Person Page - 1326

     3rd Earl of Cambridge.

     4th Earl of March.

     Isabella of Valois, Duchess of Bourbon or Isabella of France (1313 – 26 July 1383), was a French noblewoman, and a daughter of Charles of Valois by his third wife Mahaut of Chatillon. She was the wife of Peter I, Duke of Bourbon. One of her daughters, Jeanne of Bourbon became the Queen consort of King Charles V of France, and through her, Isabella was the maternal grandmother of King Charles VI.

Her paternal grandparents were Philip IV of France and Isabella of Aragon. Her maternal grandparents were Guy IV, Count of Saint-Pol and Marie of Brittany.

She was a sister of Blanche of Valois, who married Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, Blanche's daughter was Katharine of Bohemia. Isabella's other sister was Marie of Valois who married Charles, Duke of Calabria in 1323. Marie was the mother of Joan I of Naples. Isabella had a brother called Louis, he became Count of Chartres, but he died aged ten.

When her father died in 1325 all his titles went to Isabella's older half siblings by his first marriage to Marguerite of Anjou and Maine.

[edit] Marriage and issue
On 25 January 1336 Isabella married Peter I, Duke of Bourbon, son of Louis I, Duke of Bourbon and Mary of Avesnes. Peter and Isabella had only one son, Louis and seven daughters. Her husband died at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, and Isabella never remarried. After her husband's death Isabella's son Louis became the Duke of Bourbon. In the same year 1356, Isabella arranged for her daughter Jeanne to marry Charles V of France; as he was at the time the Dauphin of France, Jeanne duly became Dauphine.[1]

Isabella outlived her eldest two daughters. Her husband suffered from madness, so this was passed on to their children. Jeanne and Louis were the only two of the seven children to suffer from the hereditary madness. Nobody realised that Jeanne suffered from insanity until she had a nervous breakdown shortly after the birth of her seventh child Louis I de Valois, Duke of Orléans. Isabella's grandson Charles VI of France is well known for suffering from the mental disorder. In 1361 Isabella's daughter Blanca was murdered on the orders of her husband Pedro because he had fallen in love with Maria de Padilla, the mother of his four illegitimate children including, Infanta Isabella of Castile and Infanta Constance of Castile, who both eventually married into the English royal family . Blanca was either shot by a crossbowman or she was poisoned. Isabella was grief-stricken when she was informed of the death of her second eldest daughter. She eventually became a nun at the Convent des Cordeliers du Faubourg, Saint-Marceau in Paris.[2]¹

     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