Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors

by English Historical Fiction Authors

  The Church’s antagonism toward the Flagellants, however, did not necessarily reflect the popular perception of them. The fear of death that had overshadowed Europe created a ripe breeding ground for the Flagellants’ fanaticism. The movement grew quickly in Germany and the Netherlands.

  Matthew of Neuenberg remarks that after the Flagellants proceeded through the city of Strasbourg, about a thousand men joined their brotherhood. France, also, had many converts to the sect until, in 1349, King Philip VI forbade public self-flagellation on pain of death; this decree effectively nipped the movement in the bud throughout his domains.

  Interestingly enough, England was one of the countries where the Flagellants made the fewest inroads. In 1349, a group of fanatical Frisians came across the Channel hoping to gain converts in London. They put on a dramatic public display outside of St. Paul’s Cathedral. But although their bloody flails and eerie chants unnerved the crowd, the chroniclers record that not a single Englishman wished to don their red-cross robes and take up the scourge himself.

  In my book, I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, the hero Sir John Potenhale encounters this group of Flagellants making their demonstration in London. His mother has already been carried off by the plague, his father has been driven insane by it, and Potenhale himself is in a spiritually fragile condition. The Flagellants’ bloody ceremony fills him with horror and makes him wonder whether it is indeed the sins of the world that have brought this punishment upon the land. Although he is not impelled to join the brotherhood, their ceremony does make him question his own calling as a knight, a quandary central to the plot of the novel.

  Fortunately for Europe, this movement did not last. The fuel of the Flagellants’ fanaticism had always been the terror created by the Black Plague, and when the pestilence began to abate in the early 1350s, the numbers of the sect diminished significantly.

  Although it was not eradicated entirely, the Flagellant brotherhood disappeared from public view and into the void of obscurity. Throughout the next couple centuries, pockets of it would crop up here and there, but the brotherhood never again gained the same following that the Black Plague had brought them. The scourge of Europe had disappeared, and there was no longer any need to scourge oneself in an attempt to avoid it. The thanotophobia had receded, and with it the religious hysteria that had turned the fourteenth century on its head.

  How Joan of Kent Became Princess of Wales

  by Rosanne E. Lortz

  Edward, the Black Prince, and Joan of Kent—a pair of star cross’d lovers that eventually came together in one of history’s true love matches. It took three marriages and over thirty years before Joan finally became the Princess of Wales, but if the chroniclers are to be believed, it was worth the wait.

  Joan, who later became known as “The Fair Maid of Kent,” was the daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, half-brother to King Edward II of England. Edmund supported the king in the bitter battle against his wife Queen Isabella, pejoratively known as the “she-wolf of France.”

  When Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer triumphed, Edward II was deposed, placed in prison, and later murdered. Edmund Woodstock, for the crime of remaining loyal to his brother, was sentenced to death for treason in 1330. As the story goes, Edmund had to wait nearly half a day for the authorities to find an executioner willing to do the deed since no one wanted to be responsible for his unjust death. Edmund of Woodstock was survived by his wife and four children. Joan, the third of Edmund’s progeny, was a little less than two years old at the time.

  Young Edward III had been placed on the throne by Isabella and Mortimer, but he was more filial to his father’s memory than to his mother’s commands. When he came of age, he organized a coup to remove the adulterous pair from power. Mortimer he executed, Isabella he imprisoned, and in a kindly gesture, he took Edmund Woodstock’s widow and her brood into his household to be provided for.

  As these events were transpiring, Edward III’s wife Philippa gave birth to their oldest son, another Edward, to whom history would give the appellation, the “Black Prince of Wales.” This Prince Edward and his cousin Joan were raised in close proximity to each other, and later events indicate that they grew to be fast friends. A marriage between the two was never considered, at least not by the one person who mattered.

  King Edward III was determined to secure for his eldest son a matrimonial alliance that would benefit the country of England. During the Black Prince’s early years, his father attempted at various times to betroth him to the daughter of the French king, the daughter of the Duke of Brabant, and a Portuguese princess. None of these marriage alliances materialized, however, and the prince was destined to remain a bachelor until the age of thirty, winning great glory on the battlefields of Crecy and Poitiers.

  Joan, on the other hand, was in the unenviable position of having too many marriages materialize. When she was twelve years of age (fifteen or sixteen, according to other sources), she contracted a secret marriage with Thomas Holland, a man twice her age and seneschal to the house of Salisbury. Her royal family, it is certain, knew nothing of this marriage to Holland, for a few years later they betrothed her to William Montacute, the Earl of Salisbury.

  What happened next is unclear, whether Joan actually did go through with the marriage to Salisbury or whether the news of her earlier marriage came out first and prevented the ceremony. Holland, it is thought, must have been overseas at the time or he would have spoken up to prevent the polyandrous relationship. One fact at least is certain: there were now two Englishmen claiming Joan of Kent as their wife.

  Joan’s opinion on the matter was that her first marriage to Thomas Holland was binding and ought to be recognized. But Joan’s opinion was also of little consequence.

  One story, perhaps apocryphal, describes the Earl of Salisbury locking the lady up in a tower and refusing to let her go to her first husband. An appeal was sent to the pope asking him to rule on the situation. Even though it had been undertaken without her guardians’ permission, Pope Clement VI decided in favor of the first marriage, and Joan took her place in Holland’s home as his wife.

  Joan’s marriage to Thomas Holland produced two sons and two daughters. Her oldest son, Thomas, was privileged to have the Black Prince stand godfather to him at his baptism, a sign of the mutual regard between his mother and her cousin Edward.

  Holland, although his first appearance on the scene was as a lowly seneschal, rose swiftly in the world. He became Earl of Kent in right of his wife, and shortly before his death in 1360 was named captain-general of all of England’s holdings on the continent.

  At Holland’s death, Joan—fabulously wealthy, still young, and still beautiful—was the most eligible widow in all of England. A French chronicler tells how many of the English lords sought her hand in marriage, asking the Black Prince to be the go-between and make the match. Here is historian Henry Dwight Sedgwick’s delightful summary of the story:

  The widow, as I say, was a great catch, and, as in those martial days there was little time for the more delicate hesitations and diffidences of life, suitors very soon gathered round. Many gentlemen, knowing that she and the Prince were not only cousins but good friends, went to him and asked him to say a few words to her in their favor. The most importunate of these was Lord Brocas, a very gallant nobleman of high rank, who had served the Prince well both in war and peace. The Prince, accordingly, accepted the commission and went to see the Countess of Kent several times on the suitor’s behalf.

  The chronicler states that he went very willingly; for which, apart from the commission, there were reasons enough. First, she was his cousin; second, he took notice of her very great beauty and of her gracious manner that pleased him wonderfully well; and third, the time passed agreeably.

  On one occasion, when the Prince was speaking to her of the said gentleman, she answered that she should never marry again. She was moult soubtill
e et sage and repeated this to the Prince several times. The Prince replied, “Heigh ho! Belle Cousine, in case you do not wish to marry any of my friends, the great beauties, of which you are compact, will be wasted. If you and I were not of common kin, there is no lady under heaven whom I should hold so dear as you.” And the Prince was taken unawares by love for the Countess. And then, like the subtle woman, and skillful in ambush, that she was, the Countess began to cry.

  Then the Prince tried to comfort her; he kissed her very often, and felt great tenderness for her tears, and said to her: “Belle Cousine, I have a message for you from one of the gallant gentlemen of England, and he is besides a very charming man.” The Countess answered, still weeping: “Ah, Sire, for God’s sake forbear to speak of such things to me. I have made up my mind not to marry again; for I have given my heart to the most gallant gentleman under the firmament, and for love of him, I shall have no husband but God, so long as I live. It is impossible that I should marry him. So, for love of him, I wish to shun the company of men. I am resolved never to marry.”

  The Prince was very desirous to know who was the most gallant gentleman in the world, and begged the Countess insistently to tell him who it was. But the Countess the more she saw his eagerness, the more she besought him not to inquire further; and, falling on her knees, said to him: “My very dear Lord, for God’s sake, and for His mother’s, the sweet Virgin, please forbear.” The Prince answered that, if she did not tell him who was the most gallant gentleman in the world, he would be her deadly enemy. Then the Lady said to him: “Very dear and redoubtable Lord, it is you, and for love of you no gentleman shall lie beside me.” The Prince, who was then all on fire with love for her, said: “Lady, I swear to God, that as long as I live, no other woman shall be my wife.” And soon they were betrothed.

  A less colorful, and probably less embroidered version of the story is given in the Life of the Black Prince written by Chandos Herald:

  The prince, very soon after this [the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360], married a lady of great worth, with whom he had fallen in love, who was beautiful, pleasing and wise. He did not wait long after his marriage before going to Gascony to take possession of his lands. The prince took his wife with him, whom he loved greatly.

  Because the two were closely related, they needed to receive a dispensation from the pope allowing the marriage. They had no trouble obtaining it. The historian Richard Barber writes: “Innocent VI, like all the Avignon popes, favoured the French cause, and the prince’s proposed marriage eliminated an important diplomatic weapon for the English.” The French wanted nothing better than to see Edward III’s son make a politically useless marriage.

  But although an alliance with Joan offered no political advantage, the prince never appeared to regret his choice. Seven years later, the romance was still alive, as evidenced by a letter written to Joan after the Battle of Najera. The prince’s salutation reads: “My dearest and truest sweetheart and beloved companion.”

  Although sickness and time would harden the prince’s character, making him capable of committing the massacre at Limoges in 1370, we never hear of anything but felicity betwixt him and Joan. Together Edward and Joan had two sons, the youngest of whom would become Richard II of England.

  Edward died in 1376 at the age of 45. He had instructed that his body be laid to rest in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, in the Chapel of Our Lady, with a space nearby for his dear wife. He even had carvings of her face added to the ceiling there. The crypt, however, was not deemed worthy enough, and so his body was moved upstairs to be placed by the shrine of the famous Saint Thomas Becket. Joan lived nine years longer to see the accession of her son to the throne, the rise of the Lollards, and the Peasants’ Revolt. When she died, her body was laid to rest in Lincolnshire beside the tomb of Thomas Holland, her first husband. And so, despite the prince’s dearest wishes, in the end he and his “beloved companion” were separated.

  As wife to Edward, the Black Prince, Joan became history’s first English Princess of Wales. But there was more to remember about Joan than just her title. She was, in the words of the chronicler Froissart, “la plus belle de tout le royaume d’Engleterre et la plus amoureuse—the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving.” Or to use Henry Dwight Sedgwick’s translation: “the prettiest girl and greatest coquette in England.”

  Sources

  Barber, Richard. Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince. Great Britain: The Boydell Press, 1978.

  _______, trans. and ed. The Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince: from contemporary letters, diaries and chronicles, including Chandos Herald’s Life of the Black Prince. Great Britain: The Boydell Press, 1979.

  Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Translated and edited by Geoffrey Brereton. London: Penguin Books, 1978.

  Sedgwick, Henry Dwight. The Black Prince. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993.

  Alice Perrers: A Notorious Woman

  by Anne O’Brien

  Alice Perrers, mistress of King Edward III at the same time as she was a damsel (lady-in-waiting) to Queen Philippa, has had an astonishingly bad press. Her reputation is black with no redeeming features. “There was...in England a shameless woman and wanton harlot called Ales Peres, of base kindred...being neither beautiful or fair, she knew how to cover these defects with her flattering tongue....”

  Modern historians have been hardly less damning than her contemporaries. Here she is, in all her notoriety, as seen in the fourteenth century:

  1) Alice the Lowborn Usurper of Royal Power

  Did Alice know her place in society, or did she step outrageously beyond it? As far as we know, Alice had neither breeding nor wealth nor significant family connections, but was she the reputed bastard of a labourer and tavern whore? Perhaps not.

  Recent evidence suggests that she may have had a brother with whom she did business, and that she engaged in a brief marriage to Janyn Perres, a Lombardy merchant and moneylender, during which she made her first purchase of property. She could read and write and figure. Somewhere she learned this—if not with her invisible family, then in a convent. And royal mistress to Edward III? Alice would not be the first lowborn woman to share a King’s bed, nor the last.

  We do not know how she came to the attention of Queen Philippa but it is unlikely that she would have done so if she had been born in the filth of the gutter. Perhaps Alice does not deserve her notoriety based on her stepping beyond her birth.

  2) Alice the Unattractive Woman

  Alice was not merely a plain woman but “famously ugly”. How could an ugly woman rise to such pre-eminence? Using supernatural powers—she was accused of witchcraft—she gained a foothold in the Queen’s household and lured the unsuspecting King into a sexual liaison from which she never allowed him to escape.

  Much can be forgiven a beautiful woman but not an ill favoured one. Alice was reputed to be the inspiration for Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. He gave her a bold face, a gap-toothed smile, broad hips, a wide hat, and red stockings. I’m sure he enjoyed writing this description, but is it true? He also gave her five “legitimate” husbands. It may be that Chaucer’s physical description of Alice/the Wife is as scurrilous as the rest of it.

  Alice was said to be graceful and possess a pleasing, seductive voice. Certainly she had enough attractions to please the King. Could it be that she was dark rather than fair, the fashionable trend for the day? Perhaps she did not have mere beauty but rather a lively, striking countenance. How unfortunate that there are no representations of this famously ugly woman. We might decide that she was not ugly at all.

  3) Alice the Rapacious Royal Mistress

  Alice beguiled and manipulated King Edward until he neglected his wife and his country. Because she seduced him while Philippa was still alive, Alice was the cause of King Edward committing the sin of adultery. So great was her
power over the King that he could refuse her nothing. So corrupt were her morals that she entered into a clandestine marriage with William de Windsor without Edward’s knowledge.

  It is true that Alice became Edward’s mistress during the lifetime of the much loved Queen Philippa, and for this she was condemned. How interesting that on such occasions (even in modern royal scandals) the blame is placed very firmly on the shoulder of the non-royal woman involved. Edward was not to blame: it was Alice who seduced the King! Hard to believe that Edward, a true Plantagenet, had no part in this sexual chemistry, even in his later years.

  How did Philippa react to her damsel sleeping with her husband? Certainly she must have known, yet she made no move to dismiss her. Interestingly, during Philippa’s lifetime, the scandal was kept under wraps at court as if there was a conspiracy of silence to protect the Queen from humiliation. It was only on her death that Alice’s position was widely acclaimed. Despite the liaison between Edward and Alice, there is no evidence that the King neglected his wife. To the contrary, when Philippa died, Edward was heart-broken. It was a very strange ménage-a-trois. I regret that we know so little about it—but it is a gem for a writer of historical fiction.

  4) Alice the Greedy Embezzler of Wealth