Back in the day we dedicated a blog entry to explaining the origin of the title of Prince of Wales to designate the heir to the English crown. In it we tell that after conquering Wales, the King of England created this title to make it clear that no Welshman would ever hold it again and granted it to his son, the future Edward II.
However, both Edward II and his son Edward III were married (the former to Elizabeth of France and the latter to Philippa de Hainault) when they had already ascended the throne, so who did not get to share their title of Prince of Wales with their wives.
The first instance in which the English heir to the crown was married before becoming king, and thus the first instance in which his wife became Princess of Wales It was that of the marriage between Edward of Woodstock "the Black Prince" (to whom we dedicate a blog post) and his cousin and protagonist of this post, Joan of Kent.
Joan's father, Edmund Earl of Kent was the second son of Edward I and brother of Edward II and had been executed for supporting his brother when his wife, Elizabeth of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer had seized power and had imprisoned and subsequently assassinated the king. This rebellion ended in 1330 when Mortimer was arrested in Nottingham Castle and executed by the new King Edward III (a story we also tell on the blog).
Joan was barely two years old when her father was executed and her cousin Edward III took her under his protection and became part of the court of her wife Philippa de Hainault. As Juana grew, the fame of her beauty spread throughout England and France, to the point that several chroniclers referred to her as the most beautiful woman in the kingdom (hence the nickname with which she has passed to the Story:The Fair Maid of Kent).
Joan was therefore an extraordinary match for an arranged marriage, because of her noble status, her closeness to the king and queen, and her beauty. Thus, she arranged and celebrated her marriage to one of the king's most prominent friends and companions, William Montague, Earl of Salisbury. Montague had been one of the prominent figures in the first battles on French soil fought by Edward III in what would become known as the Hundred Years' War (the link contains a blog entry detailing the origins of Edward's claim to the French throne ).
However, one of Montague's own gentlemen, Thomas Holland stated that Joan had previously secretly married him and that her marriage to Salisbury was therefore null. The case was a huge scandal in England at the time, especially when in a tournament organized by Edward III in 1348 to celebrate the birth of the Order of the Garter, Montague and Holland fought on opposite sides of the opposing groups of knights.
The question was submitted to the decision of the Pope, who in 1349 ruled in favor of Holland and ordered Montague to deliver Joan to him. The marriage between the two lasted eleven years until Holland's death in 1360 and five children were born from it.
Juana's widowhood did not last long. She was still a young woman (33 years old), attractive and a childhood friend of the Prince of Wales Edward of Woodstock, who by then was already one of the most famous warriors in Christendom. Ignoring the gossip about marrying a woman who had already married twice, had one of her marriages annulled by the Pope (Salisbury was still alive), and who already had five children, the couple married on 10 October 1361 at Windsor. Joan thus became the first woman to hold the title of Princess of Wales.
The couple initially settled in a newly built palace for them in Kennington, but in 1363 Edward III urged his son to take up residence in the family possessions in French territory, where the greatest monarchs of the Plantagenet dynasty had earned their fame and Edward and Joan moved to Bordeaux.
The couple's first child, named Edward, was born in 1365 and died in 1372. The couple's second and last child was baptized Richard and was born in 1367.
That same year, the Black Prince moved to Castile to support King Pedro I in his civil war against his half-brother Enrique de Trastámara. It seems that the Castilian climate did not sit well with Eduardo that he began to show the symptoms of the disease that years later would cause his death. His delicate state of health and his growing unpopularity in his French possessions due to the exactions of taxes that he carried out to support his campaign in Castile, made him decide to return to England where he died in 1376.
A year later King Edward III also died, so the surviving son of the Black Prince and Joan of Kent ascended the throne with the name of Richard II with just ten years of age. The role of his mother was secondary during the first years of his reign, as a royal council was appointed during the king's minority led by his uncle John of Ghent. However, Juana was at her son's side in 1381 when he had to face a serious crisis that became known as Pleasant's Revolt.
Joan died in 1385 and was buried next to her first husband Thomas Holland in Stamford.
Fonts| Dan Jones:The Plantagenets, the Kings that made England.
English Monarchs:Plantagenet; Joan “Fair Maid of Kent”.