Joan of Kent ★

Born Abt in Woodstock Palace, Oxfordshire, England. She married 1340, to Thomas Holland, 1st Earl of Kent. She died August 1385, at Wallingford Castle, Berkshire, England.

Early Life and Family Tragedy

Joan of Kent was born around 1328 at Woodstock Palace in Oxfordshire, daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, sixth son of Edward I, and Margaret Wake. When Joan was only two, her father was executed for treason after becoming entangled in the politics surrounding the deposed Edward II; Joan, her mother, and her siblings were placed under house arrest at Arundel Castle. The family's fortunes recovered only once Edward III came of age and, as Joan's cousin, took responsibility for restoring them.

The Scandal of Three Marriages

At about twelve, in 1340, Joan secretly married the knight Thomas Holland without royal permission; he left almost immediately for campaigns in Flanders and France. While he was away, her family arranged a second marriage, to William Montagu, heir to the Earl of Salisbury — whether Joan concealed her first marriage out of fear for Holland's life, or was simply never told of it clearly by her family, remains disputed.

The truth emerged around 1348 when Holland returned and petitioned the Pope for his wife's return; Salisbury held Joan captive during the proceedings to keep her from testifying. In 1349 the Church ruled in Holland's favor, annulling the Montagu marriage and confirming Joan and Holland's union. The couple had five children, including the future John Holland, Duke of Exeter, and on her brother's death in 1352 Joan inherited the titles 4th Countess of Kent and 5th Baroness Wake of Liddell in her own right; Holland was made Earl of Kent through her in 1360.

Marriage to Edward the Black Prince

After Thomas Holland's death in 1360, Edward the Black Prince, heir to the English throne, pursued Joan in what contemporaries recognized as a genuine love match rather than a strategic alliance. In spring 1361 the couple married secretly without royal or papal permission, a serious breach given their close kinship, and Edward III had to secure four separate papal dispensations to legitimize the union before an official wedding at Windsor Castle on October 10, 1361.

The couple moved to Bordeaux in 1362 when Edward was made Prince of Aquitaine, and lived there for nine years. Their son Edward of Angoulême died young; their second son, Richard — born prematurely in January 1367 while his father campaigned in Spain — would become King Richard II. Joan herself organized the defense of Aquitaine during her husband's absence on campaign.

The Dowager Princess and Mother of Richard II

The Black Prince's health collapsed after his Spanish campaign, and the family returned to England; he died at Westminster in June 1376, days before his forty-sixth birthday. When Edward III died the following year, Joan's ten-year-old son was crowned Richard II, and Joan became the reigning king's mother during a turbulent minority.

During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, Joan was returning from a pilgrimage to Canterbury when she encountered Wat Tyler's rebel forces at Blackheath; rather than being harmed, she was saluted and given safe escort, a striking sign of the common affection she was held in. She attended her son's wedding to Anne of Bohemia in January 1382 and remained an influential presence at court through his early reign.

Later Life and Legacy

In 1378 Joan was made a Lady of the Garter, one of the highest honors open to a medieval woman. In 1385, her son John Holland killed a favorite of Queen Anne during a quarrel in Scotland; Richard II condemned his own half-brother to death, and a dying Joan spent her final days pleading for his life, dying on August 8 or 14, 1385, most likely at Wallingford Castle, before Richard finally relented and pardoned Holland.

She was buried beside her first husband, Thomas Holland, at the Greyfriars in Stamford, rather than beside the Black Prince at Canterbury as he had once envisioned — though a carved ceiling boss in Canterbury Cathedral still bears her likeness. Known in her lifetime as the "Fair Maid of Kent," she left behind a large and consequential family: a son on the English throne, and descendants from her first marriage who shaped English nobility for generations.