Joan of Kent

1328 – 1385 · Generation XVII · House of Plantagenet

Joan of Kent (1328–1385). Married Edward the Black Prince in 1361. One of their children is recorded in this archive. Remembered as the “Fair Maid of Kent,” she was a granddaughter of Edward I through Edmund of Woodstock, who was executed when she was two. At about twelve she secretly married Thomas Holland; while he was abroad her family matched her with William Montagu, heir to the earldom of Salisbury, and not until 1349 did the pope annul that union and return her to Holland, by whom she had five children. Countess of Kent in her own right from 1352 and widowed in 1360, she wed the Black Prince in secret the following spring, and again, officially, at Windsor. The couple spent nine years at Bordeaux, where Richard II was born in 1367. As the boy king’s mother she exercised quiet influence, and in 1381 even Wat Tyler’s rebels let her pass unharmed. She died in 1385, having begged Richard for four days to spare her son John Holland.

Place in the family

Joan of Kent married Edward the Black Prince, a 4× great-uncle of King Henry VIII.

One of 26 people of House of Plantagenet (1126–1485) in this archive. The longest-reigning English house, counting its Angevin beginning and the rival Lancaster and York branches that fought the Wars of the Roses.

Partners

Married Edward the Black Prince (1330 – 1376) in 1361 — one child together

Children

King Richard II (1367 – 1400)

Life

1328 — Born
1361 — Married Edward the Black Prince
1385 — Died