Royal: Joanna of England, 1335-1348

Kings were humans, too.  Over time a myth has developed that parents in former times loved their children less than parents do today.  Various reasons are given, ranging from the fact that so many children died as babies or otherwise tragically young, to the low marriageable age of girls, to the apparent formality with which parents and children treated each other on a daily basis.  While all these factors are true, there can be no doubt that, in many cases, royal and noble parents loved their children and families as much as anybody.  And, when tragedy struck, they felt it as much as did the common people, or people today.

Edward III and his wife Philippa of Hainault had many children, at least 9 who lived to grow up.  Most of the time, the focus is on the boys.  Edward the Black Prince, John of Gaunt, Lionel of Antwerp, Edmund of Langley, and Thomas of Woodstock would take up a lot of their parents' time.  However, Edward and Philippa also had several daughters.  Their middle daughter, Joanna would perhaps cause them more pain than any of the others.  She was one of the earliest and, for her time, better known victims of the Black Death. 

Joanna was born in London in 1334.  Edward and Philippa took great care over her education.  She was placed in the care of Marie de St. Pol, wife of Aymer de Valence and co-foundress of Pembroke College, Cambridge.  There, Joan grew up with her brother Edward, the future Black Prince, her sister Isabella and their cousin, Joan of Kent.  Later, Joanna travelled in 1338 with her parents on a visit to Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, seeing the famous German city of Koblenz.  Joanna was to be married to one of Louis' sons, but that fell through later.  In 1345, she was betrothed to Pedro of Castile and departed England in 1348.  Her parents spared no expense on her trousseau, the inventory of which still survives.  Joanna's wedding dress was silk, she had another dress of red velvet, silver and gold buttons, other heavily embroidered gowns, even bed curtains and linens.  She was surrounded by a retinue of servants, retainers, musicians, clergy and men-at-arms.  There was to be no doubt that this was a Princess of England.

Joanna crossed the Channel and made her way to Bordeaux.  By that time, a strange new disease was already making itself felt in Bordeaux and was on its way to England.  Perhaps believing that Joanna was removed from any chance of infection given her rank and the fact that princesses didn't mix with common folk, Joanna's attendants felt she was safe.  Then, members of her close personal retinue began to sicken and die.  Joanna fled to a small village called Loremo, but there the Black Death caught up with her.  She died on July 1, 1348 and her body was buried in the chapel at Bordeaux.  By that time, Bordeaux and England were in the grips of the crisis.  The town mayor of Bordeaux ordered buildings in the town burned to ward away the contagion.  The fire caught the castle, destroying Joanna's remains before he family could claim them.

Meanwhile, back in London, even as he oversaw arrangements to dispose of the large numbers of dead and quell the rising panic, Edward's family would suffer two more blows.  Two of Joanna's little brothers, Thomas and William of Windsor, also died of the Plague.  This disease spared no one.  Royals, nobles, commons, clergy, tradesmen, soldiers, women and children were all susceptible to it.  Meanwhile, life went on and Edward had to write to Joanna's fiancée Pedro's father, the King of Castile, to explain what had happened and formally call off the marriage.  Edward wrote.

We are sure that your Magnificence knows how, after much complicated negotiation about the intended marriage of the renowned Prince Pedro, your eldest son, and our most beloved daughter Joan, which was designed to nurture perpetual peace and create an indissoluble union between our Royal Houses, we sent our said daughter to Bordeaux, en route for your territories in Spain. But see, with what intense bitterness of heart we have to tell you this, destructive Death (who seizes young and old alike, sparing no one and reducing rich and poor to the same level) has lamentably snatched from both of us our dearest daughter, whom we loved best of all, as her virtues demanded

No fellow human being could be surprised if we were inwardly desolated by the sting of this bitter grief, for we are humans too. But we, who have placed our trust in God and our Life between his hands, where he has held it closely through many great dangers, we give thanks to him that one of our own family, free of all stain, whom we have loved with our life, has been sent ahead to Heaven to reign among the choirs of virgins, where she can gladly intercede for our offenses before God Himself. (Source: Wikipedia).

Great Dying: the Black Death of 1348

Called the Great Dying, the Great Mortality or the Pestilence at the time, the Black Death (a 17th century term) decimated 40-60% of England's population.  Occurring during the reign of Edward III, this pestilence would cause a drastic change in English society.

Prior to the pestilence, serfdom was rigidly enforced, with severe penalties for anyone caught trying to leave the manor where they were born and would die.  Even for peasants or common people who were not serfs, getting a better life for oneself or one's family was rare.  Sons followed their fathers on the land or in a trade, and passed it along to their sons in turn.  Although sanitation and hygiene in the Middle Ages is likely exaggerated, reports of how bad it was aren't far wrong.  Without modern pesticides and pest control, rats, fleas and other vermin infested streets, homes, clothes and containers of various sorts.  Unbeknownst to humans, the rats carried a bacteria, Yersinia Pestas, that was transmitted to humans via infected fleas.  Since rats and fleas could stow away on animals, wagons, bags and crates, and eventually on ships, the plague spread from China along the trade routes and into Europe.

It first hit the Plantagenet domains of Gascony in 1348.  A seaman traveling from Gascony arrived in Weymouth in June, 1348.  Unknown to him, he was patient one.  By the fall of 1348, plague had spread to London.  It was country-wide by summer, 1349, before dying out in December.  Unlike many other areas in Europe, Edward's government attempted to respond in an organized manner.  In larger cities, provisions were made to carry away and bury the dead.  Understanding of contagion and public health was limited at the time, but not nonexistent.  People were aware that sick persons could spread the disease.  What they didn't understand was that, by the time the sick were quarantined, they had already spread the disease to others.  Church records of the period record parishioner after parishioner dead of pestilence.   Smaller towns and villages were almost empty.  Agricultural activity slowed down and there was a lull in the fighting of the Hundred Years War.

Medical care was primitive, including sweating, bloodletting, purgatives and emetics.  There was some idea that breaking open the swellings and draining the pus might save the patient, but debate on when and how to do this was widespread and many patients still died despite whatever care was available.  There was no strata of society immune from the disease.  Lords and peasants, merchants and farmers, clergy and others all died.   Edward III wrote to his colleague Alfonso of Castile that "destructive Death....has snatch from both of us our dearest daughter, whom we loved best of all, as her virtues demanded."  Meanwhile, many struggled to understand why this disease was occurring, believing it to be the scourge of God.

With villages empty and few laborers available to work the land, peasants were emboldened to leave the farms and fields outright and head to the cities, or to seek land where conditions might be better.  Edward's government tried to prevent this with a series of ordinances, but the peasants either paid no heed or would revolt outright in the Peasants' War of 1381.  It was now possible for someone to leave the manor where they and their parents and grandparents had been born, seek work in a city and begin to build a life other than that of a common laborer.  Another benefit was the number of charitable endowments, especially to the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, on behalf of people seeking to placate God's wrath.  While Europe following the plague descended into hysteria and obsession with the self-flagellation and other forms of penance, the English were busy rebuilding their lives.