Joan of Kent: The First Princess of Wales

by Penny Lawne

  The prince was away from Joan for six months. The details of his campaign in Spain are described by Chandos Herald, who was almost certainly an eyewitness. Initially the prince had the task of getting his army assembled, and then across the Pyrenees into Navarre, relying on the cooperation of the King of Navarre, before continuing on into Castile. The army marched in three divisions, as was customary, with the prince commanding the centre, John of Gaunt and Sir John Chandos the vanguard, and the rearguard under the king of Majorca with most of the Gascon lords.106 It was a bad winter and crossing the pass with such a large force was a difficult logistical undertaking, although one which the prince and his commanders were well equipped to deal with, with their considerable experience and strong working relationship. Fortunately the King of Navarre kept to his side of the bargain, enabling the army to traverse the pass without encountering resistance, and by February they had reached the capital of Navarre at Pamplona. As soon as news of the prince’s invasion reached Henry of Trastámara he took counsel from his advisers and wrote to the prince while assembling his forces, and in mid-March the two armies converged outside Vittoria. The prince, assuming battle to be imminent, knighted several of his retinue (Chandos Herald suggests around 200 were knighted that day), starting with King Pedro of Castile (who had never been knighted) and including his stepson, Thomas Holand, his stepson-in-law, Hugh Courtenay (Maud’s husband), Hugh’s brothers Philip and Peter, and Nicholas Bond (the squire who had carried the prince’s letters to and from the Pope when the prince was arranging his marriage to Joan).107 However, although the prince drew up his army for battle, the following day the Spanish forces under Trastámara did not appear, and he was forced to withdraw. Du Guesclin and the other French commanders had advised Henry of Trastámara that he was more likely to be successful if he engaged in guerrilla warfare and avoided an open conflict, and following this advice the Spanish forces kept their distance, engaging only in occasional skirmishes. Despite the prince’s efforts his enemy continued to elude him and by the beginning of April his army was short of food and other supplies; adding to their misery, the weather was wet, windy and cold. Frustrated but undaunted, the prince wrote to Henry of Trastámara, suggesting that if Henry gave up the throne the prince would act as mediator between him and Pedro. Henry had his own problems, as the loyalty of his Castilian forces was becoming increasingly uncertain, making the prospect of a head-to-head confrontation more attractive to him, in spite of the obvious risk. On 3 April the two sides finally met in battle on the banks of the River Nájera. According to Chandos Herald, Henry was confident that he would win; ‘I am not in the least frightened that I shall not have the better of this battle.’108 His optimism proved misplaced. The prince won a resounding victory, with very little loss of life among his men, while about half of Henry’s army died, with over 5,000 bodies counted by the heralds after the battle, and large numbers were taken prisoner, including the two French commanders, Du Guesclin and Audrehem.109 Henry himself escaped.

  It is difficult to know what news, if any, Joan had of her husband’s progress during this time. Certainly she would have been anxious, and not just for the prince; accompanying him were her eldest son, Thomas, her son-in-law Hugh Courtenay and many others she held dear. Two days after the battle the prince wrote to Joan. It is the only surviving letter of his to her, and although it was clearly intended by the prince for publication, he wrote in intimate and affectionate terms, giving the clearest indication of the very great love and trust he reposed in his wife. The original letter, in French, found in the National Archives in 1920, reads in translation,

  My dearest and truest sweetheart and beloved companion, as to news, you will want to know that we were encamped in the fields near Navarrete on the second of April, and there we had news that the Bastard of Spain and all his army were encamped two leagues from us on the river at Najera. The next day, very early in the morning, we moved off towards him, and sent out our scouts to discover the Bastard’s situation, who reported to us that he had taken up his position and prepared his troops in a good place and was waiting for us. So we put ourselves into battle order, and did so well by the will and grace of God that the Bastard and all his men were defeated, thanks be to our Lord, and between five and six thousand of those who fought us were killed, and there were plenty of prisoners, whose names we do not know at present, but among others are Don Sancho, the Bastard’s brother, the Count of Denia, Betrand du Guesclin, the marshal d’Audrehem, Don Juan Ramirez, Johand de Neville, Craundon, Lebègue de Villaines, Senor Carrillo, the Master of Santiago, the Master of Saint John and various castellans whose names we do not know, up to two thousand noble prisoners; and as for the Bastard himself, we do not know at present if he was taken, dead, or escaped. And after the said battle we lodged that evening in the Bastard’s lodgings, in his own tents, and we were more comfortable there than we have been for four or five days, and we stayed there all the next day. On the Monday, that is, the day when this is being written, we moved off and took the road towards Burgos; and so we shall complete our journey successfully with God’s help. You will be glad to know, dearest companion, that we, our brother Lancaster and all the nobles of our army are well, thank God, except only Sir John Ferrers, who did much fighting.110

  This is not just the letter of a victorious commander, expecting his wife to pass on his comments verbatim, but the letter of a man who loves his wife, reassuring her of his safety, and that of her son, while knowing that she will appreciate the campaign details he includes. Joan had been a soldier’s wife most of her life and she would have understood her husband’s achievement. She did indeed do as her husband had hoped, and the prince’s letter reached England before 30 April 1367. Edward III was delighted when the news reached him, expressing his pleasure by rewarding the Windsor herald who brought the message an annuity of 20 marks.111

  Meanwhile in Spain, despite the prince’s huge success, the disadvantages of his position quickly became clear. Almost immediately he was in conflict with Pedro over the fate of the prisoners, to whom the prince accorded the customary chivalry and planned ransom, as the Castilian king felt that those who had supported his half-brother were traitors and deserved to be executed. The divergence in their views had a practical as well as philosophical basis. It was an established, if unwritten, rule of warfare that knights were captured rather than killed and then ransomed, an expected reward for their victorious captors, and it had been written into the treaty signed at Libourne that all prisoners would belong to their captors. The largest ransom was that set for Alfonso, Count of Denia, captured by two English squires and bought by Edward III from the prince for £28,800, while Du Guesclin’s ransom was agreed at £19,200.112 The prince had the authority and was able to overrule Pedro, but this did not auger well for their future relationship. But in addition, the prince’s job was now accomplished and he wanted to be paid for his services, while Pedro, barely back on the throne, needed to secure his position before he could contemplate raising the money he owed. Over the next few weeks the cost of the campaign, and the amount owed to the prince, was calculated. A figure of 272,000 gold florins was agreed (roughly £385,000, a sum equivalent to two-thirds of the ransom for John II), with formal deeds of obligation signed in a formal ceremony at Burgos on 2 May, stipulating that the first half of the money was to be paid within four months, after which time the prince and his army would leave Castile.113 It soon became apparent that Pedro lacked the means to pay. It was simply too enormous a sum, dependent in the short term on prosperity and resources Castile lacked and in the long term on the newly restored Pedro’s political longevity. Pedro left, promising to find the funds, and the prince and his army waited. As the days turned into months the summer heat brought with it a wave of epidemics of dysentery and enteric fever, and by June the prince himself was ill. By August it was obvious that there was no point in waiting any longer, and the prince ordered his army to leave Castile, returning to Aquitaine through Navarre and across the Pyrenees t
o Bayonne, disbanding his troops at the end of August.114

  Joan had remained in Bordeaux while the prince was away, in the abbey of St Andrews, with Pedro’s three daughters. It is not clear when they took their leave of Joan and returned to Spain to rejoin their father, and they may have waited until after the prince’s return. In September the prince arrived back in Bordeaux, Chandos Herald recording that

  nobly was he received with crosses and processions, and all the monks came to meet him … he dismounted at St Andrews. The princess came to meet him, bringing with her firstborn son Edward … The gentle prince kissed his wife and son. They went to their lodging on foot, holding each other by the hand. There were such rejoicings at Bordeaux that everyone was glad of the return of the Prince and his companions, and everyone welcomed their friends. That night there was great joy throughout Aquitaine.115

  The picture painted by the herald once again showed the very real affection between Joan and the prince, but the celebrations were muted in comparison to the tremendous rejoicing there had been in England after the Battle of Poitiers eleven years earlier. With his customary flourish and generosity the prince called all the Gascon nobility to his court and presented them with gifts, thanking them for their service.116 He probably also arranged an escort for the three Spanish princesses to rejoin their father. Soon afterwards the prince and Joan left Bordeaux and returned to Angoulême. Joan’s happiness at her husband’s return was soon replaced by concern for his state of health, as the sickness from which he had suffered in Spain returned. The nature of the prince’s malady has never been clearly identified, although it seems likely to have been dysentery, known as the bloody flux, or possibly recurring malaria.117 Attacking him at irregular intervals, causing him great weakness, debilitation and fainting, at its worst the illness left him bedridden and unable to attend business or make decisions, while in between he would seem reasonably fit, but he never regained the strength and health he had earlier enjoyed. For a man who had enjoyed excellent health, and who had been on so many rigorous campaigns where he had spent all day in the saddle, these sudden, completely debilitating attacks must have been frustrating and humiliating.

  The prince’s problems then began in earnest. With Pedro unable to pay him, the prince’s own finances were soon in crisis. He owed huge amounts of money. Every member of his army, from foot soldier and archer to knight, from his own retinue to the local nobility who had fought with him, looked to him for payment of their wages. He had used any spare money of his own in raising the army and starting the campaign, and now that it was over the ransoms from those who had been captured proved insufficient to cover the debts owing. The only payment he had received from Pedro was his personal jewellery, which when sold raised a sum of around £10,500.118 Money had to be found from somewhere, and there was no suggestion that the English Treasury was about to come to the prince’s aid. In January 1368 the prince summoned an assembly of the Aquitanian lords in Angoulême and proposed a further hearth tax of 10 sous a year for five years. Basking in the reflected glory of the prince’s achievement at Nájera, the nobles voted for the tax, although they demanded in return a charter of rights.119 Collection began peacefully enough; however, in itself the tax would be insufficient to cover all the outstanding commitments, and it was soon to provide a focus for discontent. The lack of surviving records makes it impossible to say whether the drain on resources forced the prince to use his own private income and that of his wife, though it seems likely that this is what happened, and it would certainly have been in character for Joan to have relinquished her own personal income to help her husband. But there was simply not enough. Crucially, in poor health and in financial difficulty, the prince could not sustain either his flamboyant and vibrant court or his earlier generosity towards the Gascon nobility which had set the tone of his rule prior to the Spanish campaign. His good relationship with the local nobility gradually disintegrated, and his reputation at home suffered. Even the usually supportive English chroniclers doubted the prince’s behaviour, with the Anonimalle Chronicle recording that the prince was so proud he forced the local nobility to wait for hours on their knees before addressing him.120 While this was patently absurd, the story indicated that there was a growing doubt about the prince and a suspicion that he was personally to blame for the situation. But Chandos Herald, writing with the benefit of hindsight (and no doubt through rose-tinted spectacles) had no doubt where the blame lay: ‘As soon as it was known that the prince was ill and at death’s door, his enemies decided to start the war again and began to negotiate with his enemies.’121

  Charles V watched from Paris and took satisfaction in the realisation that the prince’s position had been greatly weakened rather than strengthened by his Spanish war. The French king encouraged the growing dissatisfaction and discontent in Aquitaine, encouraging pro-French sentiments among local nobility. Gaston of Foix, who had never paid homage to the prince, and with whom the prince had had an uneasy relationship, became openly disloyal. The Gascon nobles, led by the d’Albrets, openly questioned the hearth tax. The prince owed the Count of Armagnac war wages of around £28,300 and had promised a pension of £1,000 a year to Arnaud Amanieu d’Albret, and now could not pay either.122 By offering them both suitably large financial inducements, it proved easy for Charles V to persuade d’Albret and Armagnac to ally themselves with France and, on 4 May 1368, d’Albret married Charles V’s sister-in-law, Marguerite. In June 1368, repudiating the allegiance he had sworn to the prince, the Count of Armagnac appealed to the French king against the imposition of the hearth tax; other Gascon nobles quickly followed suit. This was open rebellion. In direct contravention of the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny, Charles V ignored the prince’s independent sovereignty and in November 1368 formally summoned the prince to appear before the parlement in Paris to answer for the tax.123 The prince roused himself from his sickbed with a furious response, but he was unable to stem the growing mass of defections from his side. Personal tragedy compounded his woes; in May his brother Lionel died in Piedmont, and in September his sister-in-law Blanche of Lancaster died, just five months after giving birth to a son, Henry, at Bolingbroke Castle.124 By December the disaffection among the Gascon nobility was so vociferous that the prince felt his honour was at stake, and he wrote to his father rejecting the complaints made about him. Worse was to follow. Any hope that Pedro might honour his agreement ended when Henry of Trastámara entered into an alliance with France and, aided once again by Du Guesclin (who had been ransomed by the prince), retook Castile from Pedro at the end of 1368, and killed Pedro himself in March 1369. The glowing Spanish victory had turned to ashes.

  The catastrophic end to the Spanish campaign, and the incursions from Paris threatening the prince’s sovereignty in Aquitaine, might not have mattered so much had it not been for the fact that the prince was too sick to respond effectively in a strong and decisive manner. Charles V sensed that his time had come, and in the spring of 1369 launched an invasion with the intention of taking part of Aquitaine. Nevertheless the French king was careful to rely principally on minor raids and to use diplomacy to attempt to win over the Gascon towns and cities, rather than risking a full confrontation with the prince which he knew he would probably lose. His policy was more successful than he could have anticipated, and there followed months of desultory fighting while successive towns and cities went over to the French. By March 1369 the French chancery listed over 900 cities, towns, fortresses and castles in Aquitaine allied to France.125 The prince was summoned to appear before the parlement in Paris on 2 May to answer Charles V’s summons about the hearth tax, and, as expected, did not attend. Diplomatic overtures from England failed, and at the beginning of June Edward III resumed the title of King of France. A resumption of war was inevitable. In England Edward III and his advisers determined on an expedition to northern France, and the advance force headed by John of Gaunt sailed to Calais at the end of July, with the king intending to join him later. This left the prince to
defend Aquitaine on his own, although the king did send a small force to assist him led by the prince’s younger brother, Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, and the Earl of Pembroke. Never had the prince needed his abler captains more, but he lost several of his older companions in arms during the year; his friend Sir James Audley, whom he had left in charge of Aquitaine during the Nájera campaign, died that year, as did the earls of Suffolk and Warwick and Sir Bartholomew Burghersh.126 To make matters worse, Queen Philippa died at Windsor Castle on 14 August after a short illness, and a mourning Edward III sent his army to northern France without him in September. When the news reached Aquitaine, it was a moment of great sadness for Joan and the prince, who had last seen Philippa six years earlier. For most of Joan’s life the queen had acted as her foster mother, and more recently as her guide and mentor. The prince had always been very close to his mother, and her death was a real blow. The bond between the prince and his parents had not been weakened by the distance between them, and they had maintained regular contact, with tokens of affection in the form of gifts, such as the lion and leopard the prince had recently sent his father, but now his mother was dead, and the prince knew that his father too was in failing health, and had lost the drive and energy which had once characterised his behaviour.127