Excerpt
Queens at War
1“Mutual affection and delight”The story of fifteenth-century English queenship began in February 1400, when Joan of Navarre, Dowager Duchess of Brittany, was residing at De La Motte, her château at Vannes, and received a proposal of marriage from Henry IV.
Henry had then been a widower for six years. In Paris, he had considered marrying Lucia, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, or Marie, Countess of Eu, a niece of Charles VI, but Richard II had scuppered those plans. Now, as King, Henry needed a great marriage alliance with political advantages, and he saw Joan as the ideal choice. He was hoping for an ally against Charles VI. Brittany seemed ideal, as it enjoyed virtual independence from France, while owing fealty to its King, and dynastic blood ties between Brittany and England were close.
A new alliance between England and Brittany would be advantageous in terms of enlisting Breton support against France and encircling that kingdom with Henry’s allies, while England could profit from the Breton salt trade. Doubtless the King also had his eye on Joan’s rich Breton dower, the financial settlement with which a man endowed his wife on marriage (as opposed to the dowry she brought to him). He believed that her illustrious dynastic connections would benefit him; being a usurper, he was in need of powerful allies and may have felt that marriage with Joan would equate to recognition of his right to rule and his acceptance in European royal circles.
It is possible that they had met in the autumn of 1396 at a royal wedding at Calais, or in England in 1398, or in Brittany in 1399, when Henry was Duke of Lancaster. At thirty-three, he would surely have made an impression on Joan, being a powerfully built man of five foot ten, always richly and elegantly garbed. He was handsome, with a curled mustache, good teeth, deep russet hair, and the short, forked beard fashionable in that period, as was seen when his tomb was opened in 1832. He was well educated and proficient in Latin, French, and English, although, for preference, he spoke Norman French, the traditional language of the English court. A skillful jouster, he loved tournaments and feats of arms, and his reputation as a knight was widespread. Devout and markedly orthodox in his religious views, he had been twice on crusade, first in 1390 with the German Order of Teutonic Knights against Lithuanian pagans in Poland, and then in 1392, to Jerusalem. He loved literature, poetry, and music, and a consort of drummers, trumpeters, and pipers accompanied him wherever he went, while he himself was a musician of note.
Joan might have detected that he was a man of great ability, energetic, tenacious, courageous, and strong. He was popular and respected, having a charismatic personality, being humorous, courteous, even-tempered, generous, reserved, and dignified. People were impressed by his courtesy, chivalry, and affability. He was conventional in outlook, staunch and devout. It may not have been apparent to Joan that he was also ambitious and restless, or that he could be a devious and calculating opportunist. But when the couple met, he was an exile, having been banished from the realm of England by Richard II. Attraction there may have been between the Dowager Duchess and her visitor, but his prospects were then uncertain.
The Infanta Joan of Navarre had already led a somewhat turbulent existence. She was the sixth of the seven children of Charles II “the Bad,” King of Navarre. She had been born around 1368–9, probably at Estella, where her mother, Jeanne of Valois, lived from 1368 to 1373. She was exceptionally well connected, being related to most of the ruling families of Europe. Queen Jeanne was the daughter of John II of France, and Joan’s grandmother, another Jeanne, who had died in 1349 and had been the daughter of Louis X of France. Having been barred by the Salic law and the adultery of her mother from succeeding to the throne of France, the elder Jeanne had inherited only the small kingdom of Navarre, which bestrode the Pyrenees.
Joan was named for her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, all reigning queens of Navarre. Her name is given variously in contemporary sources but has been anglicized here to Joan. Her infancy coincided with an invasion of Navarre by the armies of Castile, and she was placed for safety with her cousin Jeanne de Beaumont in the monastery of Santa Clara at Estella, which had nurtured earlier Navarrese princesses and was now paid a florin a day for a teacher and a servant for the two girls. There, the young Joan grew up and received an elementary education befitting her sex and her rank.
Following the loss of a score of castles, King Charles had to make peace with the invaders. After her mother’s death in childbirth in 1373, Joan returned to his court, where she and her sisters were looked after by their aunt, Agnes, Countess of Foix, and saw their father frequently. They kept dogs and birds, ate a lot of fish, meat, and poultry, made offerings on feast days, enjoyed court entertainments, and were provided with new clothes and shoes as they outgrew their old ones. They were given writing materials, indicating that they were literate. They would have enjoyed visiting the King’s small menagerie at Pamplona, where he kept lions, a camel, an ostrich, monkeys, and parrots.
Because he was descended from Louis X of France, the turbulent Charles the Bad considered he had a claim to the French throne, which inevitably set him at odds with the Valois kings, especially Charles V, who once claimed that his disreputable brother-in-law had used necromancy to murder him. Joan’s childhood was overshadowed by her father’s dangerous intrigues and the upheavals they caused, and in 1381, she and her brothers were placed in the castle of Breteuil in Normandy for their protection. But it wasn’t secure and, on the orders of the regents of France, their maternal uncles, the dukes of Berri and Burgundy, the children were captured by French soldiers and carried off to Paris, where they were held for five years as hostages for their father’s good behavior. The regents looked after them well and they received honorable treatment until their father managed to procure their release in 1386.
In 1384, Berri and Burgundy had proposed a marriage between Joan, then about sixteen, and the widowed, childless John IV de Montfort, Duke of Brittany, who was a French vassal, but an autonomous ruler. He was forty-six, an irascible man with a long mustache who had strong links to England. He had been brought up at the court of Edward III, whose daughter Mary had been his first wife; his second was Joan Holland, half-sister to Richard II. Edward III had made John a Knight of the Garter, and he was then also Earl of Richmond, his family having held the title since the thirteenth century. But there had been a coolness between John IV and Richard II since Brittany had made peace with France in 1381 and Richard had confiscated the earldom. John, however, was now inclining toward England again. Charles the Bad was eager to secure him as a husband for Joan because he needed allies against France, and Duke John was eager for the match because he desperately wanted an heir; if he failed to produce one, his duchy would pass to his dynastic rival and enemy, the Count of Penthièvre. Marriage to Joan might also bring about a rapprochement with her French relatives. John was so eager for the match that in November 1384, he entered into negotiations immediately after his second wife’s death.
Joan’s marriage was agreed upon in May 1386. Viscount and Viscountess de Rohan, her beloved paternal aunt and uncle, were instrumental in arranging the alliance, for which Joan was enduringly grateful. Years later, as a widow, she rewarded her aunt Jeanne with a pension of £1,000 (£936,380) “in remuneration of the good pains and diligence she used to procure our marriage with our very dear and beloved lord, whom God assoil, of which marriage it has pleased our Lord and Savior that we should continue a noble line, to the great profit of the county of Bretagne and our other children, sons and daughters. And for this, it was the will and pleasure of our said very dear and beloved lord, if he had had a longer life, to have bestowed many gifts and benefits on our said aunt, to aid her in her sustenance and provision.”1 On 27 July, the marriage contract was signed at Pamplona. Under its terms, Charles the Bad promised an extravagant dowry of 120,000 gold livres (£73:5 million) in French coinage and 6,000 livres (£3:7 million) from rents due to him.
We have no record of Joan’s meeting with her future husband. She and John were married on 11 September 1386, in the chapel at Saillé, on the salt marshes near Guérande, Brittany. A host of Breton nobles attended the ceremony. The wedding party then traveled to Nantes for the feasts and pageants that had been arranged in their honor.
