6

Lady Holand: A Wife at Last
1350–1352

Wives should be wise and sound administrators and manage their affairs well.

Christine de Pizan

More than eight years had passed since Joan married Thomas Holand in the spring of 1341, and they had never lived, or spent much time, together. What would married life hold for Joan, and how would she be treated now she was Lady Holand, and no longer the Countess of Salisbury? In the papal bull dated 13 November 1349 Pope Clement VI required the bishops of London and Norwich, and the Bishop of Comacchio, the papal nuncio, to publicly solemnise Thomas and Joan’s marriage. No one was to be left in any doubt that Joan was properly married to Thomas, and that she was not married to William. The service confirming their marriage would have taken place in England shortly after the date of the Pope’s injunction, and would have been conducted by one of these bishops. It would have been fitting for the king and queen to have attended or at least to have been represented if they were not actually present. Edward III was possibly absent, as he and Prince Edward left secretly for France with a handful of knights shortly before Christmas, having learned of a plan by the French commander Geoffrey de Charny to retake Calais by stealth. By Christmas 1349 Joan was at last formally recognised as Thomas’ wife, and able to take her place at his side. Any celebrations for Joan were muted by the effect of the plague’s relentless course, but it would have been unthinkable for the king and queen not to acknowledge the new Lady Holand and Joan probably celebrated her first Christmas with Thomas with the royal family before she embarked on her new life. Although Edward III and Philippa must have been relieved that the matter was finally settled, the occasion was not noted by the granting of any individual favours to either Joan or Thomas. It is difficult not to imagine that Joan’s emotions were mixed, with her happiness perhaps tinged with apprehension, as leaving the court meant parting from all those who had been close to her over the years to start a life with a man she barely knew, despite all that they had gone through together.

In material terms Joan’s circumstances also changed considerably. Edward III’s court was an affluent, colourful and busy place thronged with people, the large royal family surrounded by members of the nobility, served and supported by armies of servants. Joan had spent most of her life living at court, and for the last eight years she had enjoyed a publicly prestigious status among her peers as Countess of Salisbury. William Montague was also extremely wealthy, with substantial lands and estates. Joan was exchanging this for a very different lifestyle as the wife of a member of the lower gentry. Thomas was still a knight of very modest means. As a household knight Thomas was probably paid about £12 a year, and this was increased on campaign to a daily contractual payment of 2s a day, whereas an earl like William Montague was paid three times as much for his service.¹ Thomas’ mother had done her best to help him, and he did have two small annuities, and during Maud’s lifetime the income from three Northamptonshire manors. When she died she left him a lifetime interest in two manors, Yoxall in Staffordshire and Broughton in Buckinghamshire, which did at least mean that he had somewhere to live with Joan, but a great deal less than he might have hoped to achieve. His success in the Crécy campaign should have warranted his promotion to the rank of banneret, but the fact that this had not happened suggests that he lacked the £200 annual income needed to support the status.² He was by no means alone in being in this position; his fellow companion in arms Sir John Chandos, for example, despite a similarly excellent record, did not become a banneret until 1360, when he received estates which enabled him to support the rank.

Yet by the end of 1349 Thomas should have received in full the three instalments he had been promised by Edward III for the Count of Eu, and had he done so he would have been a very rich man, and could have purchased estates to provide the requisite income and augment his status. Thomas had evidently received some, if not all, of the first instalment at least, as it had been this which had given him the ability to take the papal proceedings, but it appears that he did not receive the second or third instalments. The suggestion has been made that Thomas had not completed the transfer of the count to the king in the approved manner and therefore Edward III had good reason to refrain from making full payment.³ The king had placed the Count of Eu in the custody of Otto Holand (Thomas’ brother), and Otto had disobeyed his orders by taking the count out of England, for which he was punished with imprisonment in July 1350.⁴ However, Otto was not Thomas’ responsibility, and the king is unlikely to have used Otto’s failing as a justification for reneging on his agreement to pay Thomas. It is more probable that as the count’s ransom was still being negotiated in France the king had yet to receive any money, and Edward III was short of cash.⁵ In November 1350 the count was released on parole and returned to France in order to raise the money for his ransom, and had he been able to do so Thomas would probably have been paid.⁶ Unfortunately the count was arrested shortly after his arrival in Paris, accused of treason and summarily executed; thereafter the French had little incentive to pay the count’s ransom. This would explain why the exchequer made no further payments to Thomas, although it is hardly a justifiable excuse as the wording of the grant to Thomas by the king had been unambiguously unconditional. Whatever the real reason, the failure to make full payment was a blow for Thomas, and left him dependant on his career and any prospects he might now acquire as Joan’s husband.

It was probably in January 1350 that Thomas took his bride to her new residence, taking leave from a triumphant Edward III. The king had achieved an exhilarating success in Calais by a daring ambush which had prevented Geoffrey de Charny from retaking the town. Thomas had not had time since Maud’s death to be at either of his manors, and taking Joan to them was his first opportunity to become more familiar with them himself. Broughton, with its closer proximity to the court, was probably his preferred choice as a residence. The universally catastrophic depredations of the Black Death would have left both manors short of workers, and in a poor state of repair. Thomas’ first priority would have been to re-establish the arable crops and livestock to bring in food and income. Inheriting his mother’s manor staff, he would have relied on their knowledge and expertise to overcome the effects of the plague. This was also Joan’s first experience of running her own household. As Countess of Salisbury, she should have been the head of a large household with many servants and attendants, helping to run William’s estates with his council in his absences abroad, but the peculiar circumstances of their marriage had denied her this position. As William’s wife she had been kept closely cocooned, first within the royal household and then as William’s captive, with William’s mother and forceful grandmother filling her role. The most obvious impact of her new status must have been the freedom she now enjoyed. Even if her role in the day-to-day affairs of running the two manors was fairly limited, she now enjoyed an independence she had previously lacked.

This was also the first opportunity Thomas and Joan had to be alone together as a couple and to get to know one another properly. Almost immediately Joan conceived (their first child was born in 1350), indicating that her marriage to William had indeed been celibate.⁷ Joan did not enjoy her solitude with her husband for long. In March 1350 Thomas was ordered to report for duty, and rejoined the rest of the army, which was gathering at Sandwich. This time the intended target was the Castilian navy. After Princess Joan’s death, the alliance made with Castile had foundered, and Philip of France had bribed Alfonso of Castile to allow him the use of the Castilian navy. These ships engaged in piratical acts along the shipping lanes, and posed an invasion threat. Edward III could not allow this, and planned to remove the danger by attacking the Castilian fleet. In August the king set sail with his force from Sandwich, and engaged the Castilians off the English coast at Winchelsea in Sussex. The Castilians were defeated, their ships sunk, captured or fled. The battle took place so close to the shore that the queen, who had travelled to be with her husband, was able to watch from the cliff tops, with her household. Joan may well have been invited to join the royal party, and would doubtless have been welcomed by the queen, who would have been able to give her some practical advice on her pregnancy. After the king’s triumph, the army was once again disbanded, allowing Thomas to take his wife back to their manors.

Thomas no doubt hoped that the recognition of his marriage to Joan would result in a new relationship with the king which would be reflected in his career. Initially there is no indication that his hopes were realised, as after the engagement at Winchelsea there was an uneasy truce between England and France, with a suspension of military activities which limited the opportunities for advancement. With no military engagements Thomas was forced to spend many months away from active service, giving him time with Joan that she must have valued highly. There was little to occupy Thomas in the management of two manors, and he would have looked elsewhere for an outlet for his energies. He was not a man to sit and wait without occupation. His opportunistic marriage to Joan indicated that he fully realised the importance of making connections with people of rank, and it is inconceivable that he would neglect the opportunity afforded by his enforced idleness to capitalise on strengthening his newly won ties with Joan’s influential relations. His choice of godfather for his firstborn son is significant. By the end of 1350 Joan had borne Thomas their first child, a boy named Thomas, after his father.⁸ Prince Edward stood as godfather, attending the christening, which was probably held at Broughton church. As Thomas had been under his command the prince was perhaps a natural choice for godfather, and the prince was also known to be fond of his cousin, but there is no doubt that he was also an extremely valuable and influential patron for the young Thomas. The prince did not neglect his godchild in his first few years either, as the prince’s household accounts record that in April 1353 he presented his godson with a handsome gift of two silver basins, enamelled at the bottom, worth more than £10, suggesting that he probably gave him regular annual gifts.⁹

The affection between Joan and her brother would have made a visit to the young Earl of Kent and his wife Elizabeth natural. The vicissitudes of the last few years had seen great changes in John’s life as well. John had taken part in the Crécy campaign, probably under the aegis of Henry of Lancaster (as he appears among Henry’s retinue for 1346–7), but unlike Thomas Holand and William Montague, and in contrast to his cousin Prince Edward, he does not seem to have shown any military prowess and may not even have been present at the battle.¹⁰ Nevertheless, Edward III had granted him his full inheritance in 1347 when he was only seventeen, giving John independence from his mother. John had become a very wealthy young man, with estates in seventeen counties, comprising forty-three manors, with the right to thirty advowsons as well as extensive income from annual rents and knight’s fees, the latter extending over a further six counties. At a conservative estimate these brought in a collective annual income of just under £6,000, nearly six times the income considered necessary to support the style of an earl.¹¹ When John had married Elizabeth in the spring of 1348, Joan may not have been able to attend their wedding, as it was around this time that the Pope was issuing instructions for Joan to be freed from confinement by William. When Margaret died in 1349 John inherited his mother’s dower properties and the Wake estates which she had inherited from her brother, Thomas Wake. These were granted to John in February 1350, and a year later, on 10 April 1351, Edward III confirmed his inheritance.¹² Until John and Elizabeth had children, Joan was John’s heir, a fact of which Thomas would have been keenly aware, while John may well have been in awe of his formidable brother-in-law, whose achievements on campaign had been matched by his determined pursuit of his sister. Possibly Thomas and Joan stayed with them at Castle Donington in Leicestershire, and if so then they may have extended their trip to pay their respects to Blanche Wake, Thomas Wake’s widow, at Bourne Castle in Lincolnshire. As Henry of Lancaster’s sister, Blanche had doubtless supported her husband’s views on Joan’s marriage to Thomas and it seems unlikely that she ever developed warm feelings for her niece’s husband. Blanche, however, knew what was due to family, and Joan was probably able to repair her own relationship with her aunt, although there is no evidence that they ever became close.

Apart from her brother, Joan’s two closest blood relatives were her cousins, Margaret and Alice, the daughters of her father’s brother, Thomas Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk. Margaret was the elder and about eight years older than Joan. In her earliest years at court Joan would have seen little of her cousins, and it would certainly not have been a connection encouraged by her mother, who would not have forgotten or forgiven Thomas Brotherton for his failure to help her when Edmund was executed. The Earl of Norfolk died in 1338, and after Joan ‘married’ William Montague in 1341 it is likely that she became more familiar with her cousin Alice, who was married to William’s uncle Edward Montague. The youngest of Edward and Alice’s five children was called Joan, quite possibly named after Joan and with her acting as godmother.¹³ Unfortunately Alice died in January 1352, preventing a closer relationship between the cousins.¹⁴ Margaret was a more forceful and determined personality, and seems to have taken encouragement from Joan’s matrimonial tangles. Margaret had been married as a child by her father to his ward, John Segrave, and by 1338 had borne him two children.¹⁵ The marriage did not, however, please Margaret, and in October 1350 she went in person to Rome to secure a divorce from her husband, claiming that she had agreed to marry before she was of a marriageable age and had never agreed to cohabit with him.¹⁶ She was unsuccessful, and had to wait for her freedom until 1353, when Segrave died, whereupon she immediately married Sir Walter Mauny, one of the queen’s favourite knights.¹⁷ In doing so Margaret incurred the king’s disapproval as she had failed to get his permission first, as well as having crossed the Channel in contravention of the king’s orders, and a year later she found herself imprisoned for a short time when the council took proceedings against her.¹⁸ It was many months before the king pardoned her. There is nothing to suggest that Margaret and Joan ever became close, and this may partly be due to Margaret’s matrimonial affairs. While Thomas Holand might have had some sympathy with Margaret, recognising in her determination and willingness to take risks a kindred spirit, he might have felt it prudent to maintain a distance between them until the king’s wrath had abated.

There is unfortunately no evidence to indicate what kind of relationship Joan enjoyed with the royal princesses. Joan had been brought up with princesses Isabella and Joan, and of all her contemporaries these were her most obvious bosom companions. Although Princess Joan had died, Princess Isabella remained unmarried and at court, and was a favourite with her parents. Joan was about four years older than Isabella, and it would have been natural for her to have become close to Isabella as they grew up, and to maintain any attachment in adulthood. Joan had been living with Isabella when she married Thomas Holand in 1340, and had remained with the princess for most of the subsequent nine-year period, with Isabella witnessing at close hand the effects on her cousin of her anomalous situation. The eventual triumph for Joan in being united with the man of her choice and surviving her family’s opposition was a lesson Isabella might well have taken to heart. In 1351 Isabella was nineteen, and Edward III announced his consent to the marriage of ‘our very dear daughter whom we have loved with special affection’ to Bernard, heir to Bernard d’Albret – almost the same match which had been agreed for Joan eleven years previously in 1340.¹⁹ The importance of the alliance for the king in diplomatic terms was obvious but it seems a surprising match to impose on a daughter of whom he was unashamedly fond if she was unwilling, and it is therefore intriguing to note that Isabella refused to board the ship that had been ordered to take her to Gascony, and the match was subsequently called off. Isabella’s spirited defiance and independence enabled her to avoid matrimony until July 1365, when at the age of thirty-three she married Enguerrand de Coucy, a French knight being held hostage in England at the time; quite clearly a personal choice.

In February 1352 Thomas resumed his military career. He was appointed captain of Calais Castle, responsible for the castle garrison, with his brother Otto as his deputy.²⁰ This was just the sort of important command for which he had hoped. Calais had been won by Edward III after an extremely costly siege, and had strategic military importance as it provided a haven for English shipping and a safe bridgehead for entrance into France. Its trading role was just as significant, and Edward III intended to repopulate the town with Englishmen.²¹ The French were anxious to retake the town if they could, and its vulnerability had been demonstrated at Christmas 1349 by Geoffrey de Charny’s raid. The town was almost totally dependent on England for its food, munitions and other supplies, and had a large garrison.²² The king needed to place the defence of the town in the hands of an able, loyal, resourceful and courageous commander, and Thomas’ experience ideally suited him for the post. The appointment was to be until Christmas, and Thomas appointed attorneys to act for him in his absence and to aid Joan in managing his affairs while he was abroad.²³ Joan was pregnant with their second child, and when the baby was born he was named John, after her brother, a sign of their affectionate relationship. It is likely that Joan asked her brother to be godfather to the baby John Holand.²⁴ The expenses of Thomas’ new command and the additional family responsibilities stretched his resources and in August 1352 he petitioned the king for financial assistance, reminding Edward III of his relationship with Joan.²⁵ It is possible that Thomas also reminded the king that he had not received the full amount he had been promised for the Count of Eu; if he did there is no written record. Edward III granted Thomas’ request but his response was not particularly generous. The king grudgingly agreed a grant of only 100 marks a year limited to Joan’s lifetime ‘in aid of her sustenance’, stating that the annuity would cease immediately if Joan’s brother John died, and Joan inherited his lands; as John was only twenty-two, this must have seemed most unlikely. The fact that Thomas felt the need to ask for financial assistance, and the king’s reaction, is a clear indication that the king’s attitude remained equivocal towards him. He valued Thomas for his military abilities but this was a separate matter from their personal relationship. Although Edward III had indirectly helped Thomas to achieve the formal recognition of his marriage to Joan, the king was making it plain to Thomas that he did not intend to reward him for this, and did not welcome him with open arms as a new relation.

On 23 December 1352 John was conducting business as usual at his favourite manor of Woking in Surrey, granting his manor of Ryhall in Rutland to Bartholomew de Burghersh, when he was taken ill, and died a few days later on 27 December.²⁶ He was twenty-two years old. His sudden death was a tremendous shock for his widow, Elizabeth, and no doubt for Joan too, as he was her only surviving close relation. Their early shared childhood, their dependence on one another, the unusual difficulties endured by Joan as John was growing up and their more recent closeness meant that his death left a huge gap in her life. John was buried in the Grey Friars church in Winchester. The only known connection John had with the church is the fact that his father was buried there after his execution in 1330. The choice of John’s resting place suggests that despite Margaret’s plans Edmund’s body had never been moved to Westminster, and that John’s widow, Elizabeth, felt it appropriate to bury her husband with his father.²⁷Elizabeth had evidently loved her husband very much. Shortly after John’s death she took the veil and became a nun, entering Waverley Abbey in Surrey.²⁸ Although Elizabeth later returned to the outside world, her feelings for John remained strong, and more than fifty years later she left instructions in her will that she was to be buried with him.²⁹

Joan’s grief at her brother’s death was overshadowed by the immense implications for her of his death. As John and Elizabeth had no children, Joan was her brother’s heir, and her unexpected inheritance transformed her into one of the greatest and wealthiest landowners in England. When John died the inquisitions post mortem compiled after his death show that he had interests in twenty-three different counties, a mix of landed estates (manors) and a right to income in the form of fee farms (a fixed sum of money due annually), knight’s fees (an annual cash payment made by a knight to lieu of military service) and advowsons (the right to present a clergyman for appointment to a living).³⁰ Forty-three manors are listed: Chesterfield and Ashford in Derbyshire; Kenton, Lifton, Shebbear and Chettiscombe in Devon; Northweald and Lamarsh in Essex, Lechlade, Barnsley, Siddington and Miserden in Gloucestershire; Bedhampton and Alton in Hampshire; Bushey in Hertfordshire; Caldecot in Huntingdonshire; Wickham in Kent; Castle Donington and its manor in Leicestershire; Greetham, Bretby and Beesby in Lincolnshire; Torpel, Upton and Easton in Northamptonshire; Ollerton in Nottinghamshire; Whissendine and Ryhall in Rutland; Somerton, Kingsbury and Queen’s Camel in Somerset; Leyham and Kersey in Suffolk; Woking, Pirbright and Tolworth in Surrey; and Cottingham, Weighton, Buttercrambe, Kirkbymoorside, Cropton, Middleton, Ayton and Hemlington in Yorkshire.³¹ In many of these counties there was further income from fee farms and knight’s fees as well as advowsons, and in addition an entitlement to rental income in a further six counties: Buckinghamshire, Norfolk, Sussex, Warwick, Wiltshire and Worcestershire.³² By any standard of measurement this was a major inheritance.

Elizabeth, as John’s widow, was entitled to a third share of John’s estates as her dower; on her death these would revert to Joan or her heirs. Although the valuations given in John’s inquisitions post mortem are incomplete, a calculation of the income to which Joan became entitled on his death can be estimated from the dower grant to Elizabeth, which carefully lists the properties and annual income she received.³³ Elizabeth’s dower income comes to nearly £1,800 a year, and so the remaining two-thirds inherited by Joan can be estimated conservatively as nearly £3,500 a year. This was a huge income at a time when £1,000 a year was considered necessary to support the style of an earl, and with the exception of the Earl of Lancaster it is difficult to find any other noble who enjoyed such an income. As a point of comparison, contemporaries considered Joan’s cousin Margaret Brotherton extremely wealthy with an estimated income of £3,000 a year, likewise an older cousin of Joan’s, Elizabeth de Burgh, who enjoyed between £2,000 to £2,500 a year. Thomas and Joan’s income previously had been under £200 a year. Thomas had probably never thought that his gamble in marrying Joan would pay off in such a lucrative fashion.

Thomas was still in France when news of John’s death reached him, and he immediately returned to England. As Joan’s husband he would take responsibility for, and have control over, all of the estates and income to which she would be entitled. This was not a matter which could be dealt with by his attorneys. The first business which needed to be agreed was to sort out Elizabeth’s dower. John had left a will and his executors were Elizabeth, Gerard Braybrooke – a knight and justice of the peace in Kent, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire and a distant relative and long-standing family friend who had known Edmund and acted for Margaret over many years – and James Beaufort, a clerk and another long-time family friend.³⁴ Elizabeth’s dower was quickly agreed with Thomas and Joan in January 1353 and on 15 February the dower estates were formally vested in Elizabeth, while on 22 February the escheators were ordered to deliver the remaining estates, and the tenants ordered to pay their rents, to Thomas and Joan.³⁵ The ease and speed with which Elizabeth’s dower was agreed would undoubtedly have been helped by Joan’s knowledge of the family estates, enabling Thomas to recognise the immense practicality of the split which was suggested, probably by the executors. Elizabeth was given a geographically composite group of holdings; all of the holdings in the south-west in Devon and Gloucestershire, and those in the south-east in Hampshire and Surrey. Joan took possession of the remaining twenty-seven manors, which were spread over twelve counties.

An inheritance of this magnitude completely changed Thomas’ status. He took immediate advantage of his newfound wealth to ease his penurious position, and on 23 February 1353 he acknowledged a debt of 200 marks to Richard, Earl of Arundel, and on 12 March a debt of 400 marks to Sir Ralph Neville.³⁶ He repaid these debts quickly but cash flow remained a problem for a while as a year later, in February 1354, he was granted a six-month respite from his obligation to pay debts and produce accounts to the exchequer.³⁷ Naturally, now the king would not be paying the promised annuity to Joan. Official recognition of Thomas’ new status came swiftly with a summons to Parliament. However, as Joan’s husband, Thomas was not entitled to become Earl of Kent until the king granted him the title, and Edward III made no move to do so.³⁸ While this was not necessarily an unusual delay on the king’s part, it is possible that Edward III continued to have reservations about rewarding Thomas for having won Joan, despite his acceptance and endorsement of their marriage. Nevertheless Thomas had every anticipation that the king would grant him the earldom in time, and by 1354 his seal included a flowering tree with his shield of arms suspended by a strap, closely resembling part of John’s seal, while on the left-hand or sinister side he had a helmet out of a ducal coronet (a feature shared by Otto Holand in his shield of arms) and a plume of ostrich feathers (the ostrich feathers were adopted by Prince Edward after Crécy).³⁹

The most important individual estate now owned by Thomas and Joan was Castle Donington in Leicestershire, and they would quickly have moved themselves, with their two boys, into residence.⁴⁰ The castle occupied a strong position to the west of the town itself, above the Trent, dominating the river crossing and overlooking a wide stretch of low-lying land, with its own chapel, park, fishery and ferry to cross the river, and it was surrounded by its own woodland, meadows and pasture land on which cattle grazed. The original castle was Norman, but it had been dismantled on the orders of the king in 1216 during the First Barons’ War and then rebuilt later that century, probably by the Earl of Lincoln and using some of the materials from the earlier castle.⁴¹ The castle had its own chapel, and at the nearby church of St George in Stamford, Thomas’ relation, John Holand, had been the vicar since 1349.⁴² Castle Donington was reasonably centrally located in relation to the other estates, and within easy travelling distance of Blanche Wake at Bourne Castle in Lincolnshire and Robert Holand at Thorpe Waterville in Northamptonshire.

Apart from his newfound status and wealth, Joan’s inheritance had also made Thomas a major landowner, and their son Thomas was now heir to the Kent earldom and all its assets. This meant not simply a change of lifestyle for Thomas, but the potential for a completely different career. Previously Thomas had shown little interest in land, and with only a lifetime interest in the Broughton and Yoxall manors he had done no more than ensure he received their income on a regular basis. Now he controlled his wife’s enormous inheritance, and had an incentive to take an active interest in the estates, assess their condition, plan their future, looking at improving and consolidating them, with the aim of preserving and enhancing his son’s inheritance. It is difficult to know what condition the estates were in when John died, but many would still have been suffering from the devastating effects of the plague. When Margaret died in 1349 the escheator noted that the value of her dower manors at Torpel, Upton and Easton in Northamptonshire, and the extensive Wake manors in Yorkshire, were ‘showing great decreases in value because of the pestilence’.⁴³ John’s escheators give a grim description of the deprivations wrought on other parts of the estates. In Derbyshire, the water mill, fulling mill and lead mine at Ashford manor, formerly worth £20 a year, were valued at 100s, as they had been ‘stopped for want of workers’, while the town of Ollerton in Nottinghamshire is described as ‘remain[ing] mostly without inhabitants and the dwelling houses broken down and empty, and none will hire them’.⁴⁴ The general picture is of land left untended, properties empty and in poor repair, a lack of labour and tenants, resulting in rents at risk. This of course was a national problem, but recovery on the Kent estates may have been hindered by a lack of effective management. Edmund’s death and John’s long minority had meant that many of the estates had been managed for twenty years by Margaret and various nominees of the Crown. This did not apply to the Wake estates, which Thomas Wake had enjoyed from 1317 up to his death in 1349, but much of his land was held in border areas and had suffered considerably from the Scots’ frequent incursions. John was swift to grant the reversion of the Cumberland barony to Edward III (who then granted it to John of Gaunt in 1357) but it was hardly a loss as it was described by the inquest jury as ‘worth nothing … because it is totally laid waste … by the Scots’.⁴⁵

If Thomas and Joan were not to spend all their time in estate management they would need to place more than usual reliance on the people whom they entrusted to run the estates on their behalf. The management of the many estates comprised in the Kent earldom required a complex and hierarchical structure.⁴⁶ Overall supervision would have been placed in the hands of a council, comprising the lord himself, advisers chosen from among his entourage (usually his leading knights) and the officials who had charge of the day-to-day management of the manors; his receivers, stewards and auditors. The administrative centre for the council would have been at Castle Donington, and the chief officials probably resided there with Thomas and Joan. The council’s job was to act as a central advisory body, making decisions and giving advice, hearing petitions and giving judgment on them. As the Kent earldom consisted of estates spread over so many counties, it would have been necessary to geographically divide the manors into convenient groups for administrative purposes, each with their own steward or bailiff and accounting to the same receiver who was in turn responsible to the council. The individual steward’s duties extended to presiding over the manorial and hundred courts – each manor had its own court and each hundred (administrative districts within a shire) its own judicial court. Beneath the stewards were the officials representing the lord on each individual manor, including the reeve, whose duties covered collecting the rents due and accounting for them as well as speaking for the interests of the tenants. Reeves were exempt from labour services but the duality of the role meant it was not an easy one to discharge well and was often an unpopular duty imposed rather than sought after. The rents received were collected up and delivered to the lord’s receiver, who in turn distributed the money to each part of the household. Beneath the reeve were the tenant farmers, the people who actually cultivated the land and tended the livestock.

It is unfortunate that the extensive records which Thomas and Joan’s council would have kept for each individual manor, detailing its extent and its value, every tenancy, the rents received and payments made, have not survived.⁴⁷ The lack of these papers means that reliance has to be placed on incomplete information, much of it gleaned from the inquisitions post mortem completed after John’s death and then after that of Thomas Holand, and Joan herself. Management of large estates was inevitably complicated but Joan’s inheritance, notably so because of certain fairly unique features. It was, firstly, unusual to have two dowager interests. Naturally Thomas and Joan would have considered it important to be on good terms with Blanche Wake and Joan’s sister-in-law Elizabeth, especially as one day their dower interests would fall back into the Kent estates. In 1352 none of them could have foreseen that both dowagers would live for as long as they did; Blanche Wake died in July 1380, while Elizabeth outlived Joan by more than twenty years, and died in 1411.⁴⁸ Secondly, in contrast to most large landowners, the Kent estates had no obvious geographical concentration. The Earl of Lancaster’s estates, for example, were located largely in the north and the Midlands, the Earl of Salisbury’s (William Montague) in the West Country. Thomas Brotherton’s estates, inherited by Joan’s cousin Margaret, were mainly in Norfolk and Suffolk. In contrast, the Kent estates were spread widely over different counties, with very few holdings in the county of Kent, and had Thomas and Joan wished to visit every estate they now owned it would have taken them weeks to do so.

Many of the Kent manors were rented out rather than managed directly, an example being the manor of Ryhall in Rutland which was leased to Sir Bartholomew Burghersh.⁴⁹ There were obvious advantages for a landlord in leasing and receiving annual rent rather than being directly involved in cultivation, harvesting and selling the produce, increasingly so after the Black Death had decimated the labour market. Renting was an attractive and obvious option for Thomas Holand, with his lack of experience and knowledge of estate management, and he had no incentive to alter any such arrangements that John had already made. Nevertheless, careful and extensive management was needed in order to realise the wealth of Joan’s inheritance. Rents had still to be collected and accounted for, and when these were not forthcoming it was necessary to pursue those in dispute or arrears. When tenants died, new tenants had to be found. Margaret’s experience had shown that some tenants, especially the ecclesiastical tenants, were prompt to find excuses not to pay and tardy in making payment when ordered to do so.

Thomas and Joan initially inherited John’s council, and they would not necessarily have made any immediate changes. Continuity was obviously important and replacements may have been in short supply. Some of these knights and clerks can be identified. When John signed the lease renewal shortly before he died his witnesses were Gerard Braybrooke, Thomas Aspale, Henry Loxley (all knights), Thomas Brembre and James Beaufort (both clerks).⁵⁰ Gerard Braybrooke and James Beaufort were also his executors.⁵¹These men were almost certainly on John’s council. Gerard Braybrooke, a justice of the peace in Kent, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, was particularly close to Joan’s family, a distant relation (through Margaret’s grandmother Lora Wake, who married Gerard’s ancestor Gerard Braybrooke) who had originally served Edmund with his brother Henry and then continued to act for Margaret, before serving John.⁵² Thomas Aspale’s family similarly had a long association with Joan’s family, Robert and John Aspale having both served Edmund (John had been in France with Edmund in 1329), while Thomas and John had acted for Margaret; John, like Gerard Braybrooke, was a justice of the peace (in Norfolk and Suffolk).⁵³ Thomas already knew Thomas Aspale as they had served together in 1346.⁵⁴ Thomas Brembre had probably also served the family for a long time, as in November 1349 he had been presented to the church at Cottingham (one of the Yorkshire estates John inherited on his mother’s death), presumably as a reward for his services.⁵⁵Brembre also acted as a clerk for the king and by 1351 Brembre held prebendaries at Chichester, Southwell and Westminster; in 1352 he was presented to the church in Iver in Buckinghamshire.⁵⁶ These men had considerable experience with a history of loyalty to the family, and they would have been well aware of the troubles Joan had experienced in her marriage to Thomas. James Beaufort may have known more than most, as he had been one of the Earl of Salisbury’s executors when he died in 1344.⁵⁷ It would have been natural for these men to be happy to serve Joan, and Thomas would have had little reason to replace them. However, their age meant that in time replacements would need to be found. Thomas Aspale died within a year of John’s death, and a year after Thomas appointed Gerard Braybrooke as one of his attorneys Gerard’s son John was murdered and Gerard seems to have stepped back from affairs; possibly he was simply too old to manage any more.⁵⁸

Given Thomas’ willingness to take risks in his career it is perhaps surprising that he proved to be conservative in his approach towards the estates. The huge geographical diversity of the many manors made the inheritance unwieldy to manage, and the sheer inconvenience of this coupled with the disadvantage of the lack of concentration in any one area, made a rationalisation of the estates an obvious and logical ambition. Neither Joan’s father nor her brother had enjoyed control for sufficient time to attempt this. Thomas had the opportunity, but he gave no indication that he had any inclination to do so, unlike some of his contemporaries. William Bohun, whom Thomas served with in France, became Earl of Northampton and bought considerable amounts of land in the 1350s to increase his Bohun inheritance.⁵⁹ Thomas could have reduced the geographical spread of Joan’s inheritance and achieved a more concentrated mass of estates by actively pursuing a policy of buying and selling or even exchanging land. But he did not do so, and instead simply chose to preserve what Joan inherited, no doubt with his son in mind. Just as John had benefitted from his mother’s careful stewardship of the estates, so Thomas did, as there do not seem to have been any major disputes over any of the manors, while minor disputes appear to have resolved largely without resort to the courts. The official records reveal only two individual instances: in June 1355 Thomas and Joan agreed to pay Sir Thomas Dale 300 marks to release his claim to Leyham manor in Suffolk, and in February 1360 Thomas and Joan petitioned Edward III to recognise Joan’s claim to property in Cottingham in Yorkshire which Thomas Wake had given to Robert and Alice Cottingham.⁶⁰

Apart from the actual management of the lands, Thomas now headed a huge household. In addition to the receivers, stewards and other officials such as lawyers required to run the estates, there were a host of other retainers; Thomas had his own retinue of knights, squires and heralds, clerks to handle his papers and records, a chaplain, confessor and almoner, grooms and valets for his horses, domestic servants to staff his residences, minstrels to entertain. It is difficult to estimate how many people now comprised Thomas and Joan’s household, as their household records have not survived, but an idea of the numbers can be surmised from their contemporaries. In 1343, with a smaller income and fewer estates, Joan’s widowed cousin Elizabeth de Burgh (Elizabeth was the daughter of Edmund’s half-sister Joan of Acre) maintained a household of around 250, including fifteen knights, ninety-three esquires, thirty-nine clerks and four goldsmiths to take care of her jewellery and plate, seven ladies of her chamber each with their own maidservant plus a laundress and chambermaids.⁶¹ Elizabeth was famously hospitable, enjoying her visitors and notably generous in dispensing alms; her accounts show that in one five-month period 5,090 people received alms from her.⁶² In 1384 the Earl of Devon is known to have had a similar number in his household. Thomas and Joan may have inherited a more modest household due to the depredations of the plague, but they would have added to it with Thomas’ knights and esquires. This meant a significant change of lifestyle for Joan, as she was now head of an extremely large household and was expected to take an interest in their affairs.

Thomas and Joan were now in a position to reward members of their entourage, and to exercise patronage in accordance with their taste and wishes. Some of their contemporaries, like Elizabeth de Burgh and her friend Marie, Countess of Pembroke, were notably generous benefactors, while Joan’s uncle Thomas Wake had been a keen patron of religious orders and founded a house of Augustinian canons near Cottingham at Haltemprice and supported the Augustinian priory of Bourne. However, there is little evidence to suggest that Thomas and Joan followed their example. In March 1354 they were described as patrons of a religious house at Wothorpe in Lincolnshire, a very small house of nuns who requested their aid in order to unite with the larger Benedictine priory of St Michael at Stamford, having lost most of their incumbents to the plague in 1349.⁶³ This was no more than might be expected from people in their position, just as they obtained permission for the weekly market at Buttercrambe manor in Yorkshire with the annual fair on St Botolph’s Day.⁶⁴ The only records of any notable gifts made by Thomas were to his brother and nephew. In July 1355 Thomas and Joan granted Otto the Derbyshire manors of Ashford and Chesterfield with the advowson of the hospital of St Leonard, and subsequently they also granted Otto the manors of Tolworth in Surrey and Kersey in Suffolk.⁶⁵ Thomas also passed his Yoxall manor to Otto.⁶⁶ In November 1360 they granted Thomas’ nephew John Holand the manors of Northweald in Essex and Whissendine in Rutland.⁶⁷ Even these gifts were lifetime interests only, reverting to Joan or her heir on their respective deaths.

The great landed wealth Thomas now enjoyed gave him an independent importance in national politics which he had not previously had. To put it simply, the king needed his support, because of the resources in terms of money and men which he now commanded. This gave Thomas the potential for power and influence, and he could now expect to find the king courting him, rather than having to sue for favours himself. Thomas had amply demonstrated his ambition in engineering his secret marriage to Joan and in his subsequent behaviour, and his newfound status gave him a position he could never have dreamed of attaining. His marriage had also proved to be a considerable success on a personal level, with Joan comfortably adapting to her new roles as his wife and mother to their children, and assisting in the management of their newfound wealth. With her experience of the court, Joan would also be a valuable ally to Thomas in pursuing any political ambitions he cherished.