Edward III of having to rule what was in effect a separate kingdom at a distance via a succession of paid deputies. The prince was eminently suitable. He was the perfect deputy, having already been appointed his father’s lieutenant in Gascony in 1355; he had the military credentials to ensure the principality was protected from any resurgent French encroachments; he was respected by his enemies as well as his friends; and he had his father’s complete and unequivocal trust. By the spring of 1361 the idea of appointing the prince as ruler in Aquitaine had taken root with the council in serious discussion about its implementation, and by July several of the prince’s closest companions and officers had been appointed to positions in Aquitaine to secure the annexation of the new territories and to set up the administration for the new principality.26
One of the many considerations in planning for the prince’s future in Aquitaine was his financial position. Between 1348 and 1360 more than half the expenditure in Gascony had been financed by the English exchequer, the troops and administration costing between £1,500 and £3,750 a year.27 This was a huge drain on the Crown’s resources and could not continue. The king and the council were determined that the much larger Aquitaine should be self-financing. The prince would be expected to raise money within the duchy and use this income to support his government; this meant that initially he would need to rely on his own resources. As the king’s eldest son the prince had been well provided for financially. As Prince of Wales, Earl of Cornwall and Earl of Chester his estates in Wales, Cornwall and Chester brought in an annual income of probably around £8,000, and he was the principal beneficiary of his grandmother, Queen Isabella, when she died in 1358.28 The prince probably enjoyed almost the largest income of any of his father’s subjects (although his younger brother John of Gaunt would later enjoy considerably greater wealth, when his wife Blanche of Lancaster became sole heiress to the entire Lancastrian inheritance with its income of around £12,000 a year). However, the prince had huge demands on his wealth. As his father’s principal lieutenant in the war he was expected to have the largest retinue after the king and the cost of financing this was exorbitant.29 His estates and household institutions were directed for him by his council, which worked hard to provide him with sufficient funds. The records of his accounts provide evidence of the strain on the prince’s resources. As early as 1352 the council was finding it difficult to meet the demands made on them, and resorted to measures designed to maximise income, such as ordering that wardships and marriages granted to the prince should be sold for as much as possible, noting that if any were concealed this would be to the prince’s ‘great damage�
�.30 The Poitiers campaign was a particularly large drain on the prince’s resources. Despite his victory and the capture of John II, the prince derived little net benefit from this in financial terms, with the added cost of maintaining the French king, whom he hosted for many months after his capture at vast expense. By November 1356 the prince was having difficulty meeting his commitments and ordered his council to use any money available to pay his debts to local traders, as ‘the people [of Cornwall] are making a great clamour on account of the failure to pay’, in this instance at the expense of his own friend and comrade in arms, William Montague, Earl of Salisbury, who three years later in 1359 complained to the prince’s council that the arrears of his Cornwall annuity remained outstanding.31
Prince Edward’s exceptional generosity exacerbated his financial difficulties. His accounts are full of lists of gifts to his knights and servants, mainly cash for the latter but often valuable items such as silver gilt and enamelled cups and ewers for his knights. Generosity was highly regarded and jewels and plate were welcome presents. The prince was frequently short of ready cash and forced to borrow, which he seems to have done indiscriminately, including from friends. For example, his household accounts show that in 1355 he owed money to Henry Picard, John Wesenham, Sir Guy Brian, the Bishop of Durham, Sir Walter Mauny, the earls of Huntingdon, Stafford and Arundel, Sir Edmund Bereford, John Wode, Sir James Beaufort, Sir James Audley, Ralph Copey, Sir Frank Hale, the king and even a yeoman of the queen’s buttery called Richard, while in July 1359 he borrowed the enormous sum of £2,000 from the Earl of Arundel, which enabled him to repay a surely small but outstanding debt of 4 marks he owed to Alice Slappele, an attendant of his mother, who had written to him praying that he would remember the loan she had made to him while he was staying with the queen at Chertsey.32 In view of the financial difficulties the prince was experiencing, his father’s determination that he should manage Aquitaine without support from the English Treasury was a daunting prospect.
Once the decision had been made regarding Aquitaine, Edward III and the prince had much to discuss, and they would have discussed his marriage. Although the king had previously displayed no urgency over the marriage of his heir, Aquitaine changed this. The prince was expected to succeed his father (he was even occasionally referred to as Edward IV during his father’s lifetime), and it was important for him to beget an heir.33 The prince’s younger brothers Lionel and John were already married, and in March 1361 John’s father-in-law, Henry of Lancaster, died, leaving John heir to the richest patrimony in the country. This reinforced the desirability of the prince’s marriage, while marrying an heiress would help resolve the prince’s financial situation. From a practical aspect, it would greatly facilitate the prince’s appointment if he married before he travelled to Aquitaine, giving him a consort with whom he could set up his own establishment in the duchy and hold court. Joan’s sudden availability, and the prince’s own attraction to her, presented an unexpected opportunity. But however ardently the prince desired Joan, he was no fool. As heir to the throne, he knew he had been expected to make a match which would benefit the Crown. For many years different possible foreign matches had been mooted, and although none had come to fruition this did not mean that the king had abandoned all hope of negotiating one. Joan was not an ideal bride and would be an unusual choice. The prince would have discussed his desire to marry Joan at the earliest opportunity with his father. He wanted and needed his father’s approval, as well as his father’s assistance to facilitate the marriage. Perhaps surprisingly, despite the fact that the marriage would not bring any apparent advantages to the king, Edward III appears to have had no reservations about his son’s choice, and to have given him every encouragement. The prince’s personal inclinations were allowed to be decisive, although in Joan’s favour was the fact that she did at least have royal blood, and having been part of the royal household Joan was well versed in royal protocol; happily, and importantly, she was also extremely wealthy. Joan’s inheritance was a vital factor. The marriage would significantly augment the prince’s income, swelling it by at least another £3,000 a year, an increase of about 40 per cent.34 Evidence of the benefit this gave the prince can be seen from the fact that by 1369 he was able to give £1,537 in annuities to his staff and friends, a sum which represented more than 60 per cent of his own income from Cheshire and which would surely have been beyond his means prior to his marriage.35
However, the prince and his father were well aware that there was one considerable drawback to the marriage, and that was Joan’s marital history. The prince had almost as much knowledge of his cousin’s tangled marital history as Edward III, and realised it presented a considerable legal problem. Thomas Holand had served under him, while William Montague was one of the prince’s childhood companions and a close personal friend as well as one of his most trusted military captains, with the prince giving him a gift of a helmet with a cower decorated in silver and a matching ‘seinture al barber’, also decorated in silver and gilded, in 1359.36 Joan’s widowed status in itself was no bar, but the irregularity of her original marriage to Thomas and the fact that William was still alive, with a potential legal claim to be her husband, was a serious complication. Neither the prince nor his father had any doubts about how William would react, and it is indeed intriguing that despite the history between Joan and William there is no evidence that this caused any long-term bad feeling between them or their families. In fact, in later life William was at hand to support and advise Joan, suggesting that they maintained a friendship over the years. But for Edward III and the prince the problem of the Montague entanglement was that this could conceivably, in time, threaten the legitimacy of any children Joan bore the prince, so it was imperative that this was resolved to ensure an undisputed succession. Somehow the prince and his father had to ensure that the legality of the marriage was watertight, and this meant obtaining the cooperation of the Pope. The usual dispensation would be required in any event, as the prince and Joan were related within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, and the prince was also godfather to her eldest son and heir, Thomas. But although Joan was not a foreign princess there was no reason to suppose that the papacy would be any more accommodating in the matter of the prince’s marriage than before. The relationship between the English Crown and the papacy had been strained by the war with France, and despite the Treaty of Brétigny there remained considerable friction, exacerbated by the presence in France of many disbanded soldiers, now banded together in armed companies. To make matters worse, in the spring of 1361 the Pope was personally threatened by one such band, led by an English renegade soldier.37 Apart from the embarrassment this caused Edward III it was hardly helpful to have such an incident at this point in time, just when the king needed to ask the Pope for a considerable favour. Ensuring the prince’s marriage was legally unassailable required more than a simple dispensation, and lengthy negotiations were out of the question as this would not fit into the timescale for the prince taking over Aquitaine. They needed to find a way of persuading the Pope that was quick and foolproof. Edward III was an astute man and it did not take him long to devise an ingenious and deceptively simple plan with his son.
Meticulously planned, their strategy to secure the Pope’s consent bore a marked resemblance to one of their joint military campaigns. The first step was taken by the prince. The usual protocol was for the king to approach the pontiff with a request for the necessary dispensation. Instead the prince contacted the Pope direct individually, and by June and July 1361 he was in regular and continuous correspondence with the Pope, sending his squire Nicholas Bond back and forth to attend the pontiff in Rome and Avignon with his runner Picot couriering his letters, requesting politely and insistently that he be granted the requisite formal dispensation to enable him to marry Joan.38 Neither the prince nor his father was concerned when there was no immediately favourable response, as for them this was simply preparing the ground for the next stage of their plan. The next step was
audacious and risky. The prince secretly contracted to marry Joan. This was an extraordinary action to take, as by doing so he risked excommunication for himself and his bride. Not surprisingly, this secret contract of marriage was interpreted by Froissart as evidence that the prince had married Joan without his parents’ knowledge or approval. But the clandestine union was a characteristically bold and deliberate manoeuvre executed with the sole intention of forcing the Pope’s hand, and a vital part of the scheme. It seems quite likely that it was Edward III’s idea. The king made the next move, probably in August, by presenting Innocent VI with a formal request concerning the prince’s marriage. Edward III’s petition was a masterpiece. First, the king requested a dispensation for his son’s marriage on the grounds of his relationship to Joan; secondly, he asked the Pope to absolve the couple for having privately contracted to marry ‘per verba praesenti’, explaining disingenuously that the prince had intended subsequently obtaining the necessary dispensation (but without explaining why he had not waited to get it); and thirdly he asked the Pope to declare that any future offspring of the marriage was legitimate.39 Presented with the marriage as a fait accompli, the Pope was cornered. He could hardly withhold his consent now, especially as he had been in correspondence with the prince about it for months without indicating that he would refuse. Innocent VI dared not risk causing offence to Edward III and his son, with the undesirable diplomatic and political consequences that would inevitably follow an open breach with the English Crown. The Pope knew he had been outwitted, and on 7 September replied, granting all the king’s requests.40
Nevertheless the king and the prince must have been relieved and delighted with the speed of the Pope’s reply. Innocent VI’s authorisation for the prince’s marriage was comprehensive and addressed each of Edward III’s points separately. He dealt first with the simplest aspect, the relationship between the prince and Joan, by issuing a bull to Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, which provided the requisite dispensation.41 The issue of the unauthorised marriage contract was resolved by instructing the archbishop to release the prince and Joan from the penalty of excommunication, subject to a suitable penance.42 The king’s last request was far and away the most significant and required the most detailed response. Innocent VI ordered a fresh investigation to be made into the circumstances of Joan’s marriage to Thomas Holand, promising to formally ratify the decisions made by his two predecessors if this proved satisfactory. Archbishop Islip was instructed to conduct the examination and report back. This stage of the proceedings obviously had the potential for the greatest delay, but it is evident that pressure was brought to bear – and that the result was a foregone conclusion. By the time the archbishop submitted his report to the Pope on 18 October, confirming that he and the other bishops had re-examined the 1349 bull and were satisfied with its ecclesiastical legality, the archbishop had already solemnised the prince’s marriage to Joan.43 On 6 October Prince Edward and Joan were formally espoused, and the wedding itself took place four days later in the chapel at Windsor. Archbishop Simon Islip’s extensive report to Innocent VI spelt out the formalities he had conducted on the Pope’s behalf; he had pronounced the private contract for marriage null and void, released the couple from the penalties for excommunication, imposed a penance on them to found two chapels within a year and endow each with 20 marks a year, and finally he had solemnised their marriage.44 Innocent VI concluded the matter by issuing his personal bull on 11 December 1361 confirming the validity of the prince’s marriage to Joan.45