by Penny Lawne
19. B. Wilkinson, ‘The Protests of the earls of Arundel and Surrey in the crisis of 1341’, English Historical Review, 46 (1931), p. 181.
20. Froissart, Chronicles, Johnes, i, p. 117.
21. Foedera, ii, p. ii 1195. The earl’s movements at this time are not known for certain. Douch, ‘The Career, Lands and Family of William Montague’, p. 86 suggests the final arrangements for his release were not completed until mid-1342.
22. Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family’, p. 22 notes Otto drawing wages for the expedition. Throughout their military careers Otto and Thomas were generally together, often with Otto as Thomas’ lieutenant, so it likely that Thomas was with him. Thomas and Alan were paid war wages from 23 September 1342 to 15 February 1343.
23. Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family’, p. 22.
24. Warner, ‘The Montague earls of Salisbury’, p. 21.
25. Douch, ‘The Career Lands and Family of William Montague Earl of Salisbury’, p. 86; Warner, ‘The Montague earls of Salisbury’, p. 22.
26. TNA, C76/18, m. 13 3 attorneys appointed until Christmas; CPR 1343–1345, p. 15: in May John Holand and Henry Fitz Roger appointed.
27. Froissart, Oeuvres, Lettenhove, ii, p. 398.
28. Foedera, ii, p. ii, 1232, 1233.
29. Richard Barber, Edward III and the Triumph of England: The Battle of Crécy and the Company of the Garter (London, 2013), pp. 164–165, 170–171, 172–174.
30. CFR 1337–1347, p. 358. An escheator was appointed to take an inquisition of his lands at the end of January 1344.
31. CPR 1345–1348, p. 473.
32. This is a conclusion drawn by Mortimer in The Perfect King, p. 213.
33. CPR 1345–1348, p. 137.
34. Foedera, iii, i, pp. 30–31.
35. Foedera, iii, i, pp. 139, 330, 473.
36. CIPM, xii, p. 162.
37. Clifford J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp English Strategy Under Edward III, 1327–1360 (Woodbridge, 2000), p. 221.
38. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, i: Trial by Battle, p. 497; Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, p. 217 and based on Murimuth, p. 198.
39. CPR 1345–1348, p. 127.
40. The number of vessels is taken from Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, p. 217.
41. Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family’, p. 24
42. Murimuth, p. 199.
43. Jean Le Bel, Chronique, ii, 77; Froissart, Oeuvres, Lettenhove, iv, p. 402.
44. W. Shaw, Knights of England (London, 1906), ii, p. 6. John is not listed but as he accompanied the king and was the same age as Prince Edward it is unlikely he was deliberately left out.
45. Sumption, The Hundred Year War, i: Trial by Battle, p. 503.
46. Barber, Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince, p. 17.
47. Froissart, Chronicles, Johnes, p. 155.
48. Barber, Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince, p. 18.
49. Jean Le Bel, Chronique, 2:83.
50. Barber, Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince, p. 35.
51. Le Bel and Froissart both state Calais was the ultimate destination. See Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, p. 257–259.
52. Letter of Edward III to Sir Thomas Lucy dated 3 September, set out in Barber, Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince, pp. 21–23.
53. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, p. 273.
54. CPR, 1345–1348, pp. 337,538, 550, 551.
55. King David of Scotland was captured at Neville’s Cross in 1346. In a secret ransom treaty of 1356 the ransom proposed was 90,000 marks (a mark was worth two-thirds of a pound, i.e. 13s 4d Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, p. 337. After the Battle of Poitiers, the ransom set for King John was 4,000,000 écus, equal to £666,667 according to Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, p. 389.
56. Sumption, Hundred Years War, i: Trial by Battle, p. 511.
57. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, p. 247.
58. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III, p. 116.
59. This cannot be confirmed definitively but it is a reasonable inference assuming that she had remained in the royal household as a companion for the princesses.
60. CPR 1345–1348, pp. 310–311.
61. Calendar of Papal Registers, Letters, 1342–1362, p. 235.
62. Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family’, p. 27; Wentersdorf, ‘The Clandestine Marriages of the Fair Maid of Kent’, p. 210.
63. Thomas’ petition is not listed in the Calendar of Papal Registers, Petitions, 1342–1419. According to Wentersdorf there is no copy either in the Vatican’s Secret Archives. Wentersdorf, ‘The Clandestine Marriages of the Fair Maid of Kent’, p. 229. However, the papal letter of May 1348 makes it clear Thomas had already petitioned.
64. The evidence for this comes from the Pope’s brief dated May 1348 to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of Norwich and London which describes Joan as being in solitary confinement and under strong guard – ‘solitariam et segretatam a consortio hominum sub forti et arta custodia’. Wentersdorf, ‘The Clandestine Marriages of the Fair Maid of Kent’, pp. 212, 220.
65. CPR 1345–1348, p. 431.
66. W. Shaw, Knights of England (London, 1906), i, p. i; Register of Edward the Black Prince (4 vols, London, 1930–33), iv, pp. 72–73.
67. Vergil, Anglicae Historiae: Libri Vigintiseptem, p. 379.
68. Wentersdorf, ‘The Clandestine Marriages of the Fair Maid of Kent’, p. 210, citing Foedera, iv, p. 25; Calendar of Papal Registers, Petitions, 1342–1419, pp. 24, 33; Calendar Papal Registers, Papal Letters 1342–1362, pp. 108, 177, 227, 344, 363, 425, 436, 470–1, 485.
69. Wentersdorf, ‘The Clandestine Marriages of the Fair Maid of Kent’, p. 210.
70. Brundage, ‘Concubinage and Marriage in Medieval Canon Law’, pp. 1–17.
71. CPR 1348–1350, pp. 212–213.
72. Calendar of Papal Registers, Papal Letters, 1342–1362, p. 252.
73. Beltz, Memorials of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, p. 385.
74. Wentersdorf, ‘The Clandestine Marriages of the Fair Maid of Kent’, p. 213.
75. The details of the proceedings have been taken from Wentersdorf, ‘The Clandestine Marriages of the Fair Maid of Kent’.
76. TNA, E30/67.
77. CCR 1349–1354, pp. 30–31. Catherine had died by 12 May 1349.
78. CIPM, ix, p. 201.
79. CFR 1347–1356, pp. 116, 151, 154; Peter Fleming, ‘Warr Family’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004); CPR 1348–1350, pp. 327, 398. Margaret’s arms of Or, 2 bars gulles and 3 torteaux in chief are still to be seen, impaled with those of Edmund, in a stained glass window in Chesterfield church in Derbyshire. The town of Chesterfield was held as part of the Kent estates.
80. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility, p. 26.
81. CCR 1346–1349, p. 315.
82. The Complete Peerage, vii, p. 149.
83. Clifford J. Rogers, The Wars of Edward III, Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 63
84. Chamberlayne, ‘Joan of Kent’s Tale: Adultery and Rape in the Age of Chivalry’, pp. 6–8.
85. The Chronicle of Adam Usk 1377–1421, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford, 1997), p. 63.
6 Lady Holand: A Wife at Last, 1350–1352
1. Sumption, Hundred Years War, i: Trial by Battle, p. 592; Rogers, Wars of Edward III, p. xxii; England used the silver standard-£1 was equivalent to 1½ marks of silver, and a mark was 13s 4d. There were 20 shillings in a pound, and 12 pence in a shilling. The daily wage of a farm labourer was around 2 pence a day in the 1330s, and of a craftsman about 3/4d a day in the 1350s.
2. Saul, Knights and Esquires, p. 8–9.
3. Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family’, p. 26.
4. Ibid, p. 26.
5. Foedera, iii, pp. 191, 393.
6. Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. ii: Trial by Fire (London, 1999), pp. 71–2.
7. William’s wife also conceived very shortly after their marriage.
8. CIPM, vii, p. 552. When Thomas died in December 1360 his son Thomas is describe as being nine
or ten years of age. There has been considerable speculation about the number of children Joan bore Thomas and various sources, including internet sites, continue to state that they had five children, the eldest of whom was a boy called Edmund who died. This appears to be based on the premise that Thomas and Joan would have called their eldest son after Joan’s father, because they inherited his dignities. It is difficult to be accurate regarding the numbers of children as births and deaths were not recorded in a central register. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Joan bore a son called Edmund. As Joan’s marriage to Thomas was not validated until November 1349 the earliest she could have borne their first child would have been August 1350, and even if Thomas was only nine in December 1360 it is unlikely that he was a second child. Until Joan’s brother John died in December 1352 Thomas and Joan had no real anticipation that they would inherit the Kent earldom, and it would have been normal and natural for Thomas to name their eldest son after himself.
9. Register of Edward the Black Prince (4 vols, London, 1930–33), iv, p. 87.
10. Rogers, The Wars of Edward III, pp. 122, 133. Rogers notes that John is described among Henry of Lancaster’s retinue in the King’s Wardrobe records for 1346/1347 but suggests John did not join the royal host until the siege of Calais.
11. These figures are collated from using the incomplete figures given in the Inquisitions post mortem valuation taken at John’s death in 1352 (CIPM, vii, pp. 41–57), the values cited in the dower valuation for his widow Elizabeth (CCR 1349–1354, pp. 530–1), and the valuations for the Kent estates from the original grants to Edmund.
12. CFR 1347–1356, p. 236; CCR 1349–1354, p. 578.
13. Warner, ‘The Montague earls of Salisbury’, p. 38. Joan Montague married William Ufford and died childless in 1362.
14. CCR 1340–1354, pp. 411–412, 459. In January 1352 Edward and Alice are cited assenting to a payment to Alice’s mother, Mary, while in February 1352 an order was made to restore to Edward lands seized by the escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk on Alice’s death.
15. Rowena Archer, ‘The Estates and Finances of Margaret of Brotherton c. 1320–1399’, Bulletin of Institute of Historical Research, LX (1987), p. 266.
16. Calendar of Papal Registers, Papal Letters, 1342–1362, pp. 381, 391.
17. Archer, ‘The Estates and Finances of Margaret of Brotherton’, p. 266; CPR 1354–1358, p. 325; Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 30–31.
18. Archer, ‘The Estates and Finances of Margaret of Brotherton’, pp. 266–267.
19. Foedera, v, p. 702.
20. TNA, C76/30 m3.
21. Colvin, History of the Kings Works, I, p. 424; Sumption, The Hundred Years War, i: Trial by Battle, p. 583.
22. Allmand, Hundred Years War, p. 97.
23. CPR 1350–1354, p. 231.
24. John Holand’s date of birth is unknown. Joan bore Thomas four children, and all that is known for certain are the dates Thomas and John died. Thomas was clearly the elder of the two boys as he inherited the earldom. I think it is reasonable to suggest that Thomas and Joan named their second son John after Joan’s brother, and requested he stand as godfather to the child. John Holand would therefore have been born before the death of Joan’s brother in December 1352.
25. CPR 1350–1354, p. 312.
26. CPR 1350–1354, p. 383; CIPM, vii, p. 41.
27. The Complete Peerage, vii, pp. 1480150; College of Arms MS Staff. C. 10/160.6. John’s arms can still be seen in Lichfield Cathedral; per pale gules, three lions passant guardant a bordure argent with the Juliers arms of Or a lion rampant sable. It is not clear what connection John had to the Cathedral and why his arms are there.
28. The Complete Peerage, vii, pp. 150–154.
29. J. Nichols, Collection of the Wills of the Kings and Queens of England (London, 1780), p. 212; Lambeth Register Arundel, p. 2, ff. 154v, 155r.
30. There were thirty-eight counties in England at this time. Ormrod, Edward III, p. 161.
31. CIPM, vii, pp. 41–57.
32. A total of thirty advowsons and 124 knight’s fees in all.
33. CCR 1349–1354, pp. 530–531, 552–554, 594. The annual income per county was: Surrey £80, Hampshire £314 15s, Devon £114 13s 4d, Somerset £294, Gloucestershire £187 6s 8d, Sussex £4 16s 8d; the knight’s fees and advowsons are valued separately and indicate an annual income from these of £1,000. Altogether these come to nearly £1,800 a year.
34. CCR 1349–1354, p. 578; CPR 1338–1340, p. 133; CCR 1346–1349, p. 417; CPR 1350–1354, p. 86–91, 435. James Beaufort was presented to Keggeworth Church in the Lincoln diocese (in the king’s gift) in 1353.
35. CCR 1349–1354, pp. 530–531, 594; CFR 1347–1356, pp. 356–357.
36. CCR 1349–1354, pp. 585, 588.
37. CCR 1350–1354, p. 77.
38. The Complete Peerage, vii, p. 150. The summons came in July 1353.
39. Catalogue of Seals, HMSO, 1978, pp. 398–399; de Gray Birch, iii, p. 386.
40. The castle has not survived, as it was demolished in the eighteenth century and the stones were used to build a house in Donington Park, which was pulled down in its turn in 1793 by the Marquis of Hastings and rebuilt as Donington Hall. The only trace of the medieval castle now is a slight depression where the moat once stood and a few stones in the wall of a private garden. The park is now the site of the Donington Park racing circuit. The church at Castle Donington, originally built in the thirteenth century, survives, though in its present condition, after various alterations and more recent restoration, there is no trace of any connection to Joan.
41. Rev. R Lethbridge Farmer, Notes on two Churches visited by the Archaeological Society 1914; Castle Donington Church, Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society; pp. 1–10.
42. CPR, 1348–1350, p. 274.
43. CIPM, vi, p. 233.
44. CIPM, vii, p. 43.
45. CIPM, xv, p. 182.
46. For a more detailed analysis of the machinery of a large noble household see Saul, Knights and Esquires, C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages (London and New York, 1996); C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medieval England (London, 1999); Holmes, Estates of the Higher Nobility.
47. Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family’, covers the history of the Holand family from 1353 to 1475 and comments on the absence of family and estate papers. In 2005 I searched the manorial documents register at the National Archives and could find no entries for any of Joan’s estates contemporaneous with her lifetime. On Joan’s death the estate records would have been passed to her eldest son Thomas Holand. The vicissitudes of time and fortune meant that the direct male family line died out within a hundred years of Joan’s death, and the estates were split up, the records similarly split no doubt.
48. CIPM, xv, p. 181, Blanche died on 3 July 1380; CIPM, xix, p. 306, Elizabeth died on 6 June 1411.
49. CIPM, vii, p. 43.
50. CPR 1350–1354, p. 383. CPR 1350–1354, p. 435, Beaufort was presented to a church in the diocese of Lincoln in 1353; CPR 1350–1354, p. 497, Aspale is described as the king’s yeoman; CPR 1350–1354, pp. 92, 482, Loxley appointed JP in Surrey.
51. CCR 1349–1354, p. 578.
52. CPR 1350–1354, pp. 86–91. CPR 1327–1330, p. 268, in 1328 Gerard and Henry received pardons for actions committed on Edmund’s behalf. L. H. Butler, ‘Robert Braybrooke, Bishop of London (1381–1404) and his kinsmen’ (University of Oxford D. Phil. thesis, 1952), p. ii.
53. CPR 1327–1330, p. 159; CFR 1327–1337, p. 72; CPR 1327–1330, p. 385; CPR 1334–1338, p. 295; CCR 1346–1349, p. 417; CPR 1350–1354, pp. 27, 28, 84, 88.
54. Foedera, iii, p. 78.
55. CPR 1348–1350, p. 309.
56. CPR 1350–1354, pp. 46, 52–55, 172, 306.
57. CPR 1348–1350, pp. 184, 412.
58. CPR 1350–1354, pp. 231, 455, 482, 487, 498, 518.
59. Holmes, Estates of the Higher Nobility, pp. 22–23.
; 60. CCR 1354–1360, pp. 204, 208; CCR 1360–1364, p. 5.
61. Holmes, Estates of the Higher Nobility, p. 58; Margaret Wade Labarge, Women in Medieval Life (London, 2001), p. 89–90.
62. Labarge, Women in Medieval Life, p. 90.
63. CPR 1354–1358, p. 27; G. R. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain (London, 1958); Victoria History of the County of Lincolnshire (London, 1906), Vol. 2, p. 315.
64. CChR 1341–1417, p. 133.
65. TNA, C143/321/3; CPR 1354–1358, p. 411; CIPM, x, pp. 447–448.
66. CIPM, x, pp. 447–448.
67. CPR 1358–1361, p. 480.
7 A Soldier’s Wife, 1352–1360
1. Foedera, iii, i, p. 274; Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family’, p. 35.
2. TNA, E403/371, mm. 7, 16 lists payments of £100 and 100 marks for Thomas’ service in Brittany.
3. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, ii Trial by Fire, p. 98; describes the improvements to Calais’ defences achieved by October 1352, although he does not mention Thomas.
4. TNA, C76/32, m. 7, 8; Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family’, pp. 35, 280.
5. CPR 1354–1358, p. 15.
6. Froissart, Oeuvres, Lettenhove, ii, p. 398.
7. CPR 1350–1354, pp. 103, 188,; CPR 1348–1350, pp. 184, 412; CPR 1345–1348, p. 139.
8. CPR 1345–1348, pp. 112, 169, 324; RBP, iii, p. 368; CPR 1350–1354, p. 43; CPR 1334–1338, p. 163.
9. CPR 1350–1354, p. 480.
10. TNA, C76/32 m. 7.
11. TNA, SC7/22/16.
12. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, ii: Trial by Fire, pp. 134–135, describes the campaigning.
13. TNA, C76/32, m. 4.
14. CPR 1354–1358, p. 27.
15. John Aberth, Criminal Churchmen in the Age of Edward III, The Case of Bishop Thomas de Lisle (Pennsylvania, 1996), pp. 119–138.
16. Testamenta Vetusta, ed. N. H. Nichols (2 vols, London, 1826), i, pp. 64–66.
17. The Complete Peerage, VII p. 154, CCR 1385–1389, p. 13.
18. TNA, E101/93/8.
19. CPR 1354–1358, p. 26
20. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, ii: Trial by Fire, pp. 272–3, 421, 544, 459.
21. TNA, C76/32, m. 3; C76/33, m. 7, 14; Foedera, i, p. 307.