Abstract
While Joan of Navarre is one of England’s least well-known consorts, she holds a number of unique distinctions. One of these is that Joan became a queen in her second marriage to Henry IV in 1403, previously she had been duchess of Brittany during her first marriage to Jean IV from 1386 until his death in 1399. Another unusual aspect of her life is that Joan was the only queen ever to be arrested and detained on a charge treason–or in some sources witchcraft, spending a lengthy period under house arrest between October 1419 to the summer of 1422 during the reign of her stepson Henry V. This chapter explores Joan’s long life as both consort and dowager queen, demonstrating her tenacity to retain her rights and position in the face of considerable challenges and the turbulent domestic and international politics of the early fifteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
For a full biography of Joan’s life, see: Elena Woodacre, Joan of Navarre: Infanta, Duchess, Queen, Witch? (London: Routledge, 2022).
- 2.
Note that we will refer to her as “Joan” here as she is most frequently referred to by this Anglicized version of her name, although she is occasionally referred to in Anglophone sources as Joanna or even Joanne. She would have most likely been referred to by contemporaries as Jeanne or possibly Juana during her early years. In documentary sources her name is most often given as Jehanne—she also signed her own name in this way.
- 3.
See: Elena Woodacre, The Queens Regnant of Navarre: Succession, Politics and Partership (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 51–61; and Derek Whaley, “From a Salic Law to the Salic Law: The Creation and Re-creation of the Royal Succession System of Medieval France,” in The Routledge History of Monarchy, ed. Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Chris Jones, Russell E. Martin, Zita Eva Rohr (London: Routledge, 2019), 443–464.
- 4.
Jean’s first wife was Mary of Waltham, daughter of Edward III of England, who died months after their wedding in 1361. In 1366 he married Joan Holland, daughter of Joan of Kent and thus stepdaughter to the Black Prince, who died in 1384.
- 5.
See: Elena Woodacre, “The Perils of Promotion: Maternal Ambition and Sacrifice in the life of Joan of Navarre, Duchess of Brittany and Queen of England,” in Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Eras, ed. Carey Fleiner and Elena Woodacre (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 125–148.
- 6.
For a discussion of the issue of her lack of dower, see: Paul Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 154–157.
- 7.
See, for example: Jeanne-Marie Poupart, “Un mariage Anglo-Breton au XVe siècle,” Nouvelle Revue de Bretagne 2 (March-April 1951): 81–91, esp. 84–85, where she claims that the two were attracted to each other during Henry’s visit to the Breton court in 1399. See also: E. Carlton Williams, My Lord of Bedford, 1389–1435 (London: Longmans Green and Co, 1963), 10.
- 8.
Michael Jones, “Between France and England: Jeanne de Navarre, duchess of Brittany and queen of England,” in Between France and England: Politics, Power and Society in Late Medieval Brittany (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 12.
- 9.
The menu from the wedding feast has been preserved in BL Harleian MS 279 and is reprinted in Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books (London, 1888), 58–59.
- 10.
Expenditure for both events can be found in the Issue Rolls. See: TNA, E 403/574. For the collar, see: E 403/576; and Jessica Lutkin, “Luxury and Display in Silver and Gold at the Court of Henry IV,” in Fifteenth Century England IX, ed. Linda Clark (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), 155–178, esp. 168.
- 11.
The original dower grant of 4 June 1403 is in Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, Henry IV: Volume 2, 1401–1405 (London: HMSO, 1907), 234–235, 268–269, 271–272.
- 12.
Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 389–390.
- 13.
Given-Wilson, Henry IV, 423.
- 14.
CPR Henry IV 1401–1405, 325, 465, 480.
- 15.
“Henry IV: January 1404,” in Parliament Rolls of Medieval England (hereafter PROME), ed. Chris Given-Wilson, Paul Brand, Seymour Phillips, Mark Ormrod, Geoffrey Martin, Anne Curry and Rosemary Horrox (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/parliament-rolls-medieval/january-1404.
- 16.
TNA SC 8/231/11512. Joan was granted the lands on 5 April 1405. See: CPR Henry IV 1401–1405, 501, but only held them for a short period before they were restored to the Duke.
- 17.
Peter McNiven, Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1987), 174.
- 18.
“Henry IV: March 1406,” PROME. For examples of receivers’ accounts from this period that show her improved finances, see TNA SC 6/844/14 from Havering-atte-Bower 1407–1408, and for Melton Mowbray see SC 6/1092/18 (1405–1407), SC 6/1092/17 (1406–1407), and SC 6/1092/21 (1408–1410).
- 19.
CPR Henry IV 1405–1408, 413–414 (both 2 March 1408).
- 20.
“Henry IV: January 1410,” PROME. For an example of suits in 1410–1411, see: TNA C 44/23/6 regarding the manor and advowson of Beversbrook.
- 21.
Letter of Joan of Navarre to Henry IV, in BL MS RP 6767, dated 7 January 1412. My loose translation above, original text is “de droit de lour Corone et elles ount este en possession dicelles du temps dont memorie ne court.”
- 22.
For the annuity, see: TNA DL 42/15 fols. 150v and 158r.
- 23.
TNA C 81/1362/46, quoted in J.L. Kirby, Henry IV of England (London: Constable, 1970), 223.
- 24.
Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, Henry IV: Volume 4, 1408–1413 (London: HMSO, 1909), 85–87.
- 25.
TNA E 159/288, Memoranda Roll 13 Henry IV, Michelmas to Trinity.
- 26.
William Prynne, Aurum reginæ, or, A compendious tractate and chronological collection of records in the Tower and Court of Exchequer concerning queen-gold evidencing the quiddity, quantity, quality, antiquity, legality of this golden prerogative, duty, and revenue of the queen-consorts of England (London, 1668), 64.
- 27.
Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, 12 vols. (Philadelphia, 1841), 3:96. Carlton Williams claimed that “A streak of avarice ran through her nature,” Carlton Williams, Bedford, 10.
- 28.
See TNA E 5/575.
- 29.
For selected examples, see: Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Henry V: Volume 1, 1413–1416 (London: HMSO, 1910), 220, 237, 238, 335, 340, 342, 350.
- 30.
For further consideration of Joan’s relationship with her stepchildren and how it has been evaluated in historiography, see: Woodacre, “Perils of Promotion”, 136–140.
- 31.
BL Cotton MS Vespasian F III, letter 5. Also reprinted in Anne Crawford ed., Letters of the Queens of England 1100–1547 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1997), 115, although she has translated the original French to mean “dearest and best-beloved son,” whereas I have opted for a more direct translation of the original “tresch[e]r[e] et tresame filz.”
- 32.
CPR Henry V, 1413–1416, 164–167.
- 33.
CPR Henry V, 1413–1416, 342.
- 34.
“Henry V: October 1419,” PROME.
- 35.
The Chronicles of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), 73.
- 36.
A.R. Myers, “The Captivity of a Royal Witch: The Household Accounts of Queen Joan of Navarre, 1419–21,” in Crown, Household and Parliament in Fifteenth Century England, ed. Cecil H. Clough (London: Hambledon Press, 1985), 263–284.
- 37.
Guillaume Gruel, Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont, Connetable de France, Duc de Bretagne (1393–1458), ed. Achille le Vavasseur (Paris, 1890), 19–20.
- 38.
“Henry V: March 1416,” PROME.
- 39.
See records in TNA E 199 series, which took stock of the Queen’s properties in various counties between 1419 and 1421 (e.g., E 199/41/30 for Staffordshire).
- 40.
Harold F. Hutchison, Henry V: A Biography (London: Eyre & Spottiswode, 1967), 201.
- 41.
Henry’s original letter was appended to the Parliament Rolls in support of Joan’s petition. See: “Henry VI: October 1423,” PROME.
- 42.
For Katherine’s petition, see: “Henry VI: November 1422,” PROME.
- 43.
“Henry VI: November 1422,” PROME. For an example of documentation sent out to cities over fee farms and customs due to her, see these examples from Winchester and Southampton: Hampshire Record Office W/A2/7/1, 12 November 1422, and Southampton Archives SC 1/4/9.
- 44.
The petition and responses are enrolled in the Close Rolls. See: Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry VI: Volume 1, 1422–1429 (London: HMSO, 1993), 363–366.
- 45.
For example, see disputes of the alien priories of Modbury and St Clear in 1431 in CPR Henry VI, 1429–1436, 119, 141–142; and Joan’s suit vs. the Abbess of Shaftesbury over rents in Dorset TNA C 44/27/12.
- 46.
Society of Antiquaries (SoA) MS SAL/MS/216, “Primus compotus Johannis Bugge Armigeri” (1427–1428).
- 47.
Dunstable was gifted cloth in the 1427–1428 accounts, see also Judith Stell and Andrew Wathey, “New Light on the Biography of John Dunstable,” Music & Letters 62, no. 1 (1981): 60–63.
- 48.
SoA 216, fols. 36–44.
- 49.
Michelle Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503–1533 (Woodbridge: Royal Historical Society, 2018), 45–46.
- 50.
See: TNA SC 8/308/15366; and CPR Henry V 1413–1416, 38, 351.
- 51.
John Amundesham, Annales Monasterii S. Albani, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, 2 vols. (London, 1870), 1:61–62.
- 52.
Amundesham, Annales, 1:8, 12–13, 28.
- 53.
See, for example, a gift of 125 marks made to Giles by the king; Issue Roll, Michaelmas, 1 December 11 Henry VI, 419. See also: A. Bourdeaut, “Gilles de Bretagne-entre la France et l’Angleterre-les causes et les Auteurs du drame,” Memoires de la Société d’Histoire et de l’Archaeologie de Bretagne 1 (1920): 53–145, esp. 55–56.
- 54.
For more on her tomb, see: Jessica Barker, Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), 162–164.
- 55.
N.H. Nicolas, ed., Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, 7 vols. (London, 1834–1837), 5:56.
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Woodacre, E. (2023). Joan of Navarre: Beloved Queen and (Step)Mother or Unbeloved Witch?. In: Norrie, A., Harris, C., Laynesmith, J., Messer, D.R., Woodacre, E. (eds) Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94886-3_7
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