"The Most Amorous Woman in England"
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| Carving reputedly of Joan of Kent. |
Back in February, I wrote a
post about the first Prince of Wales, Edward of Woodstock, and his romance
with Joan, the Countess of Kent. (See here.) (Note that both "the Black Prince" and "the Fair Maid of Kent" are apparently posthumous monikers.) Appropriately
for Valentine’s Day, my February post told the romantic legend of Edward and
Joan’s love story. Now, I’m going to
tell you what history claims.
Not to rehash that previous
information, but Edward, son of King Edward III, by all accounts fell in love
with the Countess, perhaps even when they were children. The story picks up when they were grown and she
was a widow who had already been married to two husbands.
That is, two husbands at the
same time.
Even by the sympathetic chronicler Froissart she was called the "most beautiful lady in England, and by far the most amorous."
The historically accepted
wisdom of the clandestine marriages of Joan of Kent is that at the age of
twelve, she and Sir Thomas Holland exchanged vows, telling no one. Holland was a full-fledged knight and
fighting man, twelve years older than she.
Roughly a year later, when Holland was off at war, her parents arranged
for her to marry Sir William Montacute (or Montague), a boy about her own age, who
later succeeded his father as the Earl of Salisbury.
Making the story even more
complicated, Joan was “adopted” by the royal family and spent much of her
childhood with them, presumably including the portion during which she married
Holland. Did she tell the king and
queen, or her parents, about her secret marriage before she married Salisbury? If not, why not? If so, why did they ignore her?
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| Joan's first husbands. Sir Thomas Holland (L) and the Earl of Salisbury (R). |
And if she was, indeed
married already, how could she stand before a priest and take vows, knowing she
was no doubt committing a mortal sin and would go to Hell?
We have no answers to these
questions.
Later in the year she was
married, when Holland returned from the war, we are told that he claimed her as
his wife by their previous vow. We are
also told that her current husband (only about thirteen, as Joan was) objected
to Holland’s claim. What happened
next? Over the next few years, Holland travelled
between England and the war on the continent.
In that war, he fought beside William Montacute’s father, at that time
the earl. When he returned to England,
he served as Joan’s husband’s steward.
When I was doing my research
for SECRETS AT COURT, set around the marriage of Edward and Joan, I discovered
this with astonishment. If true, the
situation is this: Holland has said
“she’s my wife, not yours,” but for several years, he works intimately with his
“wife’s” current husband and family. He
does not pursue legal remedies to take her back for five years. (The explanation was that he lacked money to
take the petition to the church courts.
Strange, if true, that her husband would pay him to be a steward if the
money was going to be spent making the case to take his wife away!)
Again, one must wonder what
her husband, parents, and Joan herself were thinking during these years. Why would they accept Holland as a member of
the household? History does not tell us.
Finally, on the battlefield
in France, Holland took an esteemed French hostage and received a hefty ransom
for him. Received it, in fact, from King
Edward, who must have known how he would use it, for this was presumably the
money he needed to launch a legal offensive.
After several years, and a
petition to the Pope, Holland’s claim was accepted and Joan’s marriage to
Salisbury was put aside. She and Holland
lived as husband and wife for eleven years and had five children. He died in France, with her beside him, and
she returned to England a widow.
Within a few months, she had
secretly married Prince Edward. A few months.
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| Prince Edward, kneeling before his father, accepting responsibility for Aquitaine. |
Granted, they had known each
other since childhood, but such haste does seem, at the very least, questionable. And although she had been respectably married
for eleven years, her background was certainly not one considered suitable for
a future queen of England, which may be the reason they did not wait for
permission.
But the two lovebirds had an
obstacle even greater than her past.
According to the church, they were too closely related to receive
permission to marry. (Both were
grandchildren of Edward I.) In order to wed,
they would have to petition the Pope for dispensation from the church laws of
consanguinity, a lengthy process.
But they did not wait and as
a result, in 1361, the heir to the throne was married to a woman forbidden to
him by the church. This state of affairs
could not be allowed to continue and with the help of his father the king, a
petition was sent to the Pope for dispensation and permission they should have
obtained before they exchanged vows. (You would think Joan might have hesitated
to do the whole secret wedding again, since that’s exactly how she got into
trouble the first time. On the other
hand, she also knew that such a marriage had a good chance of being upheld, meaning
everyone would just have to accept her slightly checkered past.)
There was a new Pope by this
time and, ultimately, he upheld the wedding.
One wonders whether the one who wrestled with Joan’s first marriages would
have been so accommodating.
Yes, truth is stranger than
fiction, if this story can be believed, and yet, it is still repeated by
historians with a straight face. It
raised enough questions for me, however, to spark SECRETS AT COURT, where I created
my own explanation for the facts we know.
And what about the happily
ever after? Did Edward and Joan have it?
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| Richard II, Edward & Joan's son. |
They did remained happily
married, apparently, for the remainder of Edward’s short life. Prince Edward continued his record of
successful leadership in war but died before his father, at the age of 46,
leaving his son to wear the crown. Thus,
Joan, the first Princess of Wales, never became queen of England.
Shortly after their marriage,
they went to Aquitaine to rule over what was left of Edward III’s French
possessions. Their first son, born more
than three years after their wedding, died at age five or six. Their second son, two years younger, became
Richard II and sat on the English throne.
After Edward’s death, Joan
did not remarry, though she lived another nine years. She was very influential in the court of her
son, but her last days were sad. One of her Holland sons was condemned to death by the king for killing
another noble. She spent the last days of her life pleading for his release, which only came the day she died.
At her death, she was buried,
as she had asked, not beside her royal husband, but “near the monument of our
late lord and husband, the Earl of Kent.”
Thomas Holland.
Author
photo Jennifer Girard
