9

Princess of Aquitaine
1363–1371

Prudence teaches the princess or great lady how above all things in this base world she ought to love honour and a good reputation.

Christine de Pizan¹

By virtue of her marriage Joan became the most important woman at court after Queen Philippa. Her position was unique, as there had never been a Princess of Wales before. As already noted, Edward II was the first Prince of Wales, and both he and his son had married after they became king. As the wife of the heir to the throne, Joan was expected to become queen when the prince became king, and her new position as his wife gave her considerable authority and influence. In addition, she would have substantial additional responsibilities and as queen in waiting would be expected to set an example. Now there was peace with France Joan might reasonably have expected that marriage to the prince would mean she would spend time at court and be able to receive guidance from her mother-in-law on how to conduct herself in her new position. Instead, nine months after their marriage, the prince was created Prince of Aquitaine, and they and their entourage set sail for Bordeaux to set up court. The prince would govern the duchy with Joan at his side. Joan was now both Princess of Wales and Princess of Aquitaine. With no predecessors, and so no precedent, in either role, what was expected of her and how would she cope?

On 19 July 1362, Edward III formally dubbed his son and heir Prince of Aquitaine at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony attended by all the most important members of the nobility and clergy, and the prince, clad in armour, knelt in homage to his father, undertaking to pay an ounce of gold annually in acknowledgement of his sovereignty.² It was intentionally a superlative propaganda exercise, with letters sent by the king to his subjects in Aquitaine to give them the news, publicly proclaiming throughout Europe Edward III’s supremacy over the French king as acknowledged in the Treaty of Brétigny. The event was duly recorded in a formal charter, drawn up by the prince’s clerk, John Carleton, setting out the terms on which the principality was granted to the prince. This charter can be seen in the National Archives. The main message is set out at the beginning of the charter:

Edward by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland and of Aquitaine to our most dear eldest son Edward Prince of Wales, Greeting … Intending by a liberal Recompense to do Honour unto you who lately in the parts of Aquitaine and Gascoigne, while there the frequent storms of war raged, for our sakes did not refuse the Summer Dust, and the Labour of War, but under the Name and the title of Lieutenant have supported the Burthen of our Cares, and with your Presence supplied our Absence, out of the princely Prerogative we do convey and grant unto you by these Presents the principality of the under written Lands and Provinces of all Aquitaine and Gascoigne willingly and granting that of all and singular the said Places, Lands and Provinces in our Name, next and immediate under our Throne and Government you from henceforth the true Prince, and freely during your natural Life enjoy the Title, Appellation and Name of the Prince of Aquitaine …

The charter concludes,

Now to take away all Doubts and Contentions which may arise hereafter about this Matter, and to the end that the Affair may be more clear, we reserve to ourselves, and to our Majesty royal, expressly and by Tenor of these Presents, the direct Supremacy, and all the Sovereignty and resort of the whole principality of Aquitaine and Gascoigne. And for an evident Token and clear Demonstration that our said son shall hold, and ought to hold unto us of our said Majesty, and by liege Homage, the which he hath made unto us at present … he shall be obliged to pay unto us every Year at our Palace of Westminster, on the Feast of Easter one Ounce of Gold … in token and Recognition of our supreme Dominion. Given under our Great Seal at the Palace of Westminster 19 July 1362.³

This was a momentous occasion for both the king and his son. For Edward III, the prince’s marriage and his appointment in Aquitaine completed with a satisfying resonance the desired order within the royal progeny. His heir was now settled, with a new kingdom of his own to govern and a wife, and it was confidently expected that in due course Joan would bear children, providing the hoped-for next generation. Comfortable that his heir was secure Edward III turned his attention to his younger sons, and using the occasion of his own fiftieth birthday on 13 November 1362 he created Lionel Duke of Clarence, John Duke of Lancaster and Edmund Earl of Cambridge. For the prince, now Prince of Aquitaine, a future beckoned away from his father’s court. He had a newly created territory to rule, with the expectation that this would be his home until the time came for him to succeed his father. In 1362, with Edward III a hale and hearty fifty-year-old, this must have seemed a long way off.

When the prince and Joan arrived in Aquitaine, they would need to establish themselves with their own court. As Princess of Aquitaine, Joan would preside over what would in effect be a satellite royal court. Although there was no precedent for her position, she would be expected to behave as befitted a queen. Guidance for her role was limited. In terms of literary advice, the most notable text was Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum, and Giles argued that queens should be noble, beautiful, virtuous, temperate, chaste and not given to idleness.⁴ Few queens were able to live up to such exacting perfection. The prince’s grandmother, Queen Isabella, had hardly conformed to this ideal when she took a lover and deposed her husband, although the Pope, rather than condemning her behaviour, went to great lengths to persuade Edward III and Philippa to be reconciled to the dowager queen, in order that ‘her good name may remain intact’.⁵ Chastity was of paramount importance. Isabella’s sisters-in-law, Marguerite of Burgundy and Blanche of Hungary, were both imprisoned following allegations of adultery in 1314, with Froissart noting that Blanche ‘kept but evil the sacrament of matrimony … she was kept a long space in prison in the Castle Gaillard’, after which unedifying episode Blanche’s angry husband Charles (later Charles IV of France) put her aside to remarry.⁶ Edward I’s two queens provided more suitable role models, Margaret being Joan’s own grandmother, but fortunately there was a living exemplar at hand in Queen Philippa. The difficulty for Joan was that as the first Princess of Wales there was no precedent for her role, and while she might look to her mother-in-law for guidance, their backgrounds were quite different. Philippa had been a princess in her own right when she married Edward III, and brought him prestige and a diplomatic alliance. Joan’s own birth and wealth did not add to the prince’s prestige, and there was the disadvantage of her marital history. Nevertheless, in terms of how she might conduct herself, she could look to Philippa’s example. Although she had spent the last ten years away from the court, Joan was no stranger to its ways, and knew what would be expected of her. Before leaving England she had the opportunity to take her mother-in-law’s advice. The queen had consistently throughout her marriage deferred to her husband and supported him in all ways, accompanying him on his travels whenever she could. This was a model that Joan would emulate.

In many respects the prince could hardly have chosen a woman better suited to be his wife. From the start of their marriage Joan took her lead from her husband. At thirty-one, Prince Edward was considerably older than either his father or his brothers had been when they married, and had a clear idea of his own distinction. He was used to commanding respect and obedience and from the beginning of their marriage had taken control of Joan’s affairs. Having already been married to a man with a strong and dominating personality this would not have daunted Joan, but it would undoubtedly affect how she conducted herself as princess of both Wales and Aquitaine. At the time of their marriage the prince’s career was at its peak. He was widely admired by his contemporaries, friends and enemies alike, and considered a model of chivalric virtue. Just as his father was being compared by contemporary chroniclers to Arthur, so, to many, did the prince resemble an Arthurian knightly hero. Marrying a popular and very public hero presented additional challenges, and brought with it the almost inevitable corollary that Joan would be expected to live up to her husband. The combination of Joan’s beauty, her dubious marital history and her new status as Princess of Wales inevitably led chroniclers like Froissart to identify her as a flawed heroine of Guineverian proportions, a reputation which grew posthumously. It is hardly surprising that Joan would later be given the leading romantic role in various tales of doubtful substance, such as the founding of the Order of the Garter, and the tale of Edward III rescuing the beautiful and besieged Countess of Salisbury from Wark Castle. Yet Joan was not, and could not afford to be, simply an adornment at the prince’s side. As his wife she would have her own responsibilities and duties, and she would need to exert her own authority while ensuring that she did not go against her husband’s wishes. In Aquitaine Joan would play hostess to the local nobility as well as her husband’s knights, and she would need to be diplomatic, tactful and patient, while retaining her dignity and good humour. Her marital history would be a crucial determinant in how she behaved. Apart from the fact that this had already caused the prince and his father to execute an elaborate plan to ensure papal cooperation, Joan’s honour was at stake. Scandal must be avoided. Joan would hardly have needed reminding by her husband that she should not put her reputation at risk in any way.

Prince Edward had originally anticipated that they would leave for Aquitaine shortly after he was created Prince of Aquitaine. Preparations had been in hand for some months beforehand. There was a lot to do, not least in discussion with his father and with ministers on how his role in Aquitaine would relate to the English Crown. Every military campaign entailed months of preparation and planning, and the logistics for a permanent settlement in Aquitaine required similarly thorough if not more detailed thought and attention. The prince needed to consult his own council and ensure that his own estate affairs, and those of his wife, were in order before he left, and that they would continue to be run efficiently and competently while he was away. A secret cipher was devised for the prince to write himself using his two mottoes of ‘Ich dene’ and ‘Houmont’ and the ostrich feather, and a new seal made for him by his goldsmith John Hiltoft.⁷ He made arrangements with his staff on how he would communicate with them from Aquitaine and how they would report to him. Decisions needed to be taken about who and what the prince took with him. Planning a lavish lifestyle, this included carefully securing the exclusive service of a goldsmith named Lyon and two embroiders, Hans Stowsburgh and Terri de Coloigne, promising them lodging and expenses in Bordeaux.⁸ Joan made her own arrangements too, including having a litter made for her use in Aquitaine.⁹ By July everything seemed to be in place. On 30 July the king granted his son the right to receive 60,000 crowns in gold due from John II’s ransom, and on 29 August licence to make his will to ensure the payment of his debts, while throughout August and September ships were ordered to Plymouth to facilitate the prince’s passage.¹⁰£1,000 was borrowed from the Earl of Arundel to help pay the immediate costs. At the end of August the prince and Joan left London and travelled to Cornwall, staying at Restormel Castle, and then journeyed on to Plymouth where they waited to embark. Restormel was a Norman castle which had fallen into some disrepair, and the prince had recently spent a considerable sum on bringing it back into a habitable state (today, little remains of the castle). However, a combination of poor weather conditions and insufficient ships prevented the prince’s fleet from sailing as planned. Severe storms caused considerable damage throughout the country that winter, with entire houses being blown down, and at Kennington the roof of the chapel was virtually destroyed, requiring extensive repair.¹¹ The prince and Joan spent their second winter together at Restormel rather than in France as hoped.

Joan would naturally have been occupied with her husband’s affairs, and with her children, during the months before their departure for Aquitaine, but she did not neglect her own affairs, remembering and rewarding friends and servants from her life with Thomas Holand, and ensuring that these were ratified by the prince. Throughout 1362 and 1363 grants and annuities were made and confirmed, particularly to estate workers and members of her household on Joan’s Yorkshire and Derbyshire estates, especially Castle Donington, such as Reynold and Alice Lewes, granted a life interest in a property on the Donington estate, and Maud la Zouche, given 1d a day for her good service to Joan from Kirkby Moorside manor.¹² Old friends were remembered, like Sir Richard Pembridge, who was granted a life interest in the annual rental paid by the abbot of Stratford in Essex.¹³ Joan might well have used her new position to assist some of these people in their career, but she was wise enough to do so in a very modest way. One recipient of her assistance was Robert Braybrooke, son of her parents’ old friend Gerard Braybrooke. Gerard had acted as attorney for Joan’s brother John, and then for Joan and Thomas prior to his death in 1355, and he had fought in the prince’s division at Crécy. His older son Gerard had joined in the prince’s entourage as a squire and would go to Aquitaine with them. Robert was the younger son, born in 1336 and destined for the Church. He went to Oxford to read civil law and by 1359 had obtained a dispensation to become a priest, and after his father died was granted a rectory at Clifton in Bedfordshire while his older brothers, Gerard and Henry, both became squires to the prince.¹⁴ Joan became friendly with Robert while she was married to Thomas Holand, and by the time she married the prince she had become very fond of him, describing him as her ‘beloved kinsman’ when she petitioned the Pope requesting a canonry at York for him in 1363.¹⁵ Although this was an unexceptional promotion for an able young clergyman, it was an important step in his career. In view of the evident affection Joan had for him, and the close family ties, with his brothers being part of the prince’s retinue, it is possible that Robert joined her household staff and accompanied her to Aquitaine, although there is no evidence to substantiate this. Despite the warmth of the attachment Joan had for Robert, her request did not display any special favouritism as she made similar applications for several other young men, including John Carleton and John Stene, formerly part of the prince’s retinue, who became clerks to Joan immediately after her marriage and for whom she also requested canonries in September 1363.¹⁶

It was expected that Joan and Edward would take a sizeable entourage with them. Joan’s daughters, Maud and Joan, would accompany them and they would need supervision and tutoring. Joan probably entrusted their care to her close friend Eleanor de la Warr, the wife of one of the prince’s bannerets, Roger de la Warr, who was related to Joan by marriage. Roger was Thomas Holand’s nephew, the son of his sister Margaret and John de la Warr. The de la Warr family seat was at Swineshead in Lincolnshire, and Roger’s first wife Elizabeth came from a Lincolnshire family.¹⁷ Roger was also distantly related to Joan through her mother’s family; Joan’s great aunt, Isabella Wake, married Thomas Grelley, and Thomas’ sister Joan Grelley married Roger’s grandfather, John de la Warr.¹⁸Roger had been knighted at La Hogue with the prince in 1346, fighting subsequently in the Crécy and Calais campaigns with Thomas, with his brother John, who was also one of Thomas’ retinue, accompanying him to Brittany in 1354 and 1358.¹⁹ Roger had also fought with the prince in the Poitiers campaign and in 1357 had become a banneret, receiving gifts from the prince of a helm for the jousts and a ventail in 1359.²⁰ Significantly, Roger had been one of the witnesses to the prince’s wedding to Joan, indicating an attachment between the two men.²¹ Eleanor was Roger’s second wife, and as Blanche Wake’s niece (her grandfather was Henry of Lancaster) the family connection was further strengthened.²² It is not clear when she and Joan became friends but it seems likely that in 1349 when Joan officially became Lady Holand the close ties between their husbands drew them together. Roger was one of the few people who knew the full details of Joan’s marital history, as he had also been a witness at William Montague’s marriage to Elizabeth in 1349, after William’s marriage to Joan was declared null and void.²³ Roger and Eleanor’s second son was named Thomas, probably after Thomas Holand, while their daughter was named Joan; in all probability Thomas and Joan were their godparents. The entire de la Warr family sailed with Joan and the prince, with Roger and his eldest son John forming part of the prince’s retinue, Thomas as Joan’s clerk, and Eleanor and Joan among Joan’s household. Eleanor endured the months of waiting in Cornwall with Joan, and in November 1362 the prince, probably at his wife’s behest, ordered a tun of wine to be delivered to her as a gift.²⁴ In September 1363 Joan requested a dispensation for Thomas de la Warr to be ordained priest at the age of twenty, giving him a start in what became a successful ecclesiastical career.²⁵

Another possible member of Joan’s household was her sister-in-law Elizabeth, whose new husband Eustace d’Aubrichecourt had joined the prince’s entourage. A hint of the continuing closeness between the sisters-in-law is indicated by Elizabeth’s agreement to release her dower manor of Woking to Joan in June 1363 for £400.²⁶ The manor was a special place for them both, as it had been Joan’s brother John’s favourite residence, and where he had died. In 1364, Joan granted the manor to her son and heir Thomas on the occasion of his marriage to Alice. Joan would also be joined by the wives of many of her husband’s retinue, some of whom she would become closer to than others. One new relationship forged in the summer and autumn of 1362 was with Elizabeth Luttrell, whose husband Andrew served the prince. Elizabeth was the daughter of the Earl of Devon, and the negotiations between Elizabeth’s father and the prince for the marriage of Elizabeth’s nephew, Hugh, to Joan’s daughter Maud, fostered a growing relationship between Elizabeth and Joan. By September 1363 their friendship was of sufficient intimacy for Joan to request the Pope to permit Andrew and Elizabeth to have a portable altar and give them licence to choose their own confessors while making the same request for herself.²⁷ The family connection was strengthened when Andrew’s relative, another Sir Andrew Luttrell, married Hawisia Despenser in the chapel of Blanche Wake’s castle at Bourne in the autumn of 1363.²⁸

Given the importance and potential power Joan now had as Princess of Wales, it is surprising that there is so little evidence of her exercising significant patronage between the time of her wedding and her return from Aquitaine in 1371. Although individual accounts for her household have not survived, had Joan shown any substantial and particular generosity towards an individual or a religious order or educational establishment this would be apparent from the official records, and would have been publicly recognised. It is evident that Joan took care to be restrained in her affairs, and chose not to copy her husband’s lavish generosity. This did not mean that Joan had no interest in patronage. As is evident from the small ways in which she sought favours for her staff and gave gifts to her friends and rewards to her retainers, she had a close interest in their welfare, but favoured a modest approach towards promoting the individual and causes she held most dear. From the start of her marriage to the prince, it is apparent that Joan made the choice to be discreet in how she used her influence. Her discretion would be a quality which would stand her in good stead in the years to come.

By the end of May 1363 the prince and Joan, with her four children, were at last ready to depart for Aquitaine, and on 9 June they boarded their ship, the Saint May Cog, at Plymouth and set sail, landing at Lormont outside Bordeaux on 29 June.²⁹ They took a sizeable retinue with them, even the children having individual servants; Thomas Holand had his squire, John Pounfreit, and in August young John Holand had been given his own personal attendant in the prince’s yeoman, John Hay (probably a son of his parents’ old friend Sir Henry Hay).³⁰ Also accompanying them were sixty knights, including three bannerets (Roger de la Warr being one of these), among a retinue of 250 men-at-arms, with 320 archers.³¹ Several wives of these knights formed part of Joan’s household, including her friend Eleanor de la Warr, Lady Marion Louches, Joanna Peverel, and Anne Latimer, wife of Roger de la Warr’s nephew Thomas Latimer. The entourage included most of the prince’s closest companions, with senior members of the nobility such as Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and John, Lord Cobham, and trusted retainers like John Carleton.

This expedition was very different from the one Joan’s father, Edmund, had undertaken to Gascony nearly forty years before. Edmund had served in Gascony as Edward II’s royal lieutenant, based in Bordeaux, and was there for nearly twelve months before Joan was born, from the late summer of 1324 to the autumn of 1325. Joan knew that her father had not been happy in Bordeaux. Edmund had taken up residence in the city following his humiliating defeat in the Agenais by French forces which had invaded and overrun the duchy within five weeks of his appointment, and during his remaining service his authority had been consistently undermined by his half-brother’s favourite, Hugh Despenser, who had secretly given orders to Edmund’s deputies. These experiences had irretrievably soured Edmund’s relationship with Edward II, and shortly after Edmund left Gascony he had joined Queen Isabella in Paris and returned to England with her invasion force in September 1326. Under Edward II English authority in Gascony had been fragile, and the duchy weak and divided. Much had changed since then. By 1360 Edward III’s reputation was at its highest throughout Europe, and he was described by the chronicler le Bel as a ‘second King Arthur’, and by the Chronique des quatre premiers Valoisas the ‘wisest and shrewdest warrior in the world’.³² The French king was a prisoner in England with his ransom set at the impossibly high level of 3 million écus (the French écu was worth 40d), equivalent to nearly ten times the annual revenues of the English Crown.³³ Under the Treaty of Brétigny Edward III had acquired nearly a third of the landmass of France, mainly in the south-west, of which the duchy of Gascony comprised only a part.³⁴ The borders of the new territory stretched from Poitiers in the north to Bayonne on the Atlantic coast and inland to Auch, Montauban, Rodez and Limoges.

Nevertheless, the prince knew that he had a difficult job ahead of him. The new state of Aquitaine inevitably evoked memories of the great Angevin empire. Two hundred years earlier, when Eleanor of Aquitaine had married Henry of Anjou, Aquitaine had been one of the wealthiest parts of Europe, and a rich cultural centre. Eleanor’s Aquitaine was fabled for its society of troubadours and chivalric knights, brimming with literary and artistic talent at the court she inherited from her father at Poitiers. The new state of Aquitaine not only brought with it the Angevin association but also represented the English triumph in France, and Edward III and his closest advisers wanted the significance of this supremacy to be generally recognised. Hopes for the new Aquitaine were riding high in England. But unlike Eleanor’s Aquitaine, the new Aquitaine was not a rich or prosperous land. It had been devastated by the war, and the prince was in part responsible for this. After the Treaty of Brétigny was signed, John II had sent a letter to all the regions of France which were to be handed over to English rule explaining why he had agreed to surrender them to Edward III. After his crushing defeat at Poitiers, held prisoner in England, John II had little choice other than to accept whatever terms he could agree with Edward III, but it is hard not to believe that he was genuine when he told his subjects that he wanted to put an end to the ‘wars and the evils … which have led to so much evil for the people’.³⁵ As the French king noted, ‘many mortal battles have been fought, people slaughtered, churches pillaged, bodies destroyed and souls lost, maids and virgins deflowered, respectable wives and widows dishonoured, towns, manors and buildings burnt, and robberies, oppressions, and ambushes on the roads and highways committed. Justice has failed because of them, the Christian faith has chilled and commerce has perished, and so many other evils and horrible deeds have followed from these wars that cannot be said, numbered or written.’³⁶ The people living in the territories now newly incorporated into Aquitaine were all too bitterly aware of the truth of the king’s words. The south-western areas of France had suffered catastrophically in two major campaigns, the first during Henry of Lancaster’s six-month chevauchée in 1345, when the duke, landing at Bordeaux, had attacked Bergerac, then Périgueux, and after the defeat of the French army at Auberoche in October had marched south to conclude his campaign at La Réole in Gascony in March 1346, and more recently, from the prince’s own chevauchéein 1355. As the Anonimalle Chronicle recorded, the prince had swept from Bordeaux to Bergerac devastating the counties of Périgueux, Limousin, the country of Gascony, the county of La Marche and all the county of the duchy of Berry, burning and destroying, and Sir John Wingfield, on the prince’s staff, writing to the Bishop of Winchester describing the campaign, commented that ‘it seems certain that since the war against the French king began, there has never been such destruction in a region as in this raid. For the countryside and towns which have been destroyed in this raid produced more revenue for the King of France in aid of his wars than half his kingdom.’³⁷ Now the people of these lands were to be ruled by the man who had so recently been responsible for the destruction of their countryside, their villages and towns. However glad they may have been to be told that peace had come at last, it seems unlikely that they would welcome the prince as their new ruler with open arms.

Not all of the region had suffered the horrific war damage caused by the chevauchées, but even those parts which had escaped were still feeling the effects of the bubonic plague epidemic (there had been another outbreak in 1362), and throughout the region there were significant economic difficulties. The main local trade in Gascony was wine, and the region was also a major market for English exports such as grain and wool, all badly affected by the war, with a growing armaments industry centred on Bordeaux. The town of Bordeaux also handled cloth, leather, tin and fish, all of which were sent to England. The peace, ironically, would ill suit the iron foundries and armourers. Economic problems were compounded by the breakdown in law and order, caused initially by the weakening of authority due to the war and exacerbated by the activities of the free companies of soldiers which terrorised many local populations after the withdrawal of the English army from France in May 1360. The campaigns waged by these brigand armies in many parts were almost as destructive as those conducted by Edward III and the prince, extracting money and goods while killing those who resisted.

As an artificial political creation the new Aquitaine had no obvious geographical or economic boundaries and lacked any element of cohesion, without political or cultural identity. There was no common government nor legal, financial or administrative system to bring unity. Edward III and his advisers were well aware of this but anticipated that the structure of the government of Gascony could be extended and adapted by the prince to enable him to weld his new domain together and impose an identity on it which would create a lasting union.³⁸ This was extremely optimistic. Gascony itself was fiercely independent and had been a thorn in the side for successive English kings, but at least the population historically owed allegiance to the English king. Adding to it new territories which had no such loyalties and would regard the prince’s governance as that of an occupying power did not auger well for a stable future government. The prince would need the cooperation and active support of the local nobility, and this was a significant problem. In Gascony some of the nobility, such as the Albret family, had used the conflicting claims of the English and French kings to sovereignty of the area for their own vested interests, playing one off against another, and the prince’s father, grandfather (Edward II) and great grandfather (Edward I) had all struggled to keep the loyalty of the Gascon nobility. The nobility in the newly acquired territories had even less reason to feel dutiful towards the English crown; some, like the Count of Armagnac, had fought against the prince in 1355 and 1356 (Armagnac had been appointed lieutenant in Languedoc by John II in 1352), and many were used to their independence and had benefited from the weakness of the French king, enabling them to play the field and give their support where it most suited them. Although many of them had chosen to fight on the English side, they were neither committed nor steadfast in their loyalty. Their own self interest would always come first, and they deeply resented having a sovereign head of state foisted upon them, particularly one who would live among them. The counts of Perigord and Armagnac were not alone in their outspoken view that the king of France had no right to give their lands to England.³⁹ Edward III and the prince might also have remembered that even in the Angevin empire the local nobility had resented their overlord’s authority. After Richard had been created Duke of Aquitaine in 1172 at the age of fifteen, formally invested by his father, Henry II, Richard had subsequently spent many years quelling unrest among his nobles and first displayed his considerable military abilities in imposing his authority in his own domain. Getting the local nobility on side would be key to the success of the prince’s administration. To achieve this peaceably would require hosting and entertaining them, persuading them of the benefits of the new administration and the closer ties to the English crown, and in this, Joan, as his wife, would have an important role.

Although the task facing Joan and the prince in Aquitaine was daunting, they were well prepared. The prince had acted as Edward III’s lieutenant in Gascony, and had been his father’s deputy in England many times, albeit on his own home ground with strong support from his father’s council and Parliament. In Aquitaine the prince would have far greater authority than any previous royal lieutenant, and he was secure in the knowledge he had his father’s complete support. As a soldier he knew his own abilities and had confidence in the partnership he had forged with his men. Much of the groundwork had been accomplished by members of his staff prior to his arrival. The treaty terms included a timescale for the transition of all the ceded territories, and this process started in October 1360 as soon as the treaty had been signed. The first town to be transferred was La Rochelle. In July 1361, a year before the prince’s investiture as Prince of Aquitaine, his trusted lieutenant Sir John Chandos had been sent to handle the annexation of the new territories. Although Chandos was about ten years older than the prince and had started his military career in Edward III’s service, he had become a close personal friend. He fought with the prince at Crécy, and was one of his leading commanders in the 1355 campaign. As a knight and soldier he was widely respected (two chroniclers, Knighton and Walsingham, described him as one of the most famous knights of the age) and his reputation and tenacity were useful tools in securing the acquisition of the many castles and strongholds in the hands of individual commanders who were not surprisingly reluctant to give up their positions of power.⁴⁰ A mixture of local nobility and English captains, most owed nominal loyalty to the English crown, but they had become more interested in securing their own power in the area, exploiting and terrorising the surrounding countryside. Accompanying Chandos were several other able members of the prince’s staff, including Sir Richard Stafford, Sir William Farley, Sir Nigel Loring, Sir Stephen Cosington, Thomas and William Felton and Adam Hoghton.⁴¹ Their job was to take over the existing Gascon administrative network in preparation for the prince’s arrival, and extend this throughout Aquitaine. In fact, the degree of cooperation which they received from the chief citizens in most areas of the new territories was considerable. There appears to have been general acceptance initially of the new change of allegiance and, other than a natural concern to ensure confirmation of privileges conferred by the French kings, the local nobility cooperated. This was partly due to self interest, as the new administration restored law and order and brought protection with it; by February 1362, when the transfer of the ceded territories had been completed, the influence of the free companies in those areas had virtually ceased.⁴²

When the prince and Joan arrived at Bordeaux with their entourage on 29 June 1363 they were met by Sir John Chandos, and housed at the archbishop’s palace. This was a welcome greeting for Joan, for Chandos, having been one of Thomas Holand’s valued companions and awarded a £20 annuity from Joan’s Chesterfield estate, was an old friend.⁴³ The prince and his father had given considerable thought to the way in which the prince would present himself to his new subjects. It is significant that despite the Angevin link, Edward III chose not to emulate Henry II in the ceremony of investiture for his son. Whereas in 1172 Henry II had held a formal enthronement for Richard at Poitiers, linking Richard directly to his forebears as dukes of Aquitaine, Edward III created his eldest son Prince of Aquitaine in Westminster, and a year was to pass before the prince arrived in the principality. The message for the populace was intentionally and unambiguously blunt. The Prince of Aquitaine might step in the footsteps of the dukes, but the title and the principality were both English creations, owing their existence to the king of England’s triumphs in France. There was no pretence that the local populace had consented to the change. The first order of business therefore was for the prince to take homage from his new subjects, to reinforce the message that they recognised his authority and that they owed their allegiance to him. Within ten days of his arrival, on 9 July, the prince began to receive his Gascon vassals.⁴⁴ The first lord to pay homage was Arnaud Amanieu, Lord of Albret, and in a series of ceremonies held in the cathedral of St Andrews in Bordeaux, a succession of the greater nobles swore allegiance to the prince. In early August the prince left the city and travelled first to Bergerac, then on to Périgueux, Angoulême, Cognac, Saintes, Saint Jean d’Angely, La Rochelle and Poitiers, reaching Agen in time for Christmas, returning to Poitiers in February 1364.⁴⁵ At each stage the prince received the homages of the local nobility, dignitaries and municipal officers, the mayors, jurats, consuls of each town and city. This was a triumphal progress, deliberately impressing on the local nobility that the prince had come to stay, and reinforcing the message of English dominion with the physical act of swearing loyalty to him. Nevertheless, the prince and his administration were also careful to ensure that, as far as possible, charters of privilege for individual towns were confirmed or granted, in some cases with promises to pay for necessary work. The scale of the exercise was immense; it has been calculated that between 9 July 1363 and 4 April 1364 when the list closed the prince received over a thousand individual homages.⁴⁶

Some of the nobility would have known the prince from earlier times while for others it would be their first encounter with their new lord. The prince was on show and would have wanted to look his best and make a good impression on his new subjects, so it is likely that his clothes and equipment, his retinue and all his accoutrements were the finest; a grandiose display of wealth and majesty designed to awe and impress. In many ways this was a similar progress to that made by the prince when he returned from his victory at Poitiers and entered London with his royal captive, greeted at every point along his route by crowds of well-wishers and rejoicing, but there was a crucial difference. The celebratory progress was also an opportunity to impress on the populace that the prince, their wealthy and powerful new lord, was here to stay. Joan’s presence is not recorded throughout this period but as his wife, and the leading lady of the new Aquitanian court, she was a vital accompaniment, and it must be assumed that she was at her husband’s side throughout the whole progress. This is substantiated by the only known mention of Joan during this period, in Poitiers in November 1363, when the Marshal of Brittany, Jean de Beaumanoir, is alleged to have responded to an unfavourable comment about his wife’s clothing with a retort that Joan and her ladies favoured unsuitable garments, wearing furred gowns with slit coats and great fringes.⁴⁷ Given the prince’s express intention of impressing his new subjects, and his own preference for luxurious clothing, he would have required his wife to be fashionably garbed (the more revealing style of clothing, tight-fitting with low-cut necklines and hair dressed with pearls and precious stones, was an existing fashion trend when they left England), and as a princess Joan was entitled to use the trimmed miniver fur reserved for royalty to decoratively adorn her clothing.⁴⁸ Certainly as the prince’s wife she was expected to set an example and would also have dressed to impress; it would not be remarkable if her style of dressing had initiated a fashion trend among the local nobility. De Beaumanoir’s offhand remark has been cited as evidence that Joan had a love of luxury but there is little to substantiate this, and it may simply have been French pique, as around this time Charles V of France and the Pope, Urban V, had issued laws forbidding what were deemed to be short suits and dissolute clothing.⁴⁹

By April 1364 the prince had completed the business of making himself known to his new subjects and taking their oaths of allegiance. The six-month progress must have been exhausting, and Joan may well have felt relief when it came to an end. Initially returning to Angoulême, they seem to have divided their time mainly between the castle at Angoulême and the archbishop’s palace at Bordeaux. The prince gave more attention to his family and domestic affairs, and finalised the marriages of two of his stepchildren. Joan’s eldest son, Thomas, now aged fourteen, was married to Alice, daughter of the Earl of Arundel, and Maud, probably aged around ten, was married to the Earl of Devon’s grandson, Hugh Courtenay. On her marriage Maud was granted the manors of Sutton Courtenay in Berkshire and Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire.⁵⁰ The prince would have been careful to ensure that his stepchildren were accompanied back to England by trusted members of his retinue, and it is possible that Thomas and Maud travelled back to England together. This was not the first time Joan had parted from her children, but it may have been more of a wrench this time, as there was no reason to anticipate that Thomas or Maud would live in her household again. However, Joan had known this day would come, and she would have been sensible, and no doubt pleased, with the considerable advantage her children were gaining through their stepfather’s influence.

Although the administration of Aquitaine was largely delegated to the prince’s appointees, the prince was closely involved and spent much of his time attending to the business of government. In England the king and his son had anticipated that setting up the new system of government would be achieved by extending the model used in Gascony, where royally appointed officials worked in conjunction with a council made up of the leading Gascon families. There are few surviving sources which provide any detail of the prince’s administration in Aquitaine, but it seems clear that their original plan was implemented, and the court, council and Treasury continued to function from Bordeaux. The three principal royal Gascon offices of state were the seneschal, with overall responsibility, the constable of Bordeaux and the chancellor, and these offices were continued for Aquitaine, with Thomas Felton, John Chandos and John Harewell being appointed to these positions shortly after the treaty was signed.⁵¹ The Gascon administrative structure was similarly retained and formed the basis for the new government, with a body of permanent officers appointed with responsibility to report directly to the prince. In the first few years it is evident that the government was a success, probably because the prince’s centralised, vigorous and efficient council, balanced the interests of the local magnates against the prince’s authority, and the resulting peace and order benefited the local population and stimulated trade, encouraged by the prince. Prosperity slowly began to return to the region.

As the intention was for Aquitaine to be self-financing, the natural recourse to raise money was through internal taxation. This proved considerably more difficult than the prince and his advisers had envisaged. Taxation was never likely to be popular, but whereas in England it had become an accepted and well-established practice and operated on a national scale, in France taxation was traditionally managed at a local level and with varying degrees of acceptance and success. Yet the prince’s personal income, even supplemented by Joan’s, could hardly support the costs of his administration in Aquitaine, and other than an initial grant to get him started his father had determined that there were to be no subsidies from England.⁵² In Aquitaine the principal tax was the hearth tax, and the prince increased its rate shortly after his arrival. Inevitably this was not popular but initially the announcement was greeted with acceptance. However, when it became increasingly obvious that the tax would also be collected (due to the efficiency of the prince’s administration) there were grumblings of discontent with a reluctance to pay that in some areas became outright refusal. Two leading members of the Gascon nobility, the Lord of Armagnac and the Count of Foix, simply refused to pay, and never agreed to do so throughout the prince’s time in Aquitaine. Nevertheless, there was a sufficiently adequate response through direct taxation to ensure that more than a third of the prince’s costs were met from these means.⁵³ Another obvious method for raising revenue was to control the issue of currency, or debase the value of the coinage. In 1364 the prince issued his own gold coinage, both sides of the coin having an image of the prince, with his arms, similar in design to coins which had earlier been produced by his father in Gascony. In 1365 a larger coin was produced, copying the style of the French coinage, and a few years later a smaller gold coin called a hardi. However, as each individual coin had a high intrinsic value, it appears that the new coinage was intended to advertise the prince’s power and wealth and so an exercise in propaganda rather than a means of making money. The prince and his advisers do not seem to have resorted to debasing the value of the coins in order to raise revenue.⁵⁴

Unifying Aquitaine in terms of government and finance required the active cooperation of the disparate groups of local nobility who had no previous history of working together and whose interests did not necessarily coincide. It would hardly be surprising if there had been opposition to the imposition of an English regime, and deep resentment of the victors. The natural ingredient to weld the collected nobility of the principality together was the prince himself, with Joan at his side. Prince Edward was widely admired throughout Europe for his military feats and his chivalry, and the universal esteem in which he was held provided a considerable basis for unity. Similarly his closest companions in arms, like Sir John Chandos, were regarded with respect, and many of the local nobility had fought with or against them. Their shared military experiences formed a natural bond between them. Once the homage taking had been finalised, the prince based his court mainly at Bordeaux or Angoulême. In establishing his court, the prince deliberately set out to ensure this was a major source of patronage and thus a major instrument in his government. As the court was entirely based on the reputation and personality of the prince himself it was inevitably dominated by his own entourage, although the English influence was not necessarily resented. Joan, as his wife, was expected to preside over the court and complement her husband. She would set an example to the other ladies at their court, including those of the local nobility, and she would be an alternative source of patronage and a means of access to her husband.

The prince emulated his father in his style, and there are several contemporary references to the magnificence of the Aquitanian court. Froissart noted the splendidness of the court and its ostentation, while, according to the prince’s biographer,

ever he had at his table more than fourscore knights and full four times as many squires. There were held jousts and feasts in Angoulême and Bordeaux; there abode all nobleness, all joy and jollity, largesse, gentleness and honour, and all his subjects and all his men loved him right dearly, for he dealt liberally with them. Those who dwelt about him esteemed and loved him greatly, for largesse sustained him and nobleness governed him, and discretion, temperance and uprightness, reason, justice and moderation: one might rightly say that such a prince would not be found, were the whole world to be searched throughout its whole extent.⁵⁵

Notwithstanding the hyperbole, this account gives an indication of the prince’s popularity. It was a demonstrably royal style, with the prince emphasising his status and position; according to the Anonimalle Chronicle the prince required nobles to be on their knees when addressing him.⁵⁶ The combination of chivalry, display, luxury and entertainment made the court vibrant and attractive. The contemporary accounts indicate that the court successfully fulfilled its purpose, drawing in the local nobility, who were flattered by being recognised, while enhancing the dignity of the prince. However, it also gave the court a reputation for extravagance, and such a deliberately ostentatious display of wealth and power, with all its trappings, was inevitably expensive to maintain; it has been suggested that including the wages of his personal military retinue the cost was in the region of £10,000 a year.⁵⁷

It is notable that the contemporary chroniclers, including Froissart, who spent some months at the Aquitanian court in 1366, barely mention Joan in their reflections on the prince’s time in the principality. As Princess of Aquitaine, Joan was the presiding female at the Aquitanian court, and as such might have been expected to make some individual impression, yet she is rarely cited. The chroniclers credit the prince’s flamboyance and style with setting the tone of the court, and not his wife. Had Joan established herself independently as an arbiter of fashion, or attracted a large literary entourage, or been extravagant in her patronage, there would surely have been reports. There is little doubt that Joan was faithful in following her husband’s lead yet circumspect in everything she did. While the prince’s energies were directed into the matter of government and creating a magnificent court, Joan was at his side but careful to complement and support him while never drawing attention to herself. In this, she emulated her mother-in-law, Queen Philippa. While Joan was discreet in exercising her influence, she nevertheless displayed competence as an intercessor, an expected and important part of her role. In one incident Joan responded to an appeal for help from the Count of Armagnac, after the prince had refused to use his influence. Armagnac owed a ransom sum to the Count of Foix which he could not afford to pay. When the prince declined, Armagnac turned to Joan, who is said to have approached Foix, and persuaded him to reduce the ransom by 60,000 francs. The prince later lent Armagnac money and persuaded others to make up the rest of the debt to free Armagnac.⁵⁸ Another recorded incident was in February 1366, when the Pope requested that Joan urge her husband to mediate between the kings of Castile and Aragon, and assist the Bishop of Chichester to foster peace between them.⁵⁹

Settling to their new life after the homage taking progress ceased had an immediate effect on Joan, and in the summer of 1364 she conceived their first child. The prince must have been delighted, and he would have done everything he could to ensure his wife’s health and happiness during her pregnancy. Although Joan had already given birth to four healthy children she too would have taken extra care, and it is probable that while the prince continued to travel throughout his new domain (he is known to have been in Périgueux in July and La Réole in November) Joan remained in the castle at Angoulême, attended by her women and a suitably sized retinue. Early in March 1365 Joan gave birth to a son, whom they named Edward in honour of the prince’s father.⁶⁰ There can be no doubt about the prince’s joy, as the occasion was marked with jubilant celebration, including a splendid tournament with forty knights attended by forty squires jousting in Joan’s honour, marking the occasion of her churching on 27 April.⁶¹ According to one contemporary account, 154 lords and 706 knights attended the festivities, which lasted for ten days, and the prince bore the cost of stabling 18,000 horses, and Joan is recorded as having a personal entourage of twenty-four knights and twenty-four ladies.⁶²Edward III’s influence on his son is notable, as the account bears a striking similarity to earlier churchings of Queen Philippa, and the king’s own fondness for lavish displays. The good news was taken to Edward III by one of the prince’s yeomen, Sir John Delves, who received a handsome annuity of £40 from the delighted king, while the mayor and aldermen of London received a letter from Joan herself at the end of March, advising them of the news.⁶³ The baby prince’s baptism in the cathedral of St Peter in Angoulême by the Bishop of Limoges was a grand affair, attended by numerous lords, including Peter, King of Cyprus, who stayed for a month (and during his visit endeavoured to persuade the assembled knights to join him on crusade; he was only partially successful, as the only one to take up his offer was the Earl of Warwick).⁶⁴

Aside from the birth of Prince Edward, 1365 was also notable for the marriage of the prince’s sister, Isabella, and that of Joan’s youngest daughter. Princess Isabella was close to both the prince and Joan, being the nearest in age to the prince of his siblings, while Joan had spent several years with the princess when she had lived at court as a child. Isabella was now thirty-three, and still unmarried, a favourite with her parents and a major presence at court. Her choice of husband was somewhat unexpected. She had not only fallen for a relatively humble knight some years her junior in age, but for a Frenchman whose presence in England was due to his being one of the hostages for the fulfilment of the Treaty of Brétigny. On 27 July Isabella married Enguerrand de Coucy at Windsor, with her parents in attendance.⁶⁵ There is no indication that the king and queen disapproved of Isabella’s unconventional choice, and in fact they celebrated the event in style, with Edward III paying £100 for minstrels to play at the wedding, and Philippa spending £1,273 6s 8d on jewels for the occasion.⁶⁶ Although the prince and Joan could not attend the wedding, their thoughts must have been with Isabella on such a momentous occasion. In November de Coucy returned to France, taking Isabella with him.⁶⁷ In April 1366 she gave birth to a daughter, Mary, and the following month, on 11 May, Edward III created de Coucy Earl of Bedford, and he was also shown specific favour by being made a knight of the Garter.⁶⁸ Isabella returned to England in 1367 and gave birth to her second daughter at Eltham, while in 1368 her husband resumed his military career in Italy.

Later in 1365 Joan’s youngest daughter, Joan, married John Montfort, Duke of Brittany. This was a rather different match, re-establishing the close family tie between the dukedom and the English Crown, with Joan Holand stepping into Princess Mary’s shoes as the new duchess. John Montfort had been living in the royal household and had travelled to Aquitaine with the prince in February 1363, as his claim to succeed his father as Duke of Brittany was still a matter of dispute with his rival claimant, Charles of Blois. After a truce between them signed at Poitiers in November 1363, in February 1364 Charles and John made submissions to the prince, in his capacity as Prince of Aquitaine, to resolve their dispute.⁶⁹ It was an awkward political scenario for the prince, as his father had supported Montfort all along while John remained a guest in the prince’s household at the time. Perhaps wisely, the prince made no decision, but when John returned to Brittany to fight for his inheritance he was accompanied by Sir John Chandos. In September 1364 the matter was unequivocally resolved by the decisive military victory won at Auray by Montfort and Chandos, in which Charles of Blois was killed. John Montfort’s marriage to the prince’s stepdaughter a few months later cemented the already strong relationship between them. Although Montfort was now twenty-four, Joan Holand was no more than eight or nine years old and the couple would not be expected to live together as man and wife at this stage.⁷⁰ The new Duchess of Brittany remained under her mother’s guidance for the time being. Joan had the satisfaction of her daughter making a prestigious marriage to a young man she knew well, while keeping her at her side. Maud and her husband Hugh were also part of her household by 1366, when the Pope granted her request for portable altars for Joan, Duchess of Brittany, and Sir Hugh and Lady Maud Courtenay.⁷¹

In the late spring of 1366 Joan conceived her second child by the prince. This was a naturally welcome and happy event and by now, after nearly three years in Aquitaine, everything seemed to be going well for them. The prince’s administration in Aquitaine appeared to be well established, with his vibrant and thriving court at its hub. Joan’s life in Aquitaine revolved around the prince and his concerns, and there must have been constant demands on her as his wife: entertaining the local nobility, managing their own entourage, as well as the more mundane administration of their household. Although Joan was a caring and fond mother, there is no evidence to suggest that she used her position to promote her children’s interests. The marriages of Thomas, Maud and Joan were all at the prince’s initiative, but none of them were granted land or income beyond that achieved by their marriages. The prince kept a watchful eye on his godson in England, and in October 1364 he appointed the fourteen-year-old Thomas escheator for the lordship of Denbigh, replacing one of his own men.⁷² Although the prince took his responsibilities towards his stepchildren seriously this is the only evidence of special favour being shown to Thomas.

Joan now had little time for her Holand children, and it is likely it was around this time that Maud and Joan returned to England, with the appointment of John Delves and his wife Isabel as guardians to the young Duchess of Brittany in November 1367.⁷³ John Holand, now nearly fourteen, was close by, in his stepfather’s retinue. Although there is very little evidence of Joan’s activities at this time, she would have shared in some of the prince’s leisure pursuits, such as music (the prince’s fondness for music is evident from the expenditure on instruments and musicians noted in his household accounts⁷⁴), but with her successive pregnancies it seems unlikely that she spent much time in more strenuous pastimes such as hunting.

Joan maintained a close personal interest in her English estates, even though these were being supervised by the prince’s council on her behalf. Her close emotional attachment to Castle Donington is apparent in the order issued December 1363, just months after her arrival in Aquitaine, for her steward John Fouchier to investigate a report that the warden of the hospital was failing in his obligation to provide dwellings for a chaplain and six poor people at his own cost, and to communicate his findings to the council in London as soon as possible.⁷⁵ Similarly she intervened to assist Randolf Saleby, her former steward and attorney, who had worked faithfully for her for several years and whom she and Thomas Holand had rewarded with a lifetime interest in a shop and land at the nominal rent of a single rose, given every year. He retired from his position in March 1362, just a few months after Joan’s marriage to the prince. By 1365 an annual rental of 20s was being demanded from him and he was described as being 60s (i.e. three years) in arrears. Joan became aware of his plight, and in November 1365 the bailiff at Greetham manor in Lincolnshire was ordered by the prince’s council to suspend demands for the arrears until further order.⁷⁶ John and Christina Morel were evidently regarded highly by Joan as she used her personal seal to arrange for them to receive an annuity of 10 marks in May 1364 and was at pains to ensure they received the money, with subsequent orders issued in July and November. Similarly she remembered with affection the services of William, son of Reynold of Wallingford with a 5 mark annuity.⁷⁷ Nor did she forget her first husband, as in October 1364 she ensured that her reeve at Castle Donington was reimbursed for the 5 marks he paid the chaplain singing for Thomas’ soul in the castle chapel.⁷⁸ Joan evidently ensured she was kept fully informed of estate affairs in England, and even the difficulties that her aunt, Lady Blanche Wake, was having in getting the drawbridge at Deeping manor repaired came to Joan’s attention, with her steward at Torpel manor being ordered by the prince’s council to supply Blanche with three suitable oaks for the purpose.⁷⁹ A more unusual intervention was a pardon granted at Joan’s request in November 1366 for John Chamberlyn, presumably one of her retainers, who was accused of killing Richard Alcombury.⁸⁰

Joan showed a considerable interest in several of the young clerks in her service. William Harpele was with her before her marriage to the prince, and his two brothers benefited from Joan’s affection for William. In 1365 Laurence Harpele became her clerk and received a canonry and prebend (income) through her offices, while John Harpele had become squire to the prince by 1367.⁸¹ Four applications by Joan to the Pope on behalf of a young man called William Croule have survived, starting in September 1363 with her request for him to be ordained priest while he was twenty. By 1365 he had become a constant member of her household and just a month after Prince Edward’s birth, in May 1365, she asked for a benefice valued at 30 marks on his behalf, later that year asking for it to be increased by 15 marks. In 1366 she obtained the church of Paston in Northamptonshire for him (he would receive the benefice from Peterborough Abbey).⁸² In 1365 and 1366 she asked for canonries, several with prebends, for more of her clerks: Thomas Yerd, Thomas Bullesden, John Ludham, Simon Lothebury and Hugh Bukunhull.⁸³ On 1 September 1365 an increased annuity of £10 was granted to Joan’s yeoman of the wardrobe, Stephen, for his good service to her and the prince.⁸⁴ This was evidently a personal request by Joan as the annuity was to be funded from her Cottingham estate. While patronage was expected of a woman in Joan’s position, and there is nothing unusual in these requests, it is notable that in each case she was giving these young men the crucial first step in their career, just as she had with Robert Braybrooke. These gestures show that she thought carefully about the effect of her intervention. The picture that emerges is one of interest and concern, with a thoughtful and considered approach to making rewards and requests on behalf of others. In this way Joan fulfilled her expected role, and provided quietly effective patronage while not drawing attention to herself, in contrast to her husband’s more public and lavish generosity.

Without more detailed records it is only possible to make some reasonable suppositions about Joan’s lifestyle at this time. Her time seems to have been divided between the archbishop’s palace and abbey of St Andrews in Bordeaux and the castle at Angoulême, holding court in each, sitting alongside the prince on formal occasions. She may have accompanied the prince on some of his progresses through the duchy, but most of her time was spent in Bordeaux and Angoulême. Bordeaux was the administrative capital from where the prince’s principal staff conducted their state business, a bustling city with an ever-changing population arriving and departing from its busy port. Although Bordeaux was the largest centre in the principality Joan appears to have spent more of her time in Angoulême, a smaller and less busy centre; certainly she did throughout the latter part of 1364, most of 1365 and the early part of 1366, often without the prince while he travelled to other centres. Presiding with the prince over their court occupied much of her time, as did playing hostess to the constant large number of guests while at the same time taking responsibility for supervising the upbringing of her children, as well as her household and staff. However, when the prince was away her lifestyle would have been considerably quieter. It was in every sense a royal existence, closely paralleling the lifestyle she had seen as a child and preparing her for the day when she would have to take Queen Philippa’s place. The resemblance between Joan and her mother-in-law is in some ways striking, and it is easy to conclude that Joan consciously modelled her behaviour on Philippa’s. It was also, presumably, a happy time for her, surrounded by her expanding family.

Then, in the autumn of 1366, Joan’s Aquitanian idyll ended. After only six years of peace, the prince was once again going to war, although this time the campaign was in Spain, in response to a call for aid from an ally rather than as a result of a new English initiative in France. South of Aquitaine was a collection of smaller kingdoms including Navarre, Aragon, Granada and Castile, the last being the largest and richest as well as having a strong navy. When the war with France had started in 1340 both sides had made approaches to each of these kingdoms in the hope of securing their allegiance, with Castile the most potentially valuable. Castile initially was neutral, more concerned about the security of its own southern borders. In 1343 King Alfonso XI had called for assistance, receiving papal endorsement for his Crusade against the Moors. In the temporary lull in hostilities between France and England the Castilian king had attracted support from a large number of prestigious knights, including Edward III’s close friend the Earl of Salisbury, his cousin Henry, then Earl of Derby, as well as knights seeking adventure and preferment, like Thomas Holand. In 1345 Alfonso had turned his back on his English friends and entered into an alliance with France, but by 1348 Edward III had persuaded the Castilian king to reconsider an alliance with England, and it was agreed that Alfonso’s son Pedro would wed Princess Joan. When the princess died of the plague when embarking for Spain, Pedro had married the French princess Blanche of Bourbon instead, and succeeded his father two years later when Alfonso died in 1350. Notwithstanding the support given to France by the Castilians, most obviously when their navy fought Edward III in the sea battle at Winchelsea, diplomatic negotiations had continued. Just before the prince was granted Aquitaine in 1362, Pedro agreed to an Anglo-Castilian alliance, and the treaty was formally completed at St Paul’s Cathedral on 22 June 1362.⁸⁵

Pedro’s change of heart was largely a matter of self-interest, as he had a rival for his throne in the shape of his illegitimate half-brother Henry of Trastámara. Henry had secured the backing of the kingdom of Aragon, and the support of the new King of France. John II, taken prisoner by the prince at Poitiers, had died in London in April 1364, and his death had signalled a change in French policy. Whereas John II had felt bound to honour the provisions of the Treaty of Brétigny, and to pay his ransom, his son and successor Charles V felt quite differently. Clever enough to appreciate that he needed to avoid open confrontation with Edward III, he made little effort to complete the outstanding ransom payments or treaty provisions, and it suited him well to encourage Pedro’s rival. In the autumn of 1365 Henry of Trastámara invaded Castile with the aid of an army of mercenaries (including English captains, one being Eustace d’Aubrichecourt, who appears to have left the prince’s service) raised under the auspices of the Aragonese king and led by the French generals Bernard du Guesclin and d’Audrehem, Marshal of France, with the tacit backing of France. Pedro immediately invoked the treaty, obliging Edward III to provide troops at Pedro’s expense to serve against his enemies.⁸⁶ He was disappointed in Edward III’s initial response, which was simply to issue a proclamation forbidding English subjects to attack Castile, intended to deter English and Gascon subjects from joining Henry’s mercenary army. In February the Pope wrote to Joan, asking her to urge the prince to mediate between the Castilian and Aragonese kings, and to help the Bishop of Chichester foster peace between them.⁸⁷ This is the first time the Pope is recorded asking for Joan’s assistance, indicating that by this time her influence on her husband was universally recognised, as there is no evidence that he had already made a similar request directly to the prince, who had been one of the main promoters of Anglo-Castilian treaty. But whatever the Pope hoped Joan might be able to achieve, it was already too late. By March 1366 Henry of Trastámara’s army had successfully taken most of Castile, and Henry had been crowned at Burgos while Pedro fled into exile. As Pedro’s fortunes waned the debate in England changed in tone, as a pro-French King of Castile was not only undesirable for England but also posed a significant threat to Aquitaine. The prince was a party to the discussions, writing letters to his father and sending his chamberlain Sir Nigel Loring to England in the spring of 1366. Whatever their personal feelings about Pedro (and the prince had no great fondness for the Castilian king) he was at least an ally and so a more desirable proposition than Henry of Trastámara. They would have to assist Pedro, and it would be the prince who would play the lead role in providing that assistance. Edward III called Parliament at the beginning of May, and it was agreed that a small force would be sent, led by the prince’s younger brother, John of Gaunt. In June orders were given for the requisitioning of shipping to use as transport. Meanwhile the prince began his own preparations, on 8 May ordering Sir Nigel Loring and his sixteen-year-old stepson Thomas Holand to bring a force of troops and sappers urgently to Gascony.⁸⁸

At the end of July 1366 the prince travelled from Bordeaux and met with Pedro outside Bayonne at Capbreton, where agreement for assistance was reached in principle. The basic understanding was that the prince would raise and command an army which would invade Castile and restore Pedro to his throne. The inference from the tone of the contemporary commentators is that the English were not overly enthusiastic in responding to Pedro’s request, and some historians have implied that it was the prince, anxious for another military campaign, who responded favourably to Pedro’s pleas for help and persuaded his father to go along with it.⁸⁹ However, by the time the prince met Pedro at Capbreton the decision had already been taken in England that assistance should be given, and the prince was acting in response to instructions given by his father.⁹⁰ A formal agreement was signed at Libourne on 23 September covering the practical details of the operation. King Carlos of Navarre was a necessary party to the deal, as his kingdom controlled passes into Castile which the prince would need to use, and he was promised substantial payment and territorial concessions. The prince agreed to pay for his own army and to pay King Carlos on the understanding that Pedro would repay him when his kingdom was regained. Pedro also promised to give areas of coastal land in the north of Castile to the prince and to give him the titles of Lord of Biscay and Castro Urdiales.⁹¹

As soon as the agreement was signed the prince went to work to raise his army. It proved easy to obtain support, and he was joined enthusiastically by most of the Aquitanian nobility, and by men from the free companies in France, all of whom envisaged making their fortunes from the profits of a successful campaign. Nevertheless, the adventure promised in Spain was on a very different footing to the earlier campaigns in France. Despite the obligations imposed on England under the Anglo-Castilian treaty, and however much the language of the deal signed at Libourne dressed it up, the prince would in effect be acting as a mercenary, hired by one side in a civil war. Financial support from England was intended to be minimal, and the supporting force commanded by John of Gaunt modest in size. According to Froissart, some of the prince’s closest advisors had strong reservations about the enterprise, although their scruples were a personal objection to Pedro himself on the grounds that he ‘is now and has always been, a man of great pride, cruelty and wickedness’, rather than the viability of the project.⁹² From the outset the venture was risky in the extreme, with the financial basis being critically dependent not simply on the prince being successful but also on Castile being able to pay for the expenses of the major campaign. The only financial contribution Pedro was able to make at this stage was of his personal jewellery. Although the prince could rely on his own retinue, who formed the hub of the army, to cover most of their own expenses initially, huge sums of money were nonetheless needed to cover the initial expenses that would be incurred to pay for equipment and supplies, advance payments promised to the Gascon lords and the loan to Pedro to pay the King of Navarre. It has been calculated that the amount required, even before the army set out, was in the region of £100,000.⁹³ The sheer expense of the enterprise was daunting and the quantities of ready cash needed far exceeded anything the prince had to hand. The prince resorted to melting down his own household gold and silver and to minting additional coins, and Edward III was forced to contribute a substantial sum in gold, simply to finance the start of the campaign. There is some evidence that the prince tried to control the costs by restricting the size of the contingents provided by individual lords, but this was in itself a difficult issue. The Lord of Albret was probably not the only noble to refuse, angered by what he may have considered an unwarranted limit on his opportunity to make a fortune in plunder.⁹⁴Nonetheless, Edward III and the prince confidently gambled that the prince would succeed, and that victory would ensure that the costs would be recovered, just as the diplomatic objective would be achieved.

The prince’s army gathered during the autumn of 1366 in Dax, with the prince moving his court to Bordeaux to be nearer at hand, where he was joined by the Castilian king and his three daughters, Beatrice, Constance and Isabella. Joan and the prince stayed at the abbey of St Andrews. Pedro would naturally accompany the prince on campaign, while his daughters would remain, as surety for Pedro but treated as guests, in Joan’s care.⁹⁵ John of Gaunt sailed from Plymouth early in December to join with Sir Robert Knolles in Brittany, having agreed to rendezvous with the prince at Dax where the main force was being assembled. Joan was in the last stage of her pregnancy by this time, and the prince was with her when their second son was born at the abbey of St Andrews in Bordeaux on 6 January 1367.⁹⁶ Among the women attending Joan at the birth was Lady Anne Stury, wife to Richard Stury, one of the prince’s knights, and she brought the news of the birth to the prince.⁹⁷ The baby was christened Richard three days later in the cathedral by the archbishop, with their guests the kings of Majorca and Armenia acting as his godfathers. Froissart was among the many guests. Joan ensured that a wet nurse, Mundina Danos, was engaged for the baby along with a cradle rocker named Eliona de France; both were local women.⁹⁸

According to Chandos Herald Joan was extremely unhappy at the prospect of her husband’s departure:

[She] had right bitter grief at heart, and then she reproached the goddess of love who had brought her to such great majesty, for she had the most puissant prince in the world. Often she said, ‘Alas what should I do, God, and love, if I were to lose the very flower of nobleness, the flower of loftiest grandeur, him who has no peer in the world in valour? Death! Thou wouldst be at hand. No have I neither heart nor blood nor vein, but every member fails me, when I call to mind his departure, for all the world says this, that never did any man adventure himself on so perilous an expedition. O very sweet and glorious Father, comfort me in your pity.’ Then did the prince hearken to his gentle lady’s words; he gave her right noble comfort, and said to her, ‘Lady, let be your weeping, be not dismayed, for God has power to do all.’ The noble prince gently comforts the lady, and then sweetly takes leave of her, saying lovingly, ‘Lady, we shall meet again in such wise that we shall have joy, we and all our friends for my heart tells me so.’ Very sweetly did they embrace and take farewell with kisses. Then might you see ladies weep and damsels lament, one bewailing her lover and another her husband. The princess sorrowed so much that being then big with child, she through grief delivered and brought forth a very fair son, the which was called Richard. Great rejoicings did all make, and the prince also was right glad at heart, and all say with one accord, Behold a right fair beginning.⁹⁹

Chandos Herald wrote this in 1385, nearly twenty years later, and the account is clearly embroidered – there is, for example, no evidence that Richard was born prematurely or that Joan experienced any difficulty in the birth. In view of the outcome of the Spanish campaign it is hardly surprising that the herald depicted Joan being upset, as the prince’s leaving her in January 1367 did indeed mark a real turning point in their relationship. At the time there was no real reason for Joan to feel apprehension. It was their first parting, but Joan had been a soldier’s wife for many years and she would never have expected to keep the prince at her side throughout their married life.

The prince left Bordeaux shortly after Richard’s christening and went south to Dax to join his army. He had succeeded in gathering an extremely large army, estimated variously at between 6,000 and 10,000 troops.¹⁰⁰ Most of his entourage were with him, many of whom had served with him in 1355 and had been with him at Poitiers – as well as the greater Aquitanian nobility led by Armagnac and d’Albret. This was a major enterprise, and the prince could anticipate being absent for many months. Naturally he needed to make provision for the governance of Aquitaine, and he gave his deputies his instructions for the action they were to take in his absence. It is perhaps surprising that the prince does not seem to have considered appointing his wife to be regent in his absence, but he had never envisaged Joan having a political role. Instead, Joan was to supervise what was left of their court. She watched as her husband left, taking with him her eldest son, Thomas Holand, supported by her friend Eleanor whose husband Roger de la Warr also accompanied him.¹⁰¹ It is possible that she had been joined by her sister-in-law, Elizabeth, as Elizabeth’s husband, Eustace d’Aubrichecourt, had just arrived to join the prince’s entourage.¹⁰² Prince Edward had not waited for his brother to arrive, and when John of Gaunt reached Aquitaine he first went to Bordeaux to pay his respects to his sister-in-law. Chandos Herald recalled that ‘night and morning the noble Duke of Lancaster rode until he came right to Bordeaux, and found there the princess, mistress of all honour, who welcomed him sweetly and very graciously asked news of her country, how they fared in England. And the duke recounted all.’¹⁰³ It is unlikely that at this point the two knew each other very well. Joan was twelve years older than John, and it had been during Philippa’s confinement giving birth to John that Joan had entered into her secret marriage to Thomas Holand. Being so much younger John would barely have seen his cousin as he was growing up, though he would no doubt have heard about her circumstances. John was the closest to the prince of his brothers, and had lived in the prince’s household from March 1350 to May 1355 when he was an adolescent, but, by the time the prince married Joan, John was already married himself and occupied with his management of his own extensive affairs.¹⁰⁴ Joan had not attended John’s wedding to Blanche of Lancaster, as she had been in France with Thomas Holand.¹⁰⁵ When John arrived in Bordeaux it would have been natural for him to spend some time with Joan, bringing her up to date with news from England but also giving them a chance to get to know each other better. Seeing his new nephew Richard may have been poignant for John, as his wife was expecting their third child in a few months’ time. The few days John spent with Joan in Bordeaux were the start of a strong and lasting friendship between them. While John stayed with Joan he would also have met his future wife Constance (of Castile) for the first time.

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 to 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 theAnonimalle 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

In November 1369 Charles V formally announced the confiscation of Aquitaine. So far the prince had taken no real part in the fighting himself, although he had moved to take up residence in Cognac, but now he knew that he faced a major campaign to secure his principality, and that he was probably on his own. The planned English campaign in northern France had petered out, with John of Gaunt returning to England in December, although intermittent fighting had continued. Then the prince’s most trusted and brilliant captain, Sir John Chandos, was killed in a raid early in January 1370. Charles V had regained the services of du Guesclin, and early in 1370 the French army invaded Aquitaine in two separate offensives, with one apparently aimed at attacking the prince directly in Angoulême. In April Edward III agreed that once again John of Gaunt should go to his brother’s aid, but only with a small force. In his absence Gaunt’s three children, Henry, Philippa and Elizabeth, were looked after by Joan’s aunt, Lady Blanche Wake. When John arrived in Aquitaine, with Edmund of Langley, they must have been shocked at their brother’s condition. The prince could barely sit on a horse. Nevertheless he roused himself in August when he heard that the dukes of Berry and Bourbon had ridden through Limousin and occupied Limoges, persuading the bishop and the townsfolk to surrender to France. The bishop was godfather to the prince’s eldest son, the young Prince Edward, and his surrender was seen as a personal betrayal as well as a direct rebellion against the prince. The prince assembled his army and left for Limoges early in September with the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Guichard d’Angle, plus his brothers as his captains, but he was a shadow of his former self. According to Froissart the prince was too incapacitated to sit on his horse, and had to be carried in a litter the sixty miles from Angoulême to Limoges. The prince is described as giving commands from his litter, but his perilous state of health makes it possible that he was only in nominal command.

Limoges refused to surrender to the prince. However, the prince’s miners were able to breach one of the city walls and they entered the city on 19 September. This was to be the prince’s last military engagement, and his last military success. But his reputation suffered from the critical reports of the conduct of the campaign. Froissart claimed that the prince was so angry that he ordered all the civilians, including the women and children, to be massacred, and the city itself was pillaged, robbed and burnt to the ground. The captured Bishop of Limoges was placed in Gaunt’s custody, and after some negotiation was delivered to the Pope.¹²⁸ Froissart’s account is not necessarily accurate. While it appears that the city was indeed comprehensively destroyed, it was an accepted practice at the time to do this in such situations to set an example and it is generally accepted that there is no evidence that civilians were killed. What happened was brutal, although not necessarily more so than in the previous chevauchée campaigns. But Froissart’s opinion, whether justified or not, indicates that Limoges tarnished the prince’s chivalric reputation. Although the success at Limoges to some extent restored the prince’s authority, it did not result in any of the cities and towns which had allied themselves to France relinquishing their allegiance, and the prince knew that he had only achieved a temporary respite. In just a matter of months he had lost control of the principality and the loyalty of most of the Gascon nobility. It would be an uphill task to restore both, and the prince was in no fit state to do so.

Joan’s whereabouts during the Limoges campaign are not clear. Only two contemporary writers mention her; Froissart suggests that she accompanied her husband part of the way and stayed at Cognac, where the prince joined her after the city was taken, while Chandos Herald indicates that Joan remained in Angoulême, and that the prince returned to her there.¹²⁹ This is more likely, as during the prince’s absence their eldest son, Prince Edward, was taken ill at Angoulême. Joan’s anguish must have been acute when the boy died after a short illness. Her grief was compounded when she had to break the news to the prince on his return, and found that her husband was in a considerably worse state of health than when he had left. The death of his eldest son was a bitter blow for the prince, and confirmed his belief that he needed to return to England. The unity and loyalty of Aquitaine depended on the person of the prince, and with his health destroyed the prince was simply unable to cope with the problems facing him. To add to his woes, according to Froissart, the Pope, incensed by the sack of Limoges, threatened to have the prince’s younger son, Richard, declared illegitimate.¹³⁰ The prince hoped that once in England he would recover his health and that he would then be able to return with the energy he needed to maintain his authority in Aquitaine. The prince was by this time so ill, and so desperate to leave, that he decided on an immediate departure, and arranged for John of Gaunt to deputise for him for six months.¹³¹ Joan, naturally, would accompany the prince back to England, as would most of their retinue, although it is possible that they decided it would be better for John Holand, now twenty-one, to start afresh and join Gaunt’s retinue, instead of staying with his stepfather. The prince’s helplessness was so acute that Joan probably had much to do with the planning and preparation for their departure from Aquitaine, liaising between her brother-in-law and the prince’s staff. Sadly, the prince was so ill that their departure was made in haste, before Prince Edward was buried. It cannot have been easy for Joan to agree to leave before her son’s funeral and it is indicative of the good relationship that she had established with John of Gaunt that she was happy to entrust him with the necessary arrangements. In January 1371 the prince and Joan, accompanied by Prince Richard and most of their retinue, sailed for England. Neither of them would ever return. Shortly after they left, John of Gaunt faithfully carried out his promise, and Prince Edward’s funeral was held at the cathedral of St Andrews in Bordeaux.¹³²