Person Page - 1327

     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.

     Scottish Novelist. James Matthew Barrie wrote the stories of Peter Pan and The Lost Boys. His college acquaintances include Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Lewis Stevenson, with whom he wrote for the university newspaper.

     Mayflower Passenger. Edward Winslow served as the governor of the Plymouth Colony. He also signed the Mayflower Compact.

     Lord Berners. John Bourchier, 1st Baron Berners KG (d. May 1474), was an English peer.

Bourchier was the fourth son of William Bourchier, Count of Eu, and his wife Anne of Woodstock, Countess of Buckingham, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester. Henry Bourchier, 1st Earl of Essex, and William Bourchier, 9th Baron Fitzwarine, were his elder brothers. He was knighted in 1426 and in 1455 he was summoned to the House of Lords as John Bourchier de Berners, which created the title of Baron Berners. In 1459 he was further honoured when he was made a Knight of the Garter. He also served as Constable of Windsor Castle from 1461 to 1474.

Lord Berners married Marjorie, daughter of Sir Richard Berners. He died in May 1474 and was succeeded in the barony by his grandson John, his son Sir Humphrey Bourchier having been killed at the Battle of Barnet in 1471. Marjorie, Lady Berners, died in 1475.¹