Person Page - 1324

     Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent (5 August 1301 – 19 March 1330) was a member of the English Royal Family.

He was born at Woodstock in Oxfordshire, the son of Edward I Longshanks, King of England and his second wife, Margaret of France. He was 62 years younger than his father, who died when Edmund of Woodstock was only seven. Reportedly, he enjoyed his father's favour. He was summoned to Parliament by writ of summons on 5 August 1320, by which he is held to have become Baron Woodstock. On 28 July 1321 he was created Earl of Kent.

Kent was married to Margaret Wake, 3rd Baroness Wake of Liddell, daughter of John Wake, 1st Baron Wake of Liddell by Joan de Fiennes, sometime between October and December in 1325 at Blisworth in Northamptonshire.

In 1327, after the execution and forfeiture of the Earl of Arundel, Kent held the castle and honour (land) of Arundel, although he was never formally invested with the titles appropriate to this barony. He was the father of Joan of Kent, through whom the earldom eventually passed into the Holland family.

Kent was sentenced to death by Sir Robert de Hauville for treason, having supported his half-brother, the deposed King Edward II, by order of the Regents the Earl of March and Queen Isabella, before the outer walls of Winchester Castle. It was said that he believed Edward II to be still alive and had conspired to rescue him from prison. Such was public hostility to the execution that "he had to wait five hours for an executioner, because nobody wanted to do it", until a convicted murderer offered to do the deed in exchange for a pardon.

He was buried on 31 March at the Church of the Dominican Friars in Winchester.

Kent's execution was the beginning of the end for March's regency. Thereafter, in October 1330, King Edward III assumed the full powers of King with the support of Kent's cousin, the powerful Earl of Lancaster. March was executed that same year for, inter alia, having assumed the royal powers. The children and widow of the Earl of Kent were treated as members of Edward III's Royal Household.¹

     Joan, Countess of Kent (29 September 1328 – 7 August 1385), known to history as The Fair Maid of Kent, was the first Princess of Wales. The French chronicler Froissart called her "the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving." The "fair maid of Kent" appellation does not appear to be contemporary.[1]

Joan was daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, and Margaret Wake, 3rd Baroness Wake of Liddell. Her paternal grandparents were Edward I of England and his second Queen consort Marguerite of France[2]. Her maternal grandparents were John Wake, 1st Baron Wake of Liddell and Joan de Fiennes.

Her father, Edmund, was a younger half-brother of Edward II of England. Edmund's support of the King placed him in conflict with the Queen, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March. Edmund was executed after Edward II's deposition, and Joan, her mother and her siblings were placed under house-arrest in Arundel Castle when Joan was only two years old.

The Earl’s widow, Margaret Wake, was left with four children. Joan's first cousin, the new King Edward III, took on the responsibility for the family, and looked after them well. His wife, Queen Philippa (who was also Joan's second cousin), was well known for her tender-heartedness[citation needed], and Joan grew up at court, where she became friendly with her cousins, including Edward, the Black Prince.

At the age of twelve (1340), Joan entered into a clandestine marriage with Thomas Holland of Broughton,[3] without first gaining the royal consent necessary for couples of their rank. The following winter (1340 or 1341), while Holland was overseas, her family forced her into a marriage with William Montacute, son and heir of the 1st Earl of Salisbury. Joan later claimed she was afraid that disclosing her previous marriage would lead to Thomas's execution for treason on his return, and so did not disclose it. She may also have become convinced that the earlier marriage was invalid.[4]

Joan is often identified as the countess of Salisbury who, legend says, inspired Edward III's founding of the Order of the Garter.[1] It is equally possible, however, that the woman in the case was her mother-in-law Catherine Montacute, Countess of Salisbury.

Several years later, Thomas Holland returned from the Crusades, having made his fortune, and the full story of his earlier relationship with Joan came out. Thomas appealed to the Pope for the return of his wife and confessed the secret marriage to the king. When the Earl of Salisbury discovered that Joan supported Holland’s case, he kept her a prisoner in her own home.[5]

In 1349, Pope Clement VI annulled Joan’s marriage to the Earl and sent her back to Thomas Holland, with whom she lived for the next eleven years. They had four known children (though some sources list five), before Holland died in 1360. Their children were:

Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent
John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter
Joan Holland, who married John V, Duke of Brittany (1356-1384)
Maud Holland, married Waleran III of Luxembourg, Count of Ligny (1359 - 1391)
Additional children also listed:

Edmund (c. 1354) died young
In the meantime, when the last of Joan's siblings died in 1352, she became Countess of Kent and Lady Wake of Liddell.

Evidence of the affection of Edward, the Black Prince (who was her first cousin once removed) for Joan may be found in the record of his presenting her with a silver cup, part of the booty from one of his early military campaigns. Edward's parents did not, however, favour a marriage between their son and their former ward. Queen Philippa had made a favourite of Joan at first, but both she and the king seem to have been concerned about Joan's reputation. English law was such that Joan's living ex-husband, Salisbury, might have claimed any children of her subsequent marriages as his own. In addition, Edward and Joan were within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity.

The secret marriage they are said to have contracted in 1361[6] would have been invalid because of the consanguinity prohibition. At the King's request, the Pope granted a dispensation allowing the two to be legally married. The official ceremony occurred on 10 October 1361, at Windsor Castle with the King and Queen in attendance. The Archbishop of Canterbury presided.

In 1362 the Black Prince was invested as Prince of Aquitaine, a region of France which belonged to the English Crown since the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. He and Joan moved to Bordeaux, the capital of the principality, where they spent the next nine years. Two sons were born in France to the royal couple. The elder son, named Edward (27 January 1365 - 1372) after his father and grandfather, died at the age of six.

Around the time of the birth of their younger son, Richard, the Prince was lured into a war on behalf of King Peter of Castile. The ensuing battle was one of the Black Prince’s greatest victories, but King Pedro was later killed, and there was no money to pay the troops. In the meantime, the Princess was forced to raise another army, because the Prince’s enemies were threatening Aquitaine in his absence.¹

     Thomas Holland, 1st Earl of Kent (c. 1314 – 26 December 1360) was an English nobleman and military commander during the Hundred Years' War.

He was from a gentry family in Holland, Lancashire. He was a son of Robert Holland and Maud la Zouche.

In his early military career, he fought in Flanders. He was engaged, in 1340, in the English expedition into Flanders and sent, two years later, with Sir John D'Artevelle to Bayonne, to defend the Gascon frontier against the French. In 1343, he was again on service in France; and, in the following year, had the honour of being chosen one of the founders of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. In 1346, he attended King Edward III into Normandy in the immediate retinue of the Earl of Warwick; and, at the taking of Caen, the Count of Eu and Guînes, Constable of France, and the Count De Tancarville surrendered themselves to him as prisoners. At the Battle of Crécy, he was one of the principal commanders in the van under the Prince of Wales and he, afterwards, served at the Siege of Calais in 1346-7.

Around the same time as, or before, his first expedition, he secretly married the 12-year-old Joan of Kent, daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent and Margaret Wake, granddaughter of Edward I and Marguerite of France. However, during his absence on foreign service, Joan, under pressure from her family, contracted another marriage with William Montacute, 2nd Earl of Salisbury (of whose household Holland had been seneschal). This second marriage was annulled in 1349, when Joan's previous marriage with Holland was proved to the satisfaction of the papal commissioners. Joan was ordered by the Pope to return to her husband and live with him as his lawful wife; this she did, thus producing 4 children by him.

Between 1353 and 1356 he was summoned to Parliament as Baron de Holland.

In 1354 Holland was the king's lieutenant in Brittany during the minority of the Duke of Brittany, and in 1359 co-captain-general for all the English continental possessions.

His brother-in-law John, Earl of Kent, died in 1352, and Holland became Earl of Kent in right of his wife.

He was succeeded as baron by his son Thomas, the earldom still being held by his wife (though the son later became Earl in his own right). Another son, John became Earl of Huntingdon and Duke of Exeter.

Thomas and Joan of Kent had four children:

Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent
John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter
Joan Holland, who married John V, Duke of Brittany
Maud Holland, married Waleran III of Luxembourg, Count of Ligny.¹

     Joan of Bourbon (French: Jeanne de Bourbon; Vincennes, 3 February 1338 – Paris, 6 February 1378) was consort to Charles V of France. Joanna was a daughter of Peter I, Duke of Bourbon and Isabella of Valois, a half-sister of Philip VI of France as the daughter of Charles of Valois and his third wife Mahaut of Chatillon.

Coronation of JoannaJoan gave birth to nine children but only Charles and Louis survived. Five of her children: Joan, John, Marie, Isabella and Catherine survived infancy but died in childhood. Her maternal aunts were Blanche of Valois and Marie of Valois, Blanche married Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and was the mother of Katharine of Bohemia. Marie married Charles, Duke of Calabria and was the mother of Joan I of Naples.

Joan's father, Peter was killed while at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, her mother, Isabella died in 1388, she had outlived Joan by ten years.

Her father, grandfather, and brother were all somewhat mentally unstable, and Joan seems to have inherited this family ailment. She suffered a complete nervous breakdown after the birth of her seventh child. Her eldest surviving son, Charles VI, was famous for his insanity. From her marriage to Charles V of France (1350, Tain-en-Viennois) were born nine children:

Joan (1357–1360)
John (1359–1364)
Bonne (1360)
John (1366)
Charles VI of France (1368–1422) King of France
Marie (1370–1377)
Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans (1372–1407) Duke of Orleans
Isabelle (1373–1378)
Catherine (1378–1388) married John of Berry.¹

     Charles V (21 January 1338 – 16 September 1380), called the Wise, was King of France from 1364 to his death and a member of the House of Valois. His reign marked a high point for France during the Hundred Years' War, with his armies recovering much of the territory ceded to England at the Treaty of Brétigny.

Charles was born in Vincennes, Île-de-France, France, the son of John II of France and Bonne of Luxembourg. Upon his father's succession to the throne in 1350, Charles became Dauphin of France. He was the first French heir to use the title, which is named for the region of Dauphiné, acquired by Charles' grandfather.¹

     Charles VI (3 December 1368 – 21 October 1422), called the Well-loved (French: le Bien-Aimé) and the Mad (French: le Fol or le Fou), was the King of France from 1380 to 1422, as a member of the House of Valois.

The crowning of Charles VIHe was born in Paris, the son of King Charles V and Joan of Bourbon. At the age of eleven, he was crowned King of France in 1380 in the cathedral at Reims. He married Isabeau of Bavaria in 1385. Until he took complete charge as king in 1388, France was ruled primarily by his uncle, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.

Charles VI was known both as Charles the Well-loved and later as Charles the Mad, since, beginning in his mid-twenties, he experienced bouts of psychosis. These fits of madness would recur for the rest of his life. Based on his symptoms, he probably suffered from schizophrenia.¹

     Henry III (1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272) was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for fifty-six years from 1216 to his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready. England prospered during his reign and his greatest monument is Westminster, which he made the seat of his government and where he expanded the abbey as a shrine to Edward the Confessor.

He assumed the crown under the regency of the popular William Marshal, but the England he inherited had undergone several drastic changes in the reign of his father. He spent much of his reign fighting the barons over the Magna Carta[citation needed] and the royal rights, and was eventually forced to call the first "parliament" in 1264. He was also unsuccessful on the Continent, where he endeavoured to re-establish English control over Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine.

Henry III was born in 1207 at Winchester Castle. He was the son of King John and Isabella of Angoulême. The coronation was a simple affair, attended by only a handful of noblemen and three bishops. In the absence of a crown (the crown had recently been lost with all the rest of his father's treasure in a wreck in East Anglia[1]) a simple golden band was placed on the young boy's head, not by the Archbishop of Canterbury (who was at this time supporting Prince Louis of France, the newly-proclaimed king of France) but by another clergyman—either Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, or Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, the Papal legate. In 1220, a second coronation was ordered by Pope Honorius III who did not consider that the first had been carried out in accordance with church rites. This occurred on 17 May 1220 in Westminster Abbey.[2]

Under John's rule, the barons had supported an invasion by Prince Louis because they disliked the way that John had ruled the country. However, they quickly saw that the young prince was a safer option. Henry's regents immediately declared their intention to rule by Magna Carta, which they proceeded to do during Henry's minority.¹

     1st Earl of Lancaster.