Royal: Joan, Fair Maid of Kent, 1328-1385

The women of the Plantagenet family were made for romance novels.  Beautiful, smart and tempestuous, with a will to power and a flair for danger, they were the nasty women of their time.  Joan of Kent, 1328-1385, mother of Richard II, a mother of a lion with lion's blood, fits the bill to a T.  She was said to be a remarkably beautiful woman, though the title Fair Maid of Kent is a later invention, not applied to her during her lifetime.

Joan had several crosses back to the Plantagenet dynasty.  Her father was Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, a son of Edward I.  Her mother was Margaret Wake, 3rd Baroness Wake of Liddell, was a great-granddaughter of King John of England.  Margaret Wake was also a great-granddaughter of Eleanor of England, Queen of Castile, a daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.  When Joan was just two years old in 1330, her father Edmund of Woodstock, was executed on the orders of Queen Isabella, widow of Edward II and her lover Roger Mortimer.  Edmund's crime was that he had supported his late brother, Edward II, when most other members of the royal family supported Edward III.  Margaret Wake and her four children were placed under house arrest in Arundel Castle.  As he grew older, her cousin Edward III and his wife Philippa were kind to Margaret's children.

Little Joan inherited her father's knack for trouble.  When she was just twelve she contracted a secret marriage with a soldier by the name of Thomas Holland in 1340.  She did so in direct violation of English law, which forbid her marriage without the king's consent, and common custom, which decreed that women just didn't do such things.  Holland was dispatched overseas to the war in France and later on Crusade.  Both he and Joan kept their relationship quiet.  Joan's family arranged her marriage with William Montacute, heir to the Earl of Salisbury.  The marriage was childless and, years later, Holland came back from France a successful military commander.  The full truth of Joan's secret marriage came out.  Holland stuck to his guns and petitioned the pope to annul Joan's marriage to Montacute, by now Earl of Salisbury.  The Pope did and the King gave his consent to the marriage, or remarriage, of Joan and Thomas Holland.  The couple had five children.  Their eldest son, Thomas, Jr., inherited his grandfather's title of Earl of Kent.  Her next son became Duke of Exeter.  One of her daughters, Young Joan, became Duchess Consort of Brittany.  Through her children, Joan was the ancestress of Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth of York and Katherine Parr.

Joan inherited her mother's title and became 5th Baroness Wake of Liddell, as well as Countess of Kent.  Thomas Holland, Sr., died in 1360, and by that time Joan had another admirer.  Edward the Black Prince presented Joan with a silver cup he had taken during his campaigns in France.  The two lovers secretly wed in 1360, but were at first reluctant to inform the King.  In 1361, the story once again came out and King Edward III secured the necessary papal dispensation.  Joan and the Black Prince were cousins and her first/second husband Salisbury was still alive, so a papal dispensation was necessary.  Through her husband, Joan of Kent became the first English Princess Consort of Wales.  She bore the Black Prince two children, Edward of Angouleme, who died young, and the future Richard II.  Unfortunately, Joan and her third husband had little time together.  In June, 1376, he died from the effects of chronic dysentery, leaving Joan with two small children.  Edward III's death in 1377 made Joan the mother of the King of England, Richard II.

Joan had lent her support to the Lollard movement, as followers of Bible translator John Wycliffe were called.  Clashes between Wycliffe's followers and royal authorities risked implicating her for heresy.  She was known for her sympathies for the poor and charitable nature.  Richard's early reign faced the dangers of the Peasant's Revolt and later Wat Tyler's rebellion in 1381.  Joan found herself trapped by the mob during Tyler's Revolt, but when his followers realized who she was, they parted and let her pass unharmed and with cheers.  She weathered her final tragedy in 1385, when her son, Sir John Holland, who was on campaign in Scotland, quarreled with and killed Ralph Stafford, a son of the Earl of Stafford, who was a favorite of Queen Anne of Bohemia.  John fled to England and took sanctuary at the shrine of St. John of Beverly.  Joan pleaded with Richard to forgive his half-brother, a process that went on for four days.  Finally, exhausted, she died in her bed at Wallingford Castle.  Richard relented and pardoned his half-brother on condition that he take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and stay gone for awhile.

Joan was buried next to the first man she truly loved, Thomas Holland, Sr., at Greyfriars in Lincolnshire.  The Black Prince, anticipating that she would want to be buried with him, had made a chantry chapel for her in Canterbury Cathedral.  The decoration of the chapel features busts said to be of Joan.  She has featured in several novels over the years, either as a man or side character.