Category: The Despencer Family

Joan of the Tower

5/7/2018

Born in the Tower of London on the 5th July in 1321 was Joan, the youngest of the four children of Edward II and Isabella of France.

Joan was born into a country fraught with tension. What started out as a feud eventually escalated into civil war - this feud was the result of Joan's father's reliance on the Despensers, a father and son act. History differentiates between the two by calling the son 'the Younger' - he was a royal favourite. This war came to an end following the Battle of Boroughbridge in March the following year with the execution of Thomas of Lancaster and the exile of both Despencers. However, the Despencers were to return as favourites until the end of Edward's reign.

When Joan was just seven she was contracted to marry David of Scotland, the four-year-old son of Robert the Bruce. This marriage formed part of the Treaty of Northampton. Under the terms of the treaty, England recognised Scotland's independence and Robert the Bruce as king. For their part, the Scots would pay an agreed sum of money to end the war.

Poor Joan entered into this unhappy marriage on the 17th July 1328 and was crowned as a Scottish queen the next year. David as king was an English sympathiser and disliked in Scotland and history sees him as a disastrous leader. On a personal level, he was a womaniser but left on illegitimate offspring. It's is hard to say what Joan had to put up with during her thirty-four-year marriage to the Scottish king however the answer may lay in the fact that following his release from his eleven-year captivity in England Joan chose not to accompany him back to Scotland.

Where Joan lived during the last five years of her life is unknown, she may have lived at Castle Rising, one of her mother's properties however by 1358 she was living with her mother at Hertford Castle. I wonder what these two women talked of during their time together? Did they discuss the subject of living with men they cared little for or Joan's time as Queen of the Scots or maybe Isabella's affair with Roger Mortimer?

Oh to be a fly on the wall!

By the summer of 1358, Joan was caring for her dying mother who succumbed to death that year. Joan continued to live at Hertford Castle until her own death of the black plague in 1362.

She was buried in Christ Church Greyfriars, London. Her tomb no longer exists.

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The Battle of Evesham

2/8/2017

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4th August 1265

Following King John to the throne of England in 1216 was his son Henry III. Henry turned out to be an intelligent man who was quick to master the problems of administration and government, he was also seen as an

"uncomplicated, almost naive man, and a lover of peace."

It seems then that England would, at last, be a calm and peaceful country, however this was not to be.

In our tales of history, the events of 1258 to 1265, were played out through the actions of a man who would come to be known as "the father of the English parliament" - Simon de Montfort, who Chronicler Matthew Paris describes as dictatorial and a military strategist, stating he was charismatic, plain spoken and fair.

Many of Henry III's barons had become a law unto themselves and they were now seeing Henry as weak, David Carpenter writes that Henry “failed as a ruler due to his naivety and inability to produce realistic plans for reform” and Henry did not do himself any favours, his personal extravagances that had resulted in large taxes and a major fall out with de Montfort did not help matters either. In 1238, in a blatant piece of favouritism towards de Montfort (interestingly, one of the reasons de Montfort took a dislike Henry III was because of his favouritism towards foreign nobles - it seems he conveniently forgot that he was a favoured foreigner himself !) Henry had approved de Montfort’s marriage to his sister Eleanor, and both Henry and de Montfort chose to ignore the condemnation of the marriage by the Archbishop of Canterbury along with the protest made by Henry's brother, the greedy Richard of Cornwall, who made a song and dance of the whole episode, however he was eventually bought on side for a couple of bags of gold. Henry also appointed de Montfort as Governor of Gascony, a mistake that cost him dearly. In Gascony, Montfort was disliked, but he was powerful and he abused his position and this forced Henry to intervene. On Montfort's return to England, he too perceived Henry as weak and with the barons eager for a fight, Simon de Montfort stepped into take charge.

It was Simon de Monfort who lead the rebellion against his one time friend, and after the Battle of Lewes in 1264 both the king and his son Edward, later Edward I, were captured and it was de Montfort who ruled in his name. Eventually though,de Montfort lost the support of many of Henry's disaffected barons, this along with Edward's escape would be the beginning of the end of Simon de Montfort's rule.

Edward had raised an army that outnumbered de Montfort's forces and had pursued them through the Welsh Marches to the Worcestershire town of Evesham. Edward arrived there on the morning of the 4th of August 1265. This arrival had taken de Montfort by surprise, but he was quick to respond and taking the king along with him engaged Edward's army, however within hours the battle turned into what can only be described as a massacre, one historian writing that it was "an episode of noble bloodletting unprecedented since the Conquest." quickly followed by Simon de Montfort's grizzly end, a fact that bears witness to the slaughter.

Of de Montforts death there is a contemporary account that is attributed to a London chronicler name Arnald FitzThedmar.

"The head of the Earl of Leicester, it is said, was severed from his body, and his testicles cut off and hung on
either side of his nose. In this state, the head was sent to the wife of Roger de Mortimer, at Wigmore Castle.
Simon de Montfort’s hands and feet were also cut off, and sent to many of his enemies as a great mark of dishonour
to the deceased. The trunk of his body, however, and that alone, was given for burial in the church of Evesham."

Also losing their lives that day were Simon's son Henry, and Peter de Montfort who both died in the battle. Hugh Despencer, Chief Justiciar of England, grandfather of the more famous Hugh Despencer the younger, was slain at the hands of Roger Mortimer.

Roger Mortimer holds up the severed head of Simon de Montfort by artist Matthew Ryan. http://matthewryanhistoricalillustrator.com/

By 1267 the problems between Henry and his barons, that were based on the 1258/9 provisions, had still not settled down and a new set of laws were needed. On the 18th or 19th of November 1267, in a Parliament at Marlborough the twenty nine chapters that made up the Statute of Marlborough, was passed. The kings last few years saw his power restored and it was a relatively peaceful one following the signing of the Dictum of Kenilworth. Henry was sensible enough to pass many of Simon de Montfort's ideas and changes to government, and this act was brought into play by the end of October 1266.

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Joan of the Tower

The Battle of Evesham

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