Joan of Kent: The First Princess of Wales

by Penny Lawne

  By the end of May 1363 the prince and Joan, with her four children, were at last ready to depart for Aquitaine, and on 9 June they boarded their ship, the Saint May Cog, at Plymouth and set sail, landing at Lormont outside Bordeaux on 29 June.29 They took a sizeable retinue with them, even the children having individual servants; Thomas Holand had his squire, John Pounfreit, and in August young John Holand had been given his own personal attendant in the prince’s yeoman, John Hay (probably a son of his parents’ old friend Sir Henry Hay).30 Also accompanying them were sixty knights, including three bannerets (Roger de la Warr being one of these), among a retinue of 250 men-at-arms, with 320 archers.31 Several wives of these knights formed part of Joan’s household, including her friend Eleanor de la Warr, Lady Marion Louches, Joanna Peverel, and Anne Latimer, wife of Roger de la Warr’s nephew Thomas Latimer. The entourage included most of the prince’s closest companions, with senior members of the nobility such as Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and John, Lord Cobham, and trusted retainers like John Carleton.

  This expedition was very different from the one Joan’s father, Edmund, had undertaken to Gascony nearly forty years before. Edmund had served in Gascony as Edward II’s royal lieutenant, based in Bordeaux, and was there for nearly twelve months before Joan was born, from the late summer of 1324 to the autumn of 1325. Joan knew that her father had not been happy in Bordeaux. Edmund had taken up residence in the city following his humiliating defeat in the Agenais by French forces which had invaded and overrun the duchy within five weeks of his appointment, and during his remaining service his authority had been consistently undermined by his half-brother’s favourite, Hugh Despenser, who had secretly given orders to Edmund’s deputies. These experiences had irretrievably soured Edmund’s relationship with Edward II, and shortly after Edmund left Gascony he had joined Queen Isabella in Paris and returned to England with her invasion force in September 1326. Under Edward II English authority in Gascony had been fragile, and the duchy weak and divided. Much had changed since then. By 1360 Edward III’s reputation was at its highest throughout Europe, and he was described by the chronicler le Bel as a ‘second King Arthur’, and by the Chronique des quatre premiers Valois as the ‘wisest and shrewdest warrior in the world’.32 The French king was a prisoner in England with his ransom set at the impossibly high level of 3 million écus (the French écu was worth 40d), equivalent to nearly ten times the annual revenues of the English Crown.33 Under the Treaty of Brétigny Edward III had acquired nearly a third of the landmass of France, mainly in the south-west, of which the duchy of Gascony comprised only a part.34 The borders of the new territory stretched from Poitiers in the north to Bayonne on the Atlantic coast and inland to Auch, Montauban, Rodez and Limoges.

  Nevertheless, the prince knew that he had a difficult job ahead of him. The new state of Aquitaine inevitably evoked memories of the great Angevin empire. Two hundred years earlier, when Eleanor of Aquitaine had married Henry of Anjou, Aquitaine had been one of the wealthiest parts of Europe, and a rich cultural centre. Eleanor’s Aquitaine was fabled for its society of troubadours and chivalric knights, brimming with literary and artistic talent at the court she inherited from her father at Poitiers. The new state of Aquitaine not only brought with it the Angevin association but also represented the English triumph in France, and Edward III and his closest advisers wanted the significance of this supremacy to be generally recognised. Hopes for the new Aquitaine were riding high in England. But unlike Eleanor’s Aquitaine, the new Aquitaine was not a rich or prosperous land. It had been devastated by the war, and the prince was in part responsible for this. After the Treaty of Brétigny was signed, John II had sent a letter to all the regions of France which were to be handed over to English rule explaining why he had agreed to surrender them to Edward III. After his crushing defeat at Poitiers, held prisoner in England, John II had little choice other than to accept whatever terms he could agree with Edward III, but it is hard not to believe that he was genuine when he told his subjects that he wanted to put an end to the ‘wars and the evils … which have led to so much evil for the people’.35 As the French king noted, ‘many mortal battles have been fought, people slaughtered, churches pillaged, bodies destroyed and souls lost, maids and virgins deflowered, respectable wives and widows dishonoured, towns, manors and buildings burnt, and robberies, oppressions, and ambushes on the roads and highways committed. Justice has failed because of them, the Christian faith has chilled and commerce has perished, and so many other evils and horrible deeds have followed from these wars that cannot be said, numbered or written.’36 The people living in the territories now newly incorporated into Aquitaine were all too bitterly aware of the truth of the king’s words. The south-western areas of France had suffered catastrophically in two major campaigns, the first during Henry of Lancaster’s six-month chevauchée in 1345, when the duke, landing at Bordeaux, had attacked Bergerac, then Périgueux, and after the defeat of the French army at Auberoche in October had marched south to conclude his campaign at La Réole in Gascony in March 1346, and more recently, from the prince’s own chevauchée in 1355. As the Anonimalle Chronicle recorded, the prince had swept from Bordeaux to Bergerac devastating the counties of Périgueux, Limousin, the country of Gascony, the county of La Marche and all the county of the duchy of Berry, burning and destroying, and Sir John Wingfield, on the prince’s staff, writing to the Bishop of Winchester describing the campaign, commented that ‘it seems certain that since the war against the French king began, there has never been such destruction in a region as in this raid. For the countryside and towns which have been destroyed in this raid produced more revenue for the King of France in aid of his wars than half his kingdom.’37 Now the people of these lands were to be ruled by the man who had so recently been responsible for the destruction of their countryside, their villages and towns. However glad they may have been to be told that peace had come at last, it seems unlikely that they would welcome the prince as their new ruler with open arms.

  Not all of the region had suffered the horrific war damage caused by the chevauchées, but even those parts which had escaped were still feeling the effects of the bubonic plague epidemic (there had been another outbreak in 1362), and throughout the region there were significant economic difficulties. The main local trade in Gascony was wine, and the region was also a major market for English exports such as grain and wool, all badly affected by the war, with a growing armaments industry centred on Bordeaux. The town of Bordeaux also handled cloth, leather, tin and fish, all of which were sent to England. The peace, ironically, would ill suit the iron foundries and armourers. Economic problems were compounded by the breakdown in law and order, caused initially by the weakening of authority due to the war and exacerbated by the activities of the free companies of soldiers which terrorised many local populations after the withdrawal of the English army from France in May 1360. The campaigns waged by these brigand armies in many parts were almost as destructive as those conducted by Edward III and the prince, extracting money and goods while killing those who resisted.

  As an artificial political creation the new Aquitaine had no obvious geographical or economic boundaries and lacked any element of cohesion, without political or cultural identity. There was no common government nor legal, financial or administrative system to bring unity. Edward III and his advisers were well aware of this but anticipated that the structure of the government of Gascony could be extended and adapted by the prince to enable him to weld his new domain together and impose an identity on it which would create a lasting union.38 This was extremely optimistic. Gascony itself was fiercely independent and had been a thorn in the side for successive English kings, but at least the population historically owed allegiance to the English king. Adding to it new territories which had no such loyalties and would regard the prince’s governance as that of an occupying power did not auger well for a stable future government. The prince would need the cooperation and active support of the local nobility, and this was
a significant problem. In Gascony some of the nobility, such as the Albret family, had used the conflicting claims of the English and French kings to sovereignty of the area for their own vested interests, playing one off against another, and the prince’s father, grandfather (Edward II) and great grandfather (Edward I) had all struggled to keep the loyalty of the Gascon nobility. The nobility in the newly acquired territories had even less reason to feel dutiful towards the English crown; some, like the Count of Armagnac, had fought against the prince in 1355 and 1356 (Armagnac had been appointed lieutenant in Languedoc by John II in 1352), and many were used to their independence and had benefited from the weakness of the French king, enabling them to play the field and give their support where it most suited them. Although many of them had chosen to fight on the English side, they were neither committed nor steadfast in their loyalty. Their own self interest would always come first, and they deeply resented having a sovereign head of state foisted upon them, particularly one who would live among them. The counts of Perigord and Armagnac were not alone in their outspoken view that the king of France had no right to give their lands to England.39 Edward III and the prince might also have remembered that even in the Angevin empire the local nobility had resented their overlord’s authority. After Richard had been created Duke of Aquitaine in 1172 at the age of fifteen, formally invested by his father, Henry II, Richard had subsequently spent many years quelling unrest among his nobles and first displayed his considerable military abilities in imposing his authority in his own domain. Getting the local nobility on side would be key to the success of the prince’s administration. To achieve this peaceably would require hosting and entertaining them, persuading them of the benefits of the new administration and the closer ties to the English crown, and in this, Joan, as his wife, would have an important role.

  Although the task facing Joan and the prince in Aquitaine was daunting, they were well prepared. The prince had acted as Edward III’s lieutenant in Gascony, and had been his father’s deputy in England many times, albeit on his own home ground with strong support from his father’s council and Parliament. In Aquitaine the prince would have far greater authority than any previous royal lieutenant, and he was secure in the knowledge he had his father’s complete support. As a soldier he knew his own abilities and had confidence in the partnership he had forged with his men. Much of the groundwork had been accomplished by members of his staff prior to his arrival. The treaty terms included a timescale for the transition of all the ceded territories, and this process started in October 1360 as soon as the treaty had been signed. The first town to be transferred was La Rochelle. In July 1361, a year before the prince’s investiture as Prince of Aquitaine, his trusted lieutenant Sir John Chandos had been sent to handle the annexation of the new territories. Although Chandos was about ten years older than the prince and had started his military career in Edward III’s service, he had become a close personal friend. He fought with the prince at Crécy, and was one of his leading commanders in the 1355 campaign. As a knight and soldier he was widely respected (two chroniclers, Knighton and Walsingham, described him as one of the most famous knights of the age) and his reputation and tenacity were useful tools in securing the acquisition of the many castles and strongholds in the hands of individual commanders who were not surprisingly reluctant to give up their positions of power.40 A mixture of local nobility and English captains, most owed nominal loyalty to the English crown, but they had become more interested in securing their own power in the area, exploiting and terrorising the surrounding countryside. Accompanying Chandos were several other able members of the prince’s staff, including Sir Richard Stafford, Sir William Farley, Sir Nigel Loring, Sir Stephen Cosington, Thomas and William Felton and Adam Hoghton.41 Their job was to take over the existing Gascon administrative network in preparation for the prince’s arrival, and extend this throughout Aquitaine. In fact, the degree of cooperation which they received from the chief citizens in most areas of the new territories was considerable. There appears to have been general acceptance initially of the new change of allegiance and, other than a natural concern to ensure confirmation of privileges conferred by the French kings, the local nobility cooperated. This was partly due to self interest, as the new administration restored law and order and brought protection with it; by February 1362, when the transfer of the ceded territories had been completed, the influence of the free companies in those areas had virtually ceased.42

  When the prince and Joan arrived at Bordeaux with their entourage on 29 June 1363 they were met by Sir John Chandos, and housed at the archbishop’s palace. This was a welcome greeting for Joan, for Chandos, having been one of Thomas Holand’s valued companions and awarded a £20 annuity from Joan’s Chesterfield estate, was an old friend.43 The prince and his father had given considerable thought to the way in which the prince would present himself to his new subjects. It is significant that despite the Angevin link, Edward III chose not to emulate Henry II in the ceremony of investiture for his son. Whereas in 1172 Henry II had held a formal enthronement for Richard at Poitiers, linking Richard directly to his forebears as dukes of Aquitaine, Edward III created his eldest son Prince of Aquitaine in Westminster, and a year was to pass before the prince arrived in the principality. The message for the populace was intentionally and unambiguously blunt. The Prince of Aquitaine might step in the footsteps of the dukes, but the title and the principality were both English creations, owing their existence to the king of England’s triumphs in France. There was no pretence that the local populace had consented to the change. The first order of business therefore was for the prince to take homage from his new subjects, to reinforce the message that they recognised his authority and that they owed their allegiance to him. Within ten days of his arrival, on 9 July, the prince began to receive his Gascon vassals.44 The first lord to pay homage was Arnaud Amanieu, Lord of Albret, and in a series of ceremonies held in the cathedral of St Andrews in Bordeaux, a succession of the greater nobles swore allegiance to the prince. In early August the prince left the city and travelled first to Bergerac, then on to Périgueux, Angoulême, Cognac, Saintes, Saint Jean d’Angely, La Rochelle and Poitiers, reaching Agen in time for Christmas, returning to Poitiers in February 1364.45 At each stage the prince received the homages of the local nobility, dignitaries and municipal officers, the mayors, jurats, consuls of each town and city. This was a triumphal progress, deliberately impressing on the local nobility that the prince had come to stay, and reinforcing the message of English dominion with the physical act of swearing loyalty to him. Nevertheless, the prince and his administration were also careful to ensure that, as far as possible, charters of privilege for individual towns were confirmed or granted, in some cases with promises to pay for necessary work. The scale of the exercise was immense; it has been calculated that between 9 July 1363 and 4 April 1364 when the list closed the prince received over a thousand individual homages.46

  Some of the nobility would have known the prince from earlier times while for others it would be their first encounter with their new lord. The prince was on show and would have wanted to look his best and make a good impression on his new subjects, so it is likely that his clothes and equipment, his retinue and all his accoutrements were the finest; a grandiose display of wealth and majesty designed to awe and impress. In many ways this was a similar progress to that made by the prince when he returned from his victory at Poitiers and entered London with his royal captive, greeted at every point along his route by crowds of well-wishers and rejoicing, but there was a crucial difference. The celebratory progress was also an opportunity to impress on the populace that the prince, their wealthy and powerful new lord, was here to stay. Joan’s presence is not recorded throughout this period but as his wife, and the leading lady of the new Aquitanian court, she was a vital accompaniment, and it must be assumed that she was at her husband’s side throughout the whole progress. This is substantiated by the only known mention of Joan during this period, in Poitiers in N
ovember 1363, when the Marshal of Brittany, Jean de Beaumanoir, is alleged to have responded to an unfavourable comment about his wife’s clothing with a retort that Joan and her ladies favoured unsuitable garments, wearing furred gowns with slit coats and great fringes.47 Given the prince’s express intention of impressing his new subjects, and his own preference for luxurious clothing, he would have required his wife to be fashionably garbed (the more revealing style of clothing, tight-fitting with low-cut necklines and hair dressed with pearls and precious stones, was an existing fashion trend when they left England), and as a princess Joan was entitled to use the trimmed miniver fur reserved for royalty to decoratively adorn her clothing.48 Certainly as the prince’s wife she was expected to set an example and would also have dressed to impress; it would not be remarkable if her style of dressing had initiated a fashion trend among the local nobility. De Beaumanoir’s offhand remark has been cited as evidence that Joan had a love of luxury but there is little to substantiate this, and it may simply have been French pique, as around this time Charles V of France and the Pope, Urban V, had issued laws forbidding what were deemed to be short suits and dissolute clothing.49

  By April 1364 the prince had completed the business of making himself known to his new subjects and taking their oaths of allegiance. The six-month progress must have been exhausting, and Joan may well have felt relief when it came to an end. Initially returning to Angoulême, they seem to have divided their time mainly between the castle at Angoulême and the archbishop’s palace at Bordeaux. The prince gave more attention to his family and domestic affairs, and finalised the marriages of two of his stepchildren. Joan’s eldest son, Thomas, now aged fourteen, was married to Alice, daughter of the Earl of Arundel, and Maud, probably aged around ten, was married to the Earl of Devon’s grandson, Hugh Courtenay. On her marriage Maud was granted the manors of Sutton Courtenay in Berkshire and Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire.50 The prince would have been careful to ensure that his stepchildren were accompanied back to England by trusted members of his retinue, and it is possible that Thomas and Maud travelled back to England together. This was not the first time Joan had parted from her children, but it may have been more of a wrench this time, as there was no reason to anticipate that Thomas or Maud would live in her household again. However, Joan had known this day would come, and she would have been sensible, and no doubt pleased, with the considerable advantage her children were gaining through their stepfather’s influence.