by Penny Lawne
Perhaps without realising it, Joan encouraged others to treat her son in a similarly reverential way, including his own brothers, who were kept so markedly dependent on their brother’s favour. The change in the timing of his coronation oath, surrounding him with loyal and trusted men, smoothing over difficulties whenever she could, encouraged Richard to expect obedient homage on the basis of his birth. When even Gaunt, the most powerful noble in the land, adopted a humble stance in his presence, this simply reinforced and endorsed the extreme deference with which Richard was treated by those who sought to protect him. This was a far cry from the way his grandfather had been treated when he became king. Being treated with deference, even veneration, by older, experienced and respected noblemen of power and rank in his early years helped to create a distance between Richard and his peers that would later be hard to bridge. This was increased by the fact that Richard was able to exercise power and political influence during his minority. Joan actively encouraged him to do so by exercising her own influence in his name and ensuring that the credit for actions made under her guidance went to him, with appointments and rewards being made in his name. Protected and cosseted, encouraged to expect esteem and deference, enjoying power from his earliest days as king, Richard grew up in a deliberately rarefied atmosphere. He never enjoyed the comradely environment his father and grandfather experienced with their peers, and he was never given the opportunity to prove himself among them on an equal footing. Joan helped, unintentionally, to isolate her son, and this undoubtedly encouraged his dependence on those few peers with whom he was able to build a personal relationship. Joan failed to recognise the dangers inherent in his overreliance on individual friendships, and although she saw that Richard had inherited his father’s tendency towards liberal generosity, she failed to instil in him any lasting caution. Richard did not inherit his mother’s discretion, nor did he learn from her example, and without her guiding hand he was later to display partisanship and favour in excess, becoming disastrously reliant upon favourites such as Robert de Vere.
Later Richard was to be criticised for his insistence on a high degree of formality at court as well as absolute obeisance towards him as king.6 In the early years of the reign Joan was the most important female figure at court and she could hardly avoid influencing its tone. The Aquitanian court she had presided over with the prince had been flamboyant, generous and extravagant, the affluence and largesse emulating the example set by Edward III. Inevitably this would be the model Joan would promote for her son, even if this was not her own choice. Similarly she would have encouraged her son to emulate his father in the attitude he adopted towards his subjects. The prince had attracted criticism in Aquitaine for being haughty and there were tales of his insistence on anyone approaching him adopting a bended knee. Joan’s own style was in marked contrast, but the importance she attached to her son’s royal heritage undoubtedly fostered in the young Richard any predisposition towards haughtiness he may have inherited from his father. Surrounded by his father’s old servants, who could and did remind Richard of his father and the way he had lived, it was inevitable that Richard would emulate his father and grandfather’s lavish generosity. However, a notable feature enjoyed by both the prince and Edward III was a strong rapport with the nobility, a result of their shared comradeship of arms and expressed in a common purpose in waging the war with France. Richard, succeeding to the throne as a child, and then presiding over a fading war effort and successive failures in France, was never able to develop this kind of relationship with the nobility. After his father’s death Richard did not have anyone to provide him with strong and authoritative discipline, and he was surrounded by too many people who deferred to him, stressing his importance, while restricting his independence. Joan did her best to provide her son with support by surrounding him with close family and loyal retainers, but this could not replace the trust and respect her husband and his father had earned through their feats of arms. Reliance on formality, and ceremony, was no substitute for shared military experiences, and as time passed Richard’s court became more formal and less flexible in style.
Richard was only eighteen when his mother died and there is nothing to suggest that he had any feelings other than love for her. He respected her wishes and ensured she was buried as she had directed, and although he does not seem to have visited the grave often or held annual commemorative services for her, he ensured her grave was maintained. As she had hoped and encouraged in him, he remained on good terms with all of those with whom she had been closest. John Holand was quickly reconciled to his half-brother through the good offices of John of Gaunt and was granted a full pardon in February 1386. His relationship with Richard never faltered again. It is extraordinary that Richard should forgive his half-brother for such an appalling and public crime, and that Gaunt should be the one to conciliate; their affection for Joan and grief at her death played a significant part in motivating their actions. Thomas was also restored to favour. Richard remained on good terms with his mother’s knights, and it is notable that those who harboured Lollard sympathies – William Beauchamp, Richard Stury, John Clanvowe, Lewis Clifford and William Neville – later all escaped prosecution. Joan’s death was a tragedy for Richard, as he lost his strongest supporter and his most ardent protector. It is notable that the two main portraits of Richard, the panel portrait hanging in Westminster Abbey and the Wilton Diptych, show Richard as the boy king, as he would have been during his mother’s lifetime. If indeed he was the one responsible for their commission, perhaps the older Richard wanted to evoke memories of happier times.
For most of her life Joan occupied an unusually privileged position as one of an elite group of people surrounding the king, at the centre of political life, and as the prince’s wife and Richard’s mother she spent twenty-four years in a position of considerable influence. Blessed with beauty and a warm and affectionate nature, she was modest, unambitious and a natural peacemaker but she was also on occasions independent, strong-willed, brave and determined. She understood and accepted the society into which she was born, and she shaped her life within it. She fulfilled her responsibilities and duties in her different roles as wife, mother and landowner. As the first Princess of Wales Joan set a standard of behaviour for others to admire and emulate, earning the respect and affection of her contemporaries. Judging her by the standards of her time, Chandos Herald’s description of Joan as ‘beautiful, pleasant and wise’ is a fitting epitaph.
1. Joan’s grandfather, Edward I. A formidable king, he took great care to plan a generous financial provision for his youngest son, Joan’s father Edmund of Woodstock, but died before he could complete the endowment.
2. Edward II was Joan’s half-uncle. He was deposed by his wife, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, in 1327. Three years later Joan’s father, Edmund, was tricked into believing Edward II was still alive, and executed for planning to rescue him from imprisonment in Corfe Castle.
3. Arundel Castle, Sussex. Joan lived here with her parents for the first eighteen months of her life and she was probably born here. The stone castle was originally built by one of William the Conqueror’s relatives, Roger de Montgomery, in the eleventh century. It became the principal seat of the earls of Arundel. The second earl, Edmund Fitzalan, was executed by Roger Mortimer in 1326, and the castle was granted to Joan’s father, Edmund, in 1327.
4. Arundel Castle, Sussex. This entrance was built in 1295 by Richard Fitzalan, 1st Earl of Arundel. Edmund, Earl of Kent (Joan’s father), would have left the castle through this entrance on his last fateful journey to the parliament at Winchester in March 1330.
5. Queen Philippa took Joan and her brothers, Edmund and John, into her household six months after their father’s execution in 1330. This effigy was commissioned by Philippa before her death.
6. This shows the king as he would have been in later life. Edward III was a young man of eighteen when Joan and her brothers came to live in his wife’s household.
7. The Garter Book was commissioned by William Bruges, accredited as being the first Garter King of Arms, and was probably made between 1430 and 1440. The book has twenty-seven full-page miniatures showing the twenty-six Garter knights in their Garter stalls at St George’s chapel, Windsor, each holding a panel with heraldic shields of their successors.
8. Otto Holand was Thomas Holand’s younger brother and trusted lieutenant. John Chandos was one of Prince Edward’s closest friends and a renowned and formidable fighter and commander. Both were founder members of the Order of the Garter.
9. The church of St Edward, King and Martyr, Castle Donington, Leicestershire. Originally built in the thirteenth century, and extended in the fourteenth. Joan would have been familiar with this parish church.
10. The Bible Historiale of John the Good, King of France. This Bible was owned by King John II of France, captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, and the book was subsequently purchased by William Montague, 2nd Earl of Salisbury, for his wife Elizabeth, for 100 marks.
11. The founding chapel of the Order of the Garter, Windsor Castle’s St George’s chapel contains a stall for each of the twenty-six knights of the Garter, and an annual service is held in the chapel on St George’s day, 23 April. Joan and Prince Edward were married in the chapel in October 1361.
12. Windsor Castle, Berkshire. One of the many royal palaces Joan lived in as a child and where she would have stayed the night after her wedding to Prince Edward.
13. Berkhamsted Castle, Hertfordshire. Originally a Norman castle, in 1337 Edward III granted Berkhamsted to Prince Edward as part of the duchy of Cornwall. It was the prince’s favourite castle, and became Joan’s first home with the prince after their wedding in October 1361. Prince Edward and Joan hosted Christmas here for Edward III and Queen Philippa in 1361.
14. A reconstruction drawing of Berkhamsted Castle as it would have appeared in the twelfth century. Prince Edward paid for major renovation work to the castle before his marriage to Joan, and continued improvements to it afterwards.
15. The Bohun Psalter was made for either the 6th or 7th Earl of Hereford, both named Humphrey Bohun (d. 1361 and d. 1373, respectively). In 1362 Prince Edward purchased three psalters from the executors of the sixth earl, Humphrey de Bohun, and gave them to Joan and her two daughters, Maud and Joan Holand. The gifted psalters are likely to have been of similar quality to this psalter.
16. Detail of a historiated initial ‘E’(dwardus) of Edward III, enthroned, giving a charter to the kneeling Prince Edward, at the beginning of a collection of documents relating to the principality of Aquitaine.
17. Prince Edward’s tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, to which Joan made annual pilgrimages after his death. The prince left careful instructions for its design. The tomb chest is decorated with six shields of peace and six of war, and above it, facing downwards towards his effigy, is a painting of the Holy Trinity, which the prince gave the cathedral in his lifetime. On the opposite side of the choir lies Henry IV, the prince’s nephew and the man who deposed the prince’s son Richard II.
18. Hanging above the tomb are replicas of the prince’s helmet, surcoat, shield, gauntlets and the scabbard of his sword. The originals are displayed in a glass cabinet.
19. The copper gilt effigy shows the Prince Edward as the consummate warrior. In the nineteenth century it was carefully blackened (presumably taking his posthumous appellation of the ‘Black Prince’ literally), and remained under layers of paint until it was uncovered in the early 1930s.
20. Carved stone ceiling boss, reputedly representing Joan, in the chantry chapel beside the chapel of Our Lady Undercroft in Canterbury Cathedral. Prince Edward paid for the Chapel of Our Lady Undercroft to be redesigned, in fulfilment of the papal dispensation granted to enable him to marry Joan, and he left instructions in his will to be interred in the chapel. However, when he died, it was decided that his tomb should be placed in a more prominent position on the south side of the Trinity chapel. The chantry chapel is decorated with ceiling bosses; this carved stone boss is the largest human face and clearly represents Joan. Her hair is in a netted fret, a popular fashion at the time. However, there is no evidence that the prince ordered this and it is not known who carved it.
21. St Albans Abbey kept a book listing their benefactors; Joan was obviously considered one of their more important ones as her image is pictured in the book. The abbot (from 1349 to 1396), Thomas de la Mare, was on friendly terms with Prince Edward, who, with his parents, Edward III and Queen Philippa, were also benefactors.
22. A statue of Edward III near the west door, on the outside of Canterbury Cathedral. He stands beside a statue of the prince.
23. Richard was Joan’s youngest child, and heir to Prince Edward. He became king when he was ten. This portrait was probably commissioned by Richard shortly after Joan died, and shows him as a child king.
24. Detail of a miniature of Vilenie (villainy, abuse, baseness) offering the Lover (l’Amans) a potion. The book was owned by Sir Richard Stury, a cultured and literary man. He was one of the prince’s knights and a friend to Joan, and was appointed as a household knight to Richard II.
25. Joan arranged Richard’s marriage to Anne of Bohemia. Richard was very happy with the marriage, and was heartbroken when Anne died in 1394. They had no children.
26, 27, 28. Wallingford Castle, Oxfordshire. This was Joan’s favourite residence after Prince Edward died, and where she retired to from Richard II’s court. Joan died here on 8 August 1385. The castle was demolished on the orders of Oliver Cromwell, and these ruins are all that is left.
29. Wallingford Bridge, Oxfordshire. This bridge over the River Thames is beside the castle grounds. Joan travelled to Westminster by barge down the river.
30. St Andrews church, Wickhambreaux, Kent. Wickhambreaux was the only manor in Kent owned by Joan. It is probable that she visited and stayed at the manor on her annual pilgrimage to Prince Edward’s tomb every June after he died. The manor no longer exists. The parish church of St Andrews dates from the fourteenth century, and Joan would have known it.
31. Joan’s seal, attached to an indenture from 20 April 1380 made between Joan, Princess of Wales, and Richard de Walkington and others of the town of Beverley. The deed was signed at Missenden. This is the only surviving seal of Joan’s. It is circular and two inches in diameter. Around the border edge are the words, in Latin, ‘Joan, Princess of [obscured but probably Aquitaine], Wales, Duchess of Cornwall and Countess of Cheshire and Kent’. The round, ornamental inside panel surrounds a shield with France and England quarterly, a label of three points for Prince Edward, and a bordure for Edmund, Earl of Kent (her father). The letters around the shield are I, E and P.
32. The Princess Joan Psalter, so called because at the front of the book is John Somer’s Kalendarium (an astronomical calendar). Somer dedicated his original treatise to Joan in 1380, and it was believed for a long time that this copy was presented to Joan. However, this copy was made some years after her death.
33. Image of the Trinity in the Princess Joan Psalter. Prince Edward had an especial connection with the Trinity, and died on the feast of the Trinity. (British Library)
34. The exquisite workmanship of the Princess Joan Psalter indicates that it would have been made for a patron of considerable wealth.
35. Wilton Diptych, interior panel. On the left, Richard II is kneeling and behind him are John the Baptist, St Edward (holding a ring) and St Edmund (with the arrow of his martyrdom). On Richard’s cloak is his personal emblem of the white hart, with a gold crown around its neck and pearls decorating its antlers. On the right, the Virgin and Child. Probably painted around 1396–97, when Richard would have been twenty-eight or twenty-nine, the diptych shows Richard as a fresh-faced young boy.