3
Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs, 22:6
Family support aside, while Joan and John were under the king’s protection and in the queen’s household, the major influences on their lives, and their future, were the king and queen. Edward III celebrated his eighteenth birthday in November 1330, an extremely young man just entering into the full responsibilities of kingship, and having to cope with the legacy left by his father’s deposition and the two years of political domination by his mother, Isabella, and Mortimer. He was still developing his kingly style, and his young queen, Philippa, had had little time to adjust to her new independence. What was life like for Joan and John in the royal household, away from their mother’s watchful eye while she was preoccupied with family affairs? Childhood, even of a royal child, was not particularly well recorded in the fourteenth century, and there are no records referring to Joan during her early years. However, it is possible to speculate on aspects of her childhood from some of the known background.
The king and queen had their own separate household, although they spent much time together, and the royal children and their companions came under the aegis of the queen. Naturally the queen’s household was extremely large and made up of many different parts, so that day-to-day supervision and care of the children was delegated and separately regulated. Prince Edward had a nurse, Joan of Oxford, and a nursemaid, Matilda Plumpton, appointed to attend his cradle. Matilda seems to have nursed Edward’s younger brother, Edmund of Langley, twelve years later. Both were later given generous pensions, and as an adult Prince Edward remembered his nursemaid Matilda, sending her a tun of wine in June 1357.1 These ladies may both have assisted in the care of Joan’s baby brother, so similar in age to the young prince. Prince Edward was given his own household, and a steward, Sir William Saint Omer, appointed to take charge of it for him. In 1332 Sir William’s wife, Lady Elizabeth, took charge of the prince himself. Her role expanded as the royal nursery did, and by 1334 she is described as mistress to the king’s other children.2 The Saint Omers were in charge of all aspects of the household and day-to-day lives of the royal children, including their early education, and the Saint Omers would have been expected to look after Joan and John as well as their royal charges. In April 1336 William and Elizabeth Saint Omer received a grant of £25 a year for their service to the king in looking after Prince Edward and the princesses, and Elizabeth received a further reward of £12 a year specifically for her service to the prince in December 1337.3
When Prince Edward reached the age of seven in 1337 he was given a completely independent household, and taken out of what would have been a largely female environment. His education was amended to one more suitable for his age and rank, acquiring a tutor, possibly the scholarly philosopher William Burley, Queen Philippa’s almoner, and by 1338 he was receiving military training, possessing a quantity of armour and accoutrements.4 The princesses remained together, mostly with their mother. It is probable that Joan and her brother were similarly separated, Joan remaining with the princesses and John with the prince. Traditionally other children were placed with the royal children to give them the company of others their own age; both Edward I and Edward II had their childhood households expanded in this way. Joan and John were merely the first to join their cousins. An early recruit into the prince’s household was almost certainly William Montague, eldest son of the king’s best friend. The Montagues were among the entourage closest to the king. In January 1331 Edward III appointed Montague keeper of the royal manor at Woodstock, and his wife Catherine Montague brought the king the news of Princess Isabella’s birth in June 1332.5 It has been thought that they may have become Joan’s governor and governess, but there is no evidence to substantiate this.6 The young William Montague was the same age as Joan, and two years older than Prince Edward. Joan’s later relationships with Prince Edward and the Montague family were based on the familiarity acquired during these early childhood days. An indication of that childhood familiarity is the use of the diminutive ‘Jeanette’ by Prince Edward in a gift to Joan made in 1348 many years before their marriage.7
As was usual at that time, the first language of the nobility and royal family was French, and English was used to communicate with less privileged members of the household. Joan would have spoken both, and been taught to read, and write, in French at least. Her parents were literate; Edmund’s conviction was based partly on the letters that he and Margaret had written to the guards at Corfe Castle. A limited amount of correspondence to and from Joan survives which implies literacy, the most well known being the letter written in French by Prince Edward to his wife from Spain after the Battle of Nájera in 1367.8 She would have had some knowledge of Latin, though this may have been limited to the religious services. English was little used by the higher nobility as a written language at that time, and she may not have learnt to read in it. The usual accomplishments for girls of Joan’s background included dancing, singing, the ability to play a musical instrument and embroidery. She would also have learned to ride, and probably falconry, a sport in which women participated fully and which was extremely popular with the royal family. Her brother John would in addition have received military training and enjoyed hunting and hawking, activities favoured by Edward I, Edward II and Edward III and enjoyed by Prince Edward.
Religion was a fundamental and important part of Joan’s life. Like her brother John, Joan would have been christened shortly after her birth, and her godparents expected to play an important part in her life, providing her with a spiritual family. There is unfortunately no indication as to the identity of Joan’s godparents, and although it was common for the chief godparent’s name to be given to a child, this does not seem to have been the case for Joan and her brothers. Her elder brother Edmund was clearly named after his father, and her younger brother John was probably named after Margaret’s father, John Wake. It seems likely that Joan was named after her maternal grandmother, Joan Wake. Living in the royal household meant that Joan and John had access to chapels, with chaplains and regular services. Initially they were too young to attend services, but as they grew older a daily routine of worship would have become part of their lives, such as saying matins (the hours of the Virgin) just after they got up. It had become so much an accepted part of a noble child’s day that in the 1370s the French knight Geoffrey de la Tour Landry instructed his daughters to begin their day in this way before they had breakfast.9 The calendar was punctuated by feast days of saints and religious holidays and celebrations, and it was on those days that Joan was most likely to have attended the royal chapels, which would have been richly furnished and brightly decorated with pictures of religious scenes. Aids to worship, such as statues, crosses and books, were also lavishly decorated. Queen Isabella is known to have had chapel furnishings that included an alabaster statue of the Virgin and one of St Stephen, a number of embroideries and wall hangings.10 Joan was no doubt given her own reader, probably a book of hours as this was the most popular devotional item and a traditional gift for a young girl learning to read. As Latin was not normally taught to women, even in the royal household, this would probably have been in French. Many ecclesiastics encouraged learning among women and religious texts might be combined with other material, such as the psalter given by Lord de Lisle to his daughters in 1339 which contained a number of scholarly schematic diagrams including the Tower of Theology of Master John of Metz.11
Attitudes towards religious observances varied widely. The Church regarded charity and almsgiving as an essential part of religious practice and Joan would have learned that noblewomen were expected to give food and money to the poor. There were some great ladies of the court who were renowned for their piety, such as Elizabeth de Burgh (an older half-cousin of Joan’s through her father) and Marie de St Pol, Countess of Pembroke. Both ladies were wealthy widows when Joan was a child, and gave generously to religious foundations, each also founding a college at Cambridge. Some noblewomen showed a devotion to a particular saint and there were many shrines devoted to different saints in England, such as the site to Our Lady at Walsingham, which were visited on pilgrimage. However, those closest to Joan did not show any marked inclination towards piety. Her mother, Margaret, does not seem to have been deeply interested. Not only did she not make a chantry foundation for her husband, but there is no indication that she ever went on pilgrimage or made any significant donation to one of the many religious foundations, in contrast to her brother Thomas Wake. Edward III and his queen were naturally important religious patrons but appear to have been conventional and conformist in their religious practices, and although there has been a suggestion that Philippa shared her eldest son’s later interest in the Trinity she does not seem to have made any major benefactions.12
Apart from religious works, such as the lives of saints, what sort of books would Joan have read? This is indicated from the literature popular among the aristocracy at the time. Courtly and historical romances were widely circulated, with the most popular subject matter being the tales of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, Charlemagne and his paladins, the classical histories of ancient Greece and Rome, the tales of Troy and Thebes, Alexander and Caesar. All of these tales were among the collection of books Queen Isabella is known to have had. In romantic stories the heroes were given the qualities associated with good knighthood: prowess in arms, bravery, loyalty, generosity and courtesy. There was a direct link between Christian belief and chivalry, with knights upholding justice, defending the Church, protecting the weak and the poor. It was an honour to aid and defend women, with love portrayed as an emotion which rewarded while sharpening and refining the knight’s honourable ambitions. The values expounded in these chivalrous tales were reflected in the life around Joan, with tournaments as an obvious visual display. Tournaments acted as social gatherings for the elite as well as training grounds for young knights, and bestowed prestige and prizes on the successful contenders. In the tournaments women supplied the support, the appreciative audience, the decoration – and possibly the prize, as wearing a token of an admiring lady was a usual and popular practice.
Joan grew up in an environment that encouraged and endorsed chivalry as well as the majesty of the Crown. As Edward III gained in confidence he gathered the nobility around him and set the style for his court. He started to behave in such a way as to reflect his ideas for the splendour and grandeur of monarchy. Although dress was not extravagant in the first years of Edward III’s reign, the king’s enjoyment of fine clothing was apparent early on.13 He gave Philippa several robes to wear for her churching after Prince Edward’s birth in July 1330: one of violet velvet embroidered with gold squirrels, one of cloth of gold faced with miniver fur and a robe of silk and gold to wear in evening.14 The reading of chivalric romances such as the Arthurian legend, common among the nobility, was reflected in the plentiful royal library.15 Edward III fostered this, deliberately encouraging a chivalric ethos in his court to help to unite the nobility and create camaraderie among them. Chivalric ideas permeated his court from 1330 onwards. In 1333, for example, Philippa gave Edward III a silver and enamelled cup decorated with figures from Charlemagne and the court of King Arthur stories as a New Year gift.16 Tournaments, watched by the court, such as the Cheapside tournament held in 1331, increased in number. In the 1340s Edward III was to give his ideas their apotheosis with his creation first of a round table for up to three hundred knights at Windsor in 1344, then in 1348 by setting up the Order of the Garter. All the noble, and royal, children were exposed to this atmosphere, with the boys expected to acquire knightly attributes, and the girls to provide a suitable supporting role, and their role models were the king and queen. It is no coincidence that all of Joan’s male playmates were to become renowned knights.
Queen Philippa was devoted to Edward III and followed him whenever she could, taking her children with her.17 It is therefore probable that in joining the royal nursery Joan experienced an itinerant lifestyle as a child, staying with the queen’s household when it accompanied the king on his journeys. In the early 1330s the king remained mainly in and around London, staying in different royal residences: the palace at Westminster, the royal apartments in the Tower, Windsor, Havering, Eltham and Sheen. In September 1331 the household was based at Westminster, while the king and queen attended the jousts held at Smithfield arranged by Montague. By April 1332 the queen was at Woodstock, one of her favourite palaces (Havering was another), some distance outside London but within easy reach should she need to return. Woodstock had particular associations for Joan as it was her father’s birthplace, was comfortable without being elaborately grand and had a park built by Henry I surrounded by a stone wall, turned into a menagerie for the amusement of the royal family which was being maintained for wild animals in 1334.18 In 1334 the prince is recorded as staying in the Tower (where Princess Joan had been born a year earlier) with his sisters and Elizabeth Saint Omer, receiving gifts from the City of London, and in July 1335 they were at Peterborough Abbey and then at Nottingham Castle.19 Joan and John probably accompanied their royal cousins on each of these trips, and may have been with the queen at Hatfield in Yorkshire in 1336 when she gave birth to another son, William. Given complete protection in a stable and secure environment, those early years may have been happy ones for Joan and John.