♀Joan of England

Joan of England (1272 – 7 April 1307), sometimes styled Joan of Acre, was a daughter of King Edward I, born in Palestine while her parents were on crusade, who became Countess of Gloucester and Hertford as the wife of Gilbert de Clare and then defied her father by marrying a knight in secret. She was the twenty-first great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Eleanor de Clare (1292–1337).

Birth and first marriage

Joan was born at Acre in Palestine in the spring of 1272, a daughter of the future Edward I and his first wife, Eleanor of Castile^W. Her parents had reached Palestine on crusade^W in May 1271, and her father was still on his way home in November 1272, when he became king.

In May 1283 the king contracted Joan in marriage to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford^W, on condition that he be formally divorced from his first wife, Alice de Lusignan, and obtain a papal dispensation, since Joan was Alice’s first cousin once removed. Gilbert was more than twenty-eight years older than his bride.

Gilbert and Joan were married at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1290, by a papal dispensation dated 16 November 1289. On the marriage Gilbert surrendered most of his estates to the king, who granted them back to Gilbert and Joan and their children, and that July he gave a great banquet at Clerkenwell to celebrate the wedding. Gilbert and Joan had one son, Gilbert, and three daughters, Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth.

Countess of Gloucester

In 1291 Joan received a papal indult to enter Cistercian monasteries “accompanied by eight honest matrons”. When Gilbert was made captain of the forces in Ireland, she went with him and lived there from October 1293 until some time in 1294. After they came back, their Welsh tenants rose against the earl and drove the couple out of Wales. Gilbert died at Monmouth Castle on 7 December 1295, leaving Joan a widow at twenty-three with four young children, and she later won the remission of the 10,000-mark fine the king had laid on him for his private war with the Earl of Hereford.

Second marriage

Early in 1297 Joan married Ralph de Monthermer, a knight, in secret. The marriage of a king’s widowed daughter, without his leave, enraged her father. He had Ralph^W imprisoned in Bristol Castle and took all of Joan’s lands into his own hands. Antony Bek^W, Bishop of Durham, made peace between the king and his daughter, and her lands were restored to her on 31 July 1297. Two days later the king pardoned the marriage, and Ralph did homage to him at Eltham.

The king afterwards grew much attached to his new son-in-law, who was summoned to Parliament as Earl of Gloucester and Hertford while Joan’s son Gilbert was under age. Joan and Ralph had two sons, Thomas and Edward, and a daughter, Mary.

Joan died on 7 April 1307 and was buried in the church of the Austin friars at Clare^W in Suffolk.

Notes

Sources

Joan’s birth, parentage, both marriages, her children, the papal indult, the anger of her father, Ralph’s imprisonment, the restoration of her lands and her death and burial are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), CLARE 4, p. 198. Her parents’ arrival in Palestine and her title as countess are from Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, ENGLAND 5, pp. 49–55. The regrant of the Clare estates, the banquet at Clerkenwell, her stay in Ireland, the Welsh rising and the remission of the fine are from G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. V (1926), GLOUCESTER, pp. 706–707. The secrecy of the second marriage, the king’s pardon of 2 August 1297 and Ralph’s homage at Eltham are from the first edition of the Complete Peerage, vol. V (1893), p. 351, which says Ralph “m. clandestinely” the countess “about Jan. 1296/7”. These are printed accounts of the medieval nobility, citing the patent, close and charter rolls, the papal registers and the monastic annals.

Her name

Richardson calls her Joan of England, “sometimes styled Joan of Acre”; the Complete Peerage has “Joan of Acres”. The Clare entry in Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum, as Richardson cites it, records her death in 1307 as “Obiit Johanna de Acres comitissa de Clare”.

The wedding date

Magna Carta Ancestry dates the wedding at Westminster Abbey 23 April 1290. The first edition of the Complete Peerage gives 30 April 1290 at Westminster Abbey in one volume (vol. IV, 1892, p. 41) and 2 May 1290 in another (vol. II, 1889, p. 268), and the second edition places the banquet of 3 July 1290 after a marriage “in the previous May”.