Chapter 12

The Royal Family

The legitimate children of King John and Isabelle d’Angoulême were still very young at the time Magna Carta was issued. John’s oldest son, Henry, was only 7 years old when the charter was sealed at Runnymede in June 1215. Indeed, he was only nineteen days past his ninth birthday when he was proclaimed king on 19 October 1216, King John having died in the night. John and Isabelle’s youngest child, Eleanor, was born the same year as Magna Carta and, although she would play a significant role in the Second Barons’ War, as the wife of Simon de Montfort, she and her siblings had nothing to do with the issuing of the charter in 1215. We will look at Eleanor’s incredible life and career in the next chapter, but first we will look at the rest of her family.

Joan, Lady of Wales

King John had at least one illegitimate daughter who was already fully grown and married in 1215 and experienced the highs and lows of her father’s reign first-hand, and its effects on herself and her family. Joan, or Joanna, also had a legitimate half-sister called Joan, a daughter of King John and his queen, Isabelle d’Angoulême. We know very little of Joan until her appearance on the international stage in 1203, aged around 13 or 14. It was in that year that mention is made of a ship, chartered in Normandy, ‘to carry the king’s daughter and the king’s accoutrements to England.’¹ The daughter in question appears to be Joan, who was probably born in or before 1189 before John’s marriage to Isabella of Gloucester and based on the fact she was of marriageable age in 1204. We know practically nothing about Joan’s mother, other than that she was possibly a lady by the name of Clemencia or Clementina.²

Joan is one of at least twelve illegitimate children fathered by John during the late 1180s and 1190s, who were born to several mistresses, some of whom were noble, but others were of more humble origins.³ Most of these illegitimate children were born before or during John’s first marriage, to Isabella of Gloucester, a marriage that was annulled within months of John attaining the throne. Nothing is known of Joan’s childhood, which appears to have been spent with her mother in Normandy, given that the first mention of her in official records is when her father chartered a ship to bring her to England in 1203. However, although she grew up in obscurity, Joan must have received an education suitable to her rank as the daughter of a prince and, later, king; after all, if her father intended for her to make a good marriage, one that benefited him, he would need her to be able to act the part of a noblewoman, at least. The fact she married a prince suggests that she was educated in the role and duties of a princess. Indeed, Joan became one of the most important figures in Anglo-Welsh politics during the reigns of her father, John, and half-brother, Henry III, playing the role of intermediary between her husband and the king of England.

John’s loss of Normandy and many of his other Continental territories in 1204 led him to concentrate his interests closer to home, and on his more immediate neighbours, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. As a consequence, by 15 October of that year, Joan was betrothed to the foremost prince in Wales; Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of Gwynedd, later known as Llywelyn Fawr, or Llywelyn the Great. That summer, the Welsh prince had paid homage to King John for his Welsh lands, having recognised the English king as overlord by treaty in July 1201. Llywelyn’s subsequent marriage to Joan, albeit John’s illegitimate daughter, was a sign of the king’s favour although with the unspoken caveat that the Welsh prince was of a lower royal rank than the English king, and therefore subject to England’s overlordship. Born around 1173, Llywelyn was almost twenty years older than Joan and by the time of their marriage, Llywelyn was already an accomplished warrior and experienced statesman.⁴ He was also the father of at least two children, a son and daughter, Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and Gwenllian, respectively. Their mother was a lady called Tangwystl, but her union with Llywelyn was not recognised by the church and the children were considered illegitimate under canon law, although they still had inheritance rights under Welsh law.

Joan and Llywelyn were probably married in the spring of 1205; part of Joan’s dowry, the castle and manor of Ellesmere, were granted to Llywelyn on 16 April 1205, suggesting the wedding took place around that time.⁵ Joan was 15 or 16 at the time, Llywelyn was 32. Having been uprooted from her home in Normandy, she had probably spent a year at the English court, possibly training for her role as a Welsh princess, before leaving for her new home in Wales. It is not hard to imagine that a large part of the year was spent learning what England and her father expected of her and being reminded of where her loyalties were expected to lie. The language and traditions of her new homeland would have been completely alien to the young woman. Even her name was not the same; in Welsh, she was known as Siwan.

For someone barely out of a childhood lived in obscurity, all these changes must have been daunting. Not only was she expected to become a wife and a princess to a nation that was totally alien to her, but her responsibilities also included the role of peacemaker. It was a prestigious marriage for an illegitimate daughter and one with great responsibilities; Joan was thrown into the heart of Anglo-Welsh relations. She was to become an important diplomatic tool for her husband, father and, later, her half-brother, Henry III; acting as negotiator and peacemaker between the English crown and her husband, almost from the first day of her marriage.

Despite the marriage of Joan and Llywelyn, relations between England and Wales were rarely cordial. A devastating defeat by the English occurred in 1211, in which the king

led an army into Wales against Llywelyn, but returned very quickly because the Welsh, fearing his advance, withdrew with their property into the mountains, so that the English army was beset with hunger. But after gathering a large quantity of provisions, the king was soon able to make another expedition into Wales, and now with a large force and with plenty of supplies he was able to force hostilities upon the Welsh. After having conducted matters as he wished he emerged with glory.⁶

John had swept into Gwynedd, capturing the bishop of Bangor in his own cathedral, Joan’s skills were sorely needed and ‘Llywelyn, being unable to suffer the King’s rage, sent his wife, the King’s daughter, to him by the counsel of his leading men to seek to make peace with the King on whatever terms he could.’⁷ Joan managed to negotiate peace, but at a high price, including the loss of the Four Cantrefs (the land between the Conwy and the Dee rivers), a heavy tribute of cattle and horses and the surrender of hostages, including Llywelyn’s son, Gruffudd.⁸

In 1212, as the Barnwell annalist tells us, ‘The Welsh princes, encouraged by the pope who had absolved them both from the agreement which they had made in the previous year with the English king and from the allegiance and oaths which they had taken upon themselves, attacked the English king in return for the interdict being relaxed throughout their lands.’⁹ Following this renewal of hostilities, King John ‘stirred up to violent anger, hanged the hostages and gathered an army against them from all parts of the kingdom.’¹⁰ Although Gruffudd was not among them, John hanged twenty-eight Welsh hostages, some of them little older than boys, as a precursor to his invasion. However, the attack was called off when he received word from Joan that his barons were planning treason closer to home, that Robert Fitzwalter and Eustace de Vescy were plotting the king’s assassination. Joan’s warning was one of two disparate sources (the other being from the king of Scots), which persuaded John to disband his army and head home. From this point on John’s paranoia and distrustful nature took hold. He ‘would go nowhere without either being armed or accompanied by a great force of armed men.’¹¹

The last years of John’s reign were taken up with increasingly fraught relations with his barons, leading to the crisis coming to a head in 1215. The barons called for John to agree to reforms, and to confirm the coronation charter of King Henry I. It was said ‘that both Alexander, king of the Scots, and Llywellyn, prince of North Wales, were in league with them.’¹² In June 1215, to stave off civil war, John agreed to the terms of Magna Carta, but regretted it almost immediately and sent emissaries to the pope to have the charter annulled. Pope innocent III obliged and excommunicated the leading rebels.

The last thing John needed, if he was to save his kingdom, was to be distracted by discontent in Wales. In 1214 Joan had successfully negotiated with her father for the release of the Welsh hostages still in English hands, including Llywelyn’s son, Gruffudd. As with the princesses of Scotland, Gruffudd’s release was included as a clause in Magna Carta, clause 58, and the hostages were freed the following year. It cannot have been an easy time for Joan, watching John go through the greatest crisis of his reign, especially when the French advance-guard arrived to try and claim the throne for the dauphin, Louis, at Christmas 1215; Louis himself would join his troops in the spring of 1216. Llywelyn took advantage of the unrest over the border to unite eleven of the Welsh princes and launch a lightning campaign in Wales, capturing seven castles, including the English strongholds of Carmarthen and Cardigan, in just three weeks and establishing himself as de facto prince of Wales and therefore Joan as de facto princess of Wales.

The tide was turned by King John’s death in October 1216 when Joan’s half-brother, 9-year-old Henry, was proclaimed king. Almost immediately, Magna Carta was reissued and the Forest Charter, which regulated Forest laws within England, was also issued in December 1217. In 1217 the rebels and their French allies were defeated, first at the battle of Lincoln and then at a sea battle off Sandwich, and forced to negotiate for peace. Prince Louis went home, and the last remaining English rebels were brought into the king’s peace.

Following her father’s death in October 1216, Joan continued to work towards peace between Wales and England. She visited Henry in person in September 1224, meeting him in Worcester; Joan seems to have had a good relationship with her half-brother, evidenced by his gifts to her of the manor of Rothley in Leicestershire, in 1225, followed by that of Condover in Shropshire, in 1226.¹³ An extant letter to Henry III, addressed to her ‘most excellent lord and dearest brother’ is a plea for him to come to an understanding with Llywelyn. In the letter, Joan uses her relationship with Henry to try to ease the mounting tensions between the two men. She describes her grief ‘beyond measure’ that discord between her husband and brother had arisen out of the machinations of their enemies and reassures her brother of Llywelyn’s affection for him.¹⁴

In the mid-1220s, Henry acted as a sponsor, with Llywelyn, in Joan’s appeal to Pope Honorius III to be declared legitimate; in 1226 her appeal was allowed, thus enhancing her position – and by extension Llywelyn’s – as a legitimate member of the royal family. The appeal had been granted on the grounds that neither of Joan’s parents had been married to others when she was born, which suggests that she was born either before John married Isabella of Gloucester, or that the pope did not recognise John’s marriage to Isabella as ever being lawful.

Joan and Llywelyn’s marriage appears to have been, for the most part, a successful one. Joan’s high-born status, as the daughter of a king, brought great prestige to Gwynedd. As a consequence, her household was doubled from four to eight staff, including a cook who could prepare Joan’s favourite dishes. Llywelyn seems to have valued his wife’s opinion; as we have seen, he often made use of her diplomatic skills and relationship with the English court and he often consulted her on other matters. Her influence extended to Welsh legal texts, which, from this period onwards, included French words.

Joan’s position was strengthened even further by the arrival of her children. Sometime in the spring of 1212 her son, Dafydd, was born; in 1220 he was recognised as Llywelyn’s heir by Henry III, officially supplanting his older, half-brother, Gruffudd, who, despite his illegitimacy, was entitled to his father’s lands under Welsh law. The move received papal approval in 1222. As a result, in 1229, Dafydd performed homage to Henry III as his father’s heir, his mother Joan was in attendance, thus demonstrating her own important position at the Welsh court. A daughter, Elen, was probably born around 1210, as she was first married in 1222, to John the Scot, Earl of Chester. Her second marriage, in 1237 or 1238, was arranged by Henry III and was to Robert de Quincy, brother of the earl of Winchester; Robert and Elen’s great-granddaughter was Margaret Wake, mother of Joan of Kent, and therefore grandmother of King Richard II. Recent research has confirmed that Joan was also the mother to at least two more of Llywelyn’s daughters, Gwladus and Margaret, who were previously thought to have been the daughters of a mistress. Gwladus was married to Reginald de Braose. Her stepson, William (V) de Braose, was to play a big part in Joan’s scandalous downfall in 1230. Another of Llywelyn’s daughters, Susanna, may also have been Joan’s.¹⁵

Joan’s life in the first quarter of the thirteenth century had been exemplary; she was the ideal medieval noblewoman, a dutiful daughter and wife, whose marriage helped to broker peace, if an uneasy one, between two countries. She had fulfilled her wifely duties, both by providing a son and heir and being supportive of her husband to the extent that she should not be included in the roll call of scandalous women – however, in 1230, everything changed. William de Braose was a wealthy Norman baron with estates along the Welsh Marches. Hated by the Welsh people, who had given him the nickname Gwilym Ddu, or Black William, he had been taken prisoner by Llywelyn in 1228, near Montgomery. Although he had been released after paying a ransom, de Braose had returned to Llywelyn’s court to arrange a marriage between his daughter, Isabella, and Llywelyn’s son and heir, Dafydd. During this stay, William de Braose was ‘caught in Llywelyn’s chamber with the King of England’s daughter, Llywelyn’s wife’.¹⁶

William de Braose was publicly hanged, either at Crogan near Bala, or possibly near Garth Celyn, Abergwyngregyn (on the north coast of Gwynedd), on 2 May 1230. Joan, however, escaped with her life and was imprisoned.¹⁷ We cannot say how long the affair had lasted, whether it was a brief fling in 1230, or had started when de Braose was a prisoner of Llywelyn in 1228. Joan’s position in the 1220s had appeared unassailable but this scandal rocked Wales, and England, to the core. She was no young girl struggling to come to terms with her position in life; she was about 40 years old, had been Llywelyn’s consort for twenty-five years and had borne him at least four children when the affair was discovered. Contemporaries were deeply shocked at Joan’s betrayal of her husband; indeed, following this scandal, Welsh law identified the sexual misconduct of the wife of a ruler as ‘the greatest disgrace’.¹⁸ However, there was no question over the legitimacy of her children, who had been born at least fifteen years before.

The most surprising thing about the whole affair, moreover, is Llywelyn’s response. His initial anger saw William de Braose hanged from the nearest tree, and Joan imprisoned in a tower. This rage, however vicious, was remarkably brief. Under Welsh law, Llywelyn had the right to repudiate Joan and seek a divorce for her betrayal. Maybe it was due to the strength of the previous relationship between Llywelyn and Joan, or maybe it was the high value placed on Joan’s diplomatic skills and her links with the English court; but within a year the terms of Joan’s imprisonment had been relaxed and just months after that, she was back on the political stage. Llywelyn appears to have forgiven her; the couple were reconciled, and Joan returned to her life and position as Lady of Wales. Indeed, Joan soon reprised her diplomatic duties. She attended a conference between her husband, son and her brother, Henry III at Shrewsbury, in 1232.

In spite of William de Braose’s betrayal with Joan and subsequent execution at his orders, Llywelyn was still anxious that the marriage between his son and de Braose’s daughter should go ahead. Isabella de Braose was still in Llywelyn’s care and the Welsh prince wrote letters to the girl’s mother, William de Braose’s widow, Eva Marshal, explaining that he had no choice but to execute her husband, given the nature of his crime, and asking her intentions with regard to the marriage of their children. Llywelyn wrote a second letter to Eva’s brother, William Marshal, second earl of Pembroke, again justifying his actions against William de Braose and referring to Braose’s deceit and the shame brought down on Llywelyn as a result of his wife’s adultery. He also asks William Marshal for his views on the proposed marriage between William’s niece and Llywelyn’s own son, and whether the earl still wished for the marriage to go ahead.

It seems that Llywelyn’s prompt action in writing and his frank words in the letters had the desired effect and healed any possible rift before it escalated. Dafydd and Isabella de Braose were married in 1232. Unfortunately, the marriage would remain childless and Dafydd was succeeded on his death in 1246 by his nephew, Llywelyn, son of Dafydd’s half-brother, Gruffudd.

Joan’s indiscretion was forgiven by Llywelyn, maybe even forgotten; she was released from her prison within a year and a few months later was back by Llywelyn’s side. She was returned to her position as Lady of Wales and continued to work alongside Llywelyn to maintain relations with her brother, Henry III. When she died in February 1237, the Welsh prince was deeply affected by grief. Joan died at Garth Celyn. She was buried close to the shore of Llanfaes, in the Franciscan friary that Llywelyn founded in her memory – a testament to his love for her. The friary was consecrated in 1240, just a few months before Llywelyn’s own death in April of that year. The friary was destroyed in 1537, during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Joan’s remains were lost, but her coffin was eventually believed to have been found, being used as a horse trough in the town of Beaumaris, on Anglesey. The effigy on the large stone coffin depicts a medieval lady wearing a wimple and coronet, with her hands clasped in prayer, and now rests in the porch of Beaumaris church. However, Madaline Grey makes a convincing argument that the effigy is too late to have been Joan, and can be dated to no earlier than the 1260s, given the style of headdress and jewellery featured on it.¹⁹

It is a testament to Joan’s personality, and the strength of her relationship with Llywelyn, not only that her affair with de Braose had few lasting consequences for her, but also that her father, husband and brother all relied on her to help maintain diplomatic connections between England and Wales. She had helped to keep the peace, or re-establish peace when the first could not be achieved, on numerous occasions. As the neighbours of such a powerful nation as England, Joan and Llywelyn had a stake in the good governance of their much bigger neighbour and the implementation of Magna Carta would have been viewed as necessary to curb the excesses of the king and maintain peaceful co-existence – not that it always worked in Wales’ favour, however. For a woman who had grown up in obscure surroundings, tarnished somewhat by her illegitimate birth, Joan had proven herself to be a remarkable ally and partner to her Welsh prince, something she deserves to be remembered for, far more than her one indiscretion with William de Braose.

Joan of England

While Joan, the illegitimate daughter of King John, enjoyed a successful marriage to her Welsh prince, her legitimate half-sister and namesake, Joan of England, was to some extent less fortunate. The younger Joan was the oldest daughter of King John and his second wife, Isabelle d’Angoulême. Born 22 July 1210, she was the third of five children; she had two older brothers, and two younger sisters would join the family by 1215. Even before her birth, she was mooted as a possible bride for Alexander of Scotland, son of William I, King of Scots. The humiliating treaty of Norham in 1209 forced on an ill King William, who was threatened with invasion by John, not only obliged William to pay £10,000 and hand over thirteen hostages, but also gave John the authority to arrange the marriages of William’s two daughters.²⁰ The intention was that one of these daughters marry a son of John’s, while Alexander would marry one of John’s as-yet unborn daughters. Following the death of William I, a further treaty in 1212 agreed to the marriage of the new king of Scots, 14-year-old Alexander II, to 2-year-old Joan. However, the agreement seems to have been made as a way of preventing Alexander from looking to the Continent – in particular, France – for a potential bride, and by extension, allies. Nevertheless, this did not stop John from looking further afield for a more favourable marriage alliance for Joan. Nor did it stop Alexander II from siding with the barons against King John; Alexander was, in fact, one of the signatories of Magna Carta. As mentioned earlier, Clause 59 of the charter specifically refers to the return of the king of Scots’ sisters and their fellow Scottish hostages and guarantees him the same privileges and rights as the other barons of England.²¹

John later refused a proposal from his old ally, King Philip II of France, for Joan to marry Philip’s son John, and settled instead, in 1214, for a marriage with his old enemies the de Lusignans. In 1214 Joan was betrothed to Hugh X de Lusignan. Hugh was the son of John’s rival for the hand of his wife Isabelle in 1200; Isabelle’s engagement to Hugh IX was broken off in order for her to marry John. Following the betrothal Hugh, Lord of Lusignan and Count of La Marche, was given custody of the towns of Saintes, Saintonge and the Isle of Oleron as pledges for Joan’s dowry.

Left in the custody of her future husband’s family when John returned to England, Joan was kept well away from the intrigues and crisis caused by her father’s increasing tyranny in 1215. Her father’s death in October 1216, however, did not dissolve the agreement with the Lusignans. In 1218, when Isabelle d’Angoulême left England, it was not only with the intention of going home to Angoulême where she was countess in her own right, but also to supervise the arrangements for Joan’s marriage to Hugh de Lusignan; abandoning her four other children, who would remain in England.

In 1220, in a scandalous volte-face, Hugh repudiated Joan and married her mother, his father’s former betrothed – so poor 9-year-old Joan’s erstwhile future husband was now her step-father. Isabelle d’Angoulême wrote to her 12-year-old son, King Henry III, excusing her actions and saying Sir Hugh de Lusignan could not yet marry Joan, on account of her tender years, but was in desperate need of an heir. Isabelle claimed she married him herself to prevent him looking to France for a suitable bride, and to safeguard the Plantagenet lands of Poitou and Gascony. The letter read:

We do to wit that the Counts of La Marche and Eu being both dead, Sir Hugh de Lusignan was left, as it were, alone and without an heir, and his friends would not allow him to marry our daughter on account of her tender age, but counselled him to make such a marriage that he might speedily have an heir; and it was proposed that he should take a wife in France; which if he should do, all your land in Poitou and Gascony, and ours too, would be lost. We therefore, seeing the great danger that might arise if such a marriage should take place, and getting no support from your counsellors, have taken the said Hugh Count La Marche to be our lord and husband.²²

However, instead of sending little Joan back to England, as you might expect, the now 10-year-old princess went from being Hugh’s betrothed to his prisoner. She was held hostage to ensure not only Hugh’s continued control of her dower lands, but also the transfer of his new wife’s dower as queen. At the same time, England was withholding Queen Isabelle’s dower against the return of Joan and her dower lands. Negotiations to resolve the situation went on for several months. In the meantime, despite her captivity, Joan’s older brother, Henry III, and his advisers were already looking to arrange a new marriage for her. On 15 June 1220, in York, a conference between Alexander II and Henry III saw the Scots king agree to marry Joan, with a provision that he would marry Joan’s younger sister, Isabella, if Joan was not returned to England in time. Negotiations for Joan’s return were long and difficult and not helped by the fact Hugh was threatening war in Poitou. Eventually, after papal intervention, agreement was reached in October 1220 and Joan was surrendered to the English. Joan and Alexander II were married on 19 June 1221, at York Minster. Joan was just weeks from her eleventh birthday, while Alexander was 22. The archbishop of York performed the ceremony, which was witnessed by Henry III and the great magnates of both realms. Henry III’s Pipe Rolls suggest the wedding was followed by three days of celebrations, costing £100.²³ Talking of her wedding day, the Chronicle of Lanercost had described Joan as ‘a girl still of a young age, but when she was an adult of comely beauty’.²⁴

According to the Chronicle of Melrose ‘having celebrated the nuptials most splendidly, as was befitting, with all the natives of either realm rejoicing, [Alexander] conducted [Joan] to Scotland.’²⁵ The day before the wedding Alexander had assigned dower estates to Joan, worth an annual income of £1,000, including Jedburgh, Crail and Kinghorn. However, part of the dower was still held by Alexander’s mother, the dowager queen Ermengarde, and Joan was not entitled to the income until after her mother-in-law’s death in 1233. This left Joan financially dependent on Alexander from the beginning, a situation which mirrored that of her mother’s marriage to King John and severely curbed Joan’s independence, as it had her mother.

There is a suggestion that Joan was not enamoured with Scotland and its society, and that she found it difficult to settle into the Scottish court. She was hampered by her youth, her domineering mother-in-law and, eventually, by the fact she failed to produce the desired heir. Joan’s position was further hindered from time to time by tensions between her husband and brother. In this, though, she seems to have found her purpose. Joan regularly acted as intermediary between the two kings.

Alexander often used Joan’s personal letters to her brother as a way of communicating with Henry, bypassing the formality of official correspondence between kings. One such letter is a warning, possibly on behalf of Alexander’s constable, Alan of Galloway, of intelligence that Haakon IV of Norway was intending to aid Hugh de Lacy in Ireland. In the same letter, she assured Henry that no one from Scotland would be going to Ireland to fight against Henry’s interests.²⁶ Another letter, this time from Henry, was of a more personal nature; written in February 1235, it informed Joan of the marriage of their ‘beloved sister’ Isabella to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, news at which he knew Joan ‘would greatly rejoice’.²⁷

In December 1235 Alexander and Joan were summoned to London, possibly for the coronation of Henry’s new queen, Eleanor of Provence. This would have been a long and arduous journey for the Scottish monarchs, especially in the deepest part of winter. Henry’s use of Joan as an intermediary suggests she did have some influence over her husband; this theory is supported by the fact that Joan accompanied Alexander to negotiations with the English king at Newcastle in September 1236 and again at York in September 1237. In 1234, Henry had granted Joan the manor of Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire, and during the 1236 negotiations she was granted that of Driffield in Yorkshire, thus giving Joan an income independent of Scotland. Many have seen this as an indication that Joan was intending to spend more time in England, especially seeing as the chronicler Matthew Paris hints at an estrangement, although we cannot be certain.²⁸ The 1236 and 1237 councils were attempts at resolving the ongoing claims by Alexander that King John had agreed to gift Northumberland to him as part of the marriage contract between Alexander and Joan. Henry, of course, denied this. With the mediation of a papal legate, agreement was eventually reached in York at the 1237 council, with both queens, Joan and Eleanor of Provence, present. Alexander gave up the claim to Northumberland in return for lands in the northern counties with an annual income of £200.²⁹

Following the 1237 council, Joan and her sister-in-law, Eleanor of Provence, departed on pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Given that Joan was now 27 and Eleanor already married for two years, it is possible both women were praying for children, and an heir to their respective husbands’ thrones. Joan stayed in England for the rest of the year; much of the stay seems to have been informal and pleasurable. She spent Christmas at Henry’s court and was given new robes for herself, her clerks and servants, in addition to gifts of deer and wine. Her sister Eleanor, Countess of Pembroke, widow of William II Marshal and future wife of Simon de Montfort, was present, with their niece the countess of Chester and Joan’s cousin, the captive Eleanor of Brittany.

In late January arrangements were made for Joan’s return to Scotland, but she fell ill before she could travel north. Only 27 years of age, Joan died on 4 March 1238 at Havering-atte-Bower in Essex. Her brothers, King Henry III and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, were at her side. Before her death, she had had time to get her affairs in order, as testified by the rolls of Henry III:

1238. 18 March. Sandleford. The king has granted to J. queen of Scots while she lives that if she happens to die, her executors may hold in their hands the manors of Driffield and Fenstanton for two years from Michaelmas in the twenty-second year, in order to make execution of [the testament] of the aforesaid queen as would seem best for the king, so that they would hold those manors in their hand, as has been agreed between the king and the aforesaid executors, by a certain price. Order to Robert of Crepping to take the manor of Driffield into the king’s hand and keep it safely until the king orders otherwise, saving to the aforesaid executors the corn in the land, rent of assise and all stock found in the same manor up to Michaelmas in the twenty-second year.³⁰

According to Matthew Paris ‘her death was grievous, however she merited less mourning, because she refused to return [to Scotland] although often summoned back by her husband.’³¹ Even in death Joan chose to stay in England. Her will requested that she be buried at the Cistercian nunnery of Tarrant in Dorset. The convent benefited greatly from Henry III’s almsgiving for the soul of his sister; in 1252, more than thirteen years after her death, the king ordered a marble effigy to be made for her tomb (which unfortunately has not survived). Alexander II married again just over a year after Joan’s death, to Marie de Coucy, and their son and longed-for heir, Alexander III, was born in 1241. Alexander II died of a fever in 1249.

The debacle of Joan’s betrothal and imprisonment by Hugh de Lusignan, and her unhappy marriage to Alexander II, are prime examples of the lot of a Plantagenet princess. She was too young to have any influence when Magna Carta was issued, but her husband had been a part of its creation, although it seems to have had little relevance to her as an English princess and Scottish queen. However, Joan rose above her marriages and found a purpose in her pursuit of peace between England and Scotland. She was a conduit to maintaining communications, even when relations were tense. Joan was also lucky to enjoy a happy, close relationship with her siblings, especially her brothers, Henry III and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, although once she married, she seems to have had little contact with her mother, Isabelle d’Angoulême, hundreds of miles away in France and with her new Lusignan family to concentrate on.

Isabella of England

Joan’s younger sister, Isabella, also had very little to do with Magna Carta and its aftermath, but it seems unfair to leave her out of the story, after including all her sisters. Nearly everyone knows that Henry I’s daughter Matilda, Lady of the English, was Empress as the wife of German Emperor Henry V. What is less well-known is that, almost seventy years after Matilda’s death, her great-granddaughter followed in her footsteps. Isabella of England was born in 1214; she was the fourth of five children born to King John and Isabelle d’Angoulême. Born at a time when her father’s strife with his barons was at its height, her early childhood was turbulent, to say the least. John died just two years later, in October 1216, leaving 9-year-old Henry as king of a country in the midst of civil war and fighting off an occupying French army. As with many medieval princesses, we know very little about her childhood. Her nurse was a lady named Margaret Biset, who was given an allowance of 1d. a day from the royal treasury in 1219 and would accompany the young princess to Germany when she married in 1235.³²

Just over a year after her father’s death, Isabella’s mother left England, ostensibly to finalise the wedding arrangements of Isabella’s older sister, Joan, to Hugh de Lusignan. Isabella was left in England, with her siblings, as her mother supplanted Joan as Hugh de Lusignan’s bride. Whilst Joan was still in the hands of the Lusignans, her marriage to Alexander II of Scotland was negotiated, with an added clause that Isabella could be substituted for her older sister, should Joan not make it back to England in time for the wedding. In the event Joan was released by Lusignan and returned in time, allowing Henry III to look elsewhere for a husband for Isabella.

The young princess was to become part of Henry’s policy of Continental diplomacy. The king looked at several possible husbands for his sister, such as Henry VII, king of the Romans and Louis IX of France. After some prompting by Pope Gregory IX, German Emperor Frederick II sent a Sicilian embassy to England in 1234 to pursue his own suit for the English princess to become his third wife. Frederick Hohenstaufen was born near Ancona in 1194, the son of Henry VI, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, and Constance, heiress to the Norman kingdom of Sicily. Orphaned at the age of 4, Frederick was raised under the guardianship of Pope Innocent III. During his childhood, the empire was contested between Otto IV, nephew of King John, and Philip of Swabia. However, Philip of Swabia died in 1208 and Otto was defeated at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, fighting against Philip II Augustus of France, and thereafter was forced to abdicate in 1215. In the same year, 20-year-old Frederick was crowned King of Germany at Aachen, seated on Charlemagne’s marble throne. He was then crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Honorious III in 1220. In spite of his disputes with the papacy over his sceptical attitude to Christianity, and despite being excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX, Frederick went on crusade and captured Jerusalem in 1229, where he was crowned in the Holy Sepulchre. The excommunication was lifted after Frederick crushed a papal army which was threatening Sicily. In August 1230, ‘Pope Gregory IX and Emperor Frederick II came to an agreement. The emperor went to Rome and was absolved, all sentences touching on his imperial rights being fully revoked.’³³

In November 1234, Pope Gregory encouraged Frederick to consider Isabella for his third wife. Frederick despatched the Sicilian embassy, under his close adviser, Piero della Vigna, which arrived in England in February 1235. According to Roger of Wendover ‘The king of England was extremely interested in this idea and discussed it for three days on end with the nobles and bishops of the kingdom.’³⁴ Henry was agreeable to the match, which complimented his keen interest in the Holy Roman Empire and ‘declared unanimously that Isabella should be given to the emperor.’³⁵ When the envoys asked to see Isabella Henry had her brought from the Tower of London, where she was residing, to Westminster to ‘show her to the messengers of the emperor, a beautiful girl in her twenty-first year, distinguished by her maidenhood, and properly bedecked with the accustomed trappings of royalty. The ambassadors were pleased with the girl and judged her fitting in every way to be an imperial bride’³⁶ The ambassadors were so impressed with Isabella that they ‘offered her a betrothal ring on the emperor’s behalf, and when they had placed it on her finger, they shouted together: “Long live the empress!”’³⁷

The marriage contract was signed on 22 February 1235, with Henry giving Isabella a dowry of 30,000 marks. Although Isabella already had her own fine chapel silver, Henry gave her a magnificent trousseau, which included a service of gold and silver plate.³⁸ The English people were irritated by Henry’s demand for a substantial marriage aid, but Henry saw the marriage as adding to his personal prestige, and a possible alliance against Louis IX of France. Roger of Wendover described the arrangements:

The preparations for that wedding were so lavish that they seemed to exceed all the riches of the kingdom. For the sake of the empress’s dignity, her crown was most skilfully crafted from the purest gold and studded with precious stones. On it were sculpted the four kings of England who were confessors and martyrs, and to whom King Henry had especially commended the care of his sister’s soul. In her festal robes, which were made of silk and wool, and also of linen of different hues, decked out in all the dignity that befits an empress, Isabella shone out so that it was impossible to tell which of all her many adornments would most induce love in the emperor’s heart. In addition to all this, her bed, with its silk covers and gaily coloured mattresses, different hangings and draperies sewn from the most delicate muslin, stood so splendidly that its softness actively invited those seeking repose to sweet sleep. All the vessels sent, whether for wine or for food, were cast in completely unalloyed silver and gold and, what seemed almost superfluous to everyone, even the cooking pots, large and small, were of the finest silver.³⁹

Emperor Frederick then sent the archbishop of Cologne and duke of Louvain to England with an escort of high-ranking nobles to escort his bride to her new homeland. On 11 May 1235 Isabella set sail from Sandwich, entrusted to her imperial escort and ‘to the charge of William, Bishop of Exeter, Ralph, the king’s steward, and to other aristocratic nobles of her household, aristocratic ladies-in-waiting and high-born pages who were all versed in courtly manners and suitable to serve and escort an empress.’⁴⁰ She arrived at Antwerp four days later. Proceeding with a substantial bodyguard, to protect against kidnap threats from Frederick II’s enemies, Isabella arrived in Cologne on 24 May. She made a processional entry into the city, to the cheers of a 10,000 strong crowd, endearing herself to the noble ladies by throwing her veil back. She was to spend six weeks in Cologne waiting for Frederick, who was dealing with a rebellion by his oldest son, Henry VII, to send for her.

By July 1235 they were together in Worms where, with the archbishop of Mainz officiating, ‘on Sunday, 30 July, Frederick II solemnly wed Isabella, the sister of the king of England.’⁴¹ Isabella was crowned Holy Roman Empress at the same time. Roger of Wendover continued in his commentary with a more personal observation of Isabella, saying, ‘Much as she had pleased him in outward appearance, she pleased him even more in the marriage bed, when he found the signs of her virginal purity.’⁴² Four days of wedding festivities followed, with guests including – according to Matthew Paris – four kings, eleven dukes and thirty counts and marquesses.⁴³

Frederick, it seems, put great store by astrology; in 1228 Michael Scot had completed his encyclopaedia of astrology while at Frederick’s court. And it was on the advice of the emperor’s court astrologers that the marriage was not consummated until the second night.⁴⁴ Isabella was the emperor’s third wife; his first, Constance of Aragon, had died of malaria in 1222 and his second wife, Queen Isabella-Yolanda of Jerusalem had died in childbirth in 1228. Frederick was twenty years Isabella’s senior and expended all his energy on war, travelling and ceremonials in order to maintain his authority throughout his vast empire. Frederick was delighted with his bride; she was beautiful and popular. He sent three leopards to Henry III in England as a sign of his appreciation. However, following the wedding celebrations he also dismissed the majority of Isabella’s English attendants; she was allowed to retain only her nurse, Margaret Biset – who had been with her since her early childhood – and a maid, called Kathrein. Isabella travelled with Frederick’s slaves to his palace at Hagenau, where Frederick spent the winter with his new empress. Their first child was probably born around 1237/8, although there does seem to be some confusion over how many children there were, and when they were born. What is certain is two children survived childhood; Henry, King of Jerusalem, died unmarried in his teens in 1254 and Margaret married Albert I, Margrave of Meissen and Langrave of Thuringia and Misnes, in 1256.⁴⁵

Isabella travelled extensively through her husband’s lands, residing in Apulia, Lombardy, and Noventa between 1238 and 1239. Frederick was always close by, despite his battles with the papacy, and arrived in southern Italy shortly after his wife’s arrival in February 1240. Isabella was expected to live in some magnificence, but Henry III was irritated that she was only rarely allowed to appear in public. There were rumours that Frederick kept his wives in a harem, although these were probably unfounded and arose from the seclusion that firstly Isabella-Yolanda and then Isabella lived in. When Richard, Earl of Cornwall visited the Emperor in 1241, he did not immediately see his sister. However, this was probably down to court protocol, as the empress was pregnant at the time. When they did meet the brother and sister were treated to a lavish court entertainment, being delighted by a magnificent display of jugglers and Muslim dancers. Although there is no apparent record of it, Isabella may also have been reunited for a time with her younger sister, Eleanor, wife of Simon de Montfort, who stayed in one of Frederick’s palaces, in Brindisi, while her husband Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, was on crusade to the Holy Land in 1240.⁴⁶

Following Richard’s visit, Frederick II returned to war. Before his departure on campaign, Isabella had urged Frederick to stay on good terms with her brother who was leaning more and more towards the papacy. Frederick was besieging Faenza in northern Italy when his wife died in childbirth on 1 December 1241; tragically, the baby died with her. Frederick wrote to Henry III of Isabella’s death; ‘And though the loss of the Augusta our consort and your sister cannot be named without disturbance, nor can anxiety be banished from our inmost breast, yet in her two children the memory of their parent still survives.’⁴⁷ She was buried at Andria, Sicily, alongside the emperor’s second wife, Isabella-Yolanda. Isabella had been married for just over six years and was only 27 years of age. Through her daughter Margaret, Isabella is the ancestor of Queen Victoria’s beloved husband, Prince Albert.

As the daughter of King John, the illegitimate Joan, Lady of Wales, through her husband, was involved in the birth of Magna Carta and the struggles of the last years of her father’s reign. For Joan, Queen of Scots, and Isabella, Empress of Germany, Magna Carta had little relevance in their lives; particularly Isabella who, once she was living on the Continent, was far removed from the political struggles of the thirteenth century. There was one daughter of King John and Queen Isabelle, however, for whom Magna Carta was particularly significant and acted as the starting point of the long years of struggle for herself, her husband and her family. It was left to John’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, born in the same year as the Great Charter, to make the most of the implications of Magna Carta, and the rights enshrined therein.