Joan, Lady of Wales

Joan married Llywelyn of Wales, possibly at St Werburgh's Abbey, in 1204/5 giving rise to the only claim of a "royal wedding" at Chester.

John's Daughter


Joan, Lady of Wales and Lady of Snowdon, also known by her Welsh name often written as Siwan (c. 1191/92 – February 1237) was the illegitimate daughter of King John of England, and was the wife of Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Wales (initially King of Gwynedd), effective ruler of all of Wales. Little is known about her early life. It is often written that her mother's name is known only from Joan's obituary in the Tewkesbury Annals, where she is called "Regina Clementina" (Queen Clemence):


 * "Obiit domina Johanna domina Walliae, uxor Lewelini filia regis Johannis et regina Clemencie, iii. kal. Aprilis." - The Lady Johanna of Wales died, the wife of Llywelyn, daughter of King John and Queen Clementia, 30 March.

However, there is also a possible mention of Clemence in a 1222 letter from Honorious III:


 * "Nobili viro Lowelino domino Norwallie. Confirmat statutum quod ipse in terra suae ditioni subiecta cum consensu Henrici regis Anglorum fecerat, consentientibus quoque Stephano Cantuariensi archiepiscopo S R E Cardinali et Pandulpho Norwiciensi electo Apostolicae Sedis Legato, contra abusum in eius terra introductum, ut illegitimi succederent in hereditates sicut et legitimi, ordinando ut David filius suus quem ex Iohanna filia cl. mem. [et] regis Angliae uxore sua legitima suscepit, haereditario iure in omnibus bonis suis ei succedat." - To the nobleman Lord Llywelyn of North Wales. Confirming a statute that [Llywelyn] himself in the land lying under his authority made with the consent of King Henry of the English, likewise acting together with Archbishop Stephen of Canterbury... and Pandulf the elect of Norwich and legate of the Apostolic See, against the abuse which has been introduced into his land, that the illegitimate may succeed in hereditary [title] just as the legitimate: orders that Dafydd his son who was born from Joanna the daughter of Clementia [cl. mem.] [and] of the king of England, his [Llywelyn's] lawfully accepted wife, that he might succeed him in hereditary right in all his goods.

Joan was betrothed to Llywelyn the Great in 1204, and the marriage is thought to have taken place in 1205, although the Annals of Chester (those of the abbey of St Werburgh in Chester, now the Cathedral) say that it occurred in 1204. Joan’s illegitimate birth was not the stigma to the Welsh that it had been to the Norman French. Illegitimate children were even allowed to inherit in Wales as long as their father acknowledged them.

John (born 1166) had first married Isabella, Countess of Gloucester (1174-1217) in 1189. Isabella was the youngest daughter and co-heiress of William, second Earl of Gloucester, who was himself the son of Robert of Gloucester, an illegitimate son of King Henry I. William's sister was Maud of Gloucester the wife of Ranulph De Gernon. Isabella’s only brother Robert had died in 1166, making Isabella and her two sisters co-heiresses to the very wealthy earldom of Gloucester. When John's father arranged the betrothal he disinherited the other sisters to ensure that the entire wealth would pass into the hands of John.

John and Isabella were half-second cousins as great-grandchildren of Henry I, and thus within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity. Baldwin of Forde, Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the marriage null by reason of consanguinity and placed their lands under interdict. The interdict was lifted by the old and unwell Pope Clement III (1187-91), who granted a dispensation to marry but forbade the couple from having sexual relations. As a child John would hardly have been expected to become king - he was the youngest of the four surviving sons of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. His older brothers were Henry the Young King, Richard, and Geoffrey. However the younger Henry (born 1155) died, aged 28, in the summer of 1183, during the course of a campaign in Limousin against his father and his brother Richard the Lionheart; Geoffrey (born 1158) died on 19 August 1186, at the age of 27, in Paris, where he was trampled to death in a jousting tournament; and Richard (born 1157) died in 1199 when he caught a crossbow bolt.



Shortly after John acceded to the throne in 1199, and before the end of August, John obtained an annulment of the marriage. Joan was born after the "marriage" of John and the Countess of Gloucester, although the future king and the Countess had been betrothed since 1175 (when John was 9 and Isabella of Gloucester was possibly a little older or a lot younger). John would have been about 25 when Joan was born, and he is known to have had more than ten "illegitimate" children including Richard FitzRoy (c1190-1246 ) whose mother was Adela, John's first cousin. After his "divorce" John took Isabella into wardship, holding her in ‘honourable confinement’ for the next fourteen years, and thereby hanging on to her assets.

John married Isabella of Angoulême (c1187-1246) in August 1200. It remains a little unclear why John chose to marry Isabella. Near-contemporary chroniclers argued that John had fallen deeply in love with her, and John may have been motivated by desire for an apparently beautiful, if rather young (she was no more than 12), girl. John was able to dispose of his first wife (who was now 26) by arguing that he had failed to get the necessary papal dispensation to marry the Countess as a cousin, John could therefore not have legally wedded her without this.

Matthew Paris suggests that Isobella was as bad as John and described her as guilty of adultery, sorcery and incest. One suggested lover is Isabella’s own half-brother, Peter de Joigny, and this would account for the accusation of incest. Peter visited England in 1215 and possibly 1207 so Isabella and her brother may have formed a close relationship with each other. However, Isabella was mostly pregnant during his visits and it is a mark of her unpopularity that this suggestion has been made. A further story grotesquely narrates how John had one of Isabella’s lovers strangled and his corpse suspended over her bed.

In 1226 Joan obtained a papal decree from Pope Honorius III (July 1216-March 1227) which declared her legitimate on the basis that neither of her parents had been married to other people at the time of her birth; though this didn’t give her any claim to the English throne, it did legitimise her children with Llywelyn over his others. The precise meaning of "when John was unmarried" is open to interpretation as John argued that he had never validly married his cousin, so Joan could have been born after 1189. John had died a decade before in October 1216. The question here is: who was Joan's Mother - the possible "Regina Clementina"?

The scope for the identity of Joan's mother is wide because one of John's more notorious proclivities as recorded by the chronicles was sleeping with the wives and daughters of his barons. The principal chronicles are set decidedly against John. Roger of Wendover never met John but thought he was a tyrant. Most of his work is probably based on gossip – possibly some barons visited the abbey & told him stories he later used. His work contains mistakes – he accuses John of having Geoffrey de Burgh, archdeacon of Norwich, arrested for a trivial offence & then put to death in a horrible fashion – crushed and/or starved inside a leaden cope. In fact, Geoffrey outlived John to become a bishop in 1225 (9 years after John died). Matthew Paris took over from Roger and continued with the tales of John being a tyrant, extortioner, sceptic in religion, and a seducer of wives & daughters of his own barons. A typical "rant" from Paris follows:


 * "In the meantime the king kept on oppressing one or other of the nobles of the kingdom, either by extorting money from them unjustly, or by stripping them of their privileges or properties; of some he seduced the wives, or deflowered the daughters, so that he became manifestly and notoriously odious and detestable both to God and man. Moreover, that his insatiable avarice and unappeasable gluttony and licentiousness might be concealed from no one, he prohibited all fowling and taking of winged game, and prevented the nobles from hunting, by which measures he not only lost the affections of all men, but incurred their unextinguishable hatred; so that even his own wife detested and loathed him." - Flowers of History

Matthew Paris concludes with:


 * "foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the foulness of King John"

Candidates
So who was Clemence? The only "Queen Clemence" in Europe at that time was Clemence of Toulouse, the disputed second wife of Sancho VII of Navarre. Some sources mention her as Clemence, a daughter of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor (Frederick Barbarossa), while other sources claim she was the unlikely daughter of Yusuf II, an emir from Morocco. It seems doubtful that John had a liaison with such a prominant woman without some mention being made of it.

Clemence de Verdun
Clemence was the wife of Nicholas de Verdun and the daughter of Philip le Boteler (Curia Regis Roll, 1243 [17:281-2 (no. 1462)]) and she inherited lands in Steeple Lavington, Wiltshire that she later bestowed upon another granddaughter. She and Nicholas de Verdun had one known daughter and heiress, Rohese. Rohese de Verdun.

Clemence of Fougeres
Clementia was born before 1180, possibly in Fougères, Brittany, to William Fougeres (d.7 June 1187) and his wife, Agatha Hommet. Agatha was a granddaughter to Richard Humez Hommet (d.1181), the seneschal of Normandy for Henry II. Her ancestry is asserted in a copy of a charter, probably of 1232, when the widowed Clementia gave away her Lincolnshire lands of Freiston (Fotstun) and Bennington (Benyngton) on the death of her husband, Ranulf de Blondeville. In this she describes herself as Clemenciae filiae Willielmi de Fugeres. It is possible she presented Count John with an illegitimate daughter who was named after the king himself, Johanna.

Adultery
One of the most controversial aspects of Joan’s marriage to Llywelyn was that she committed adultery with William de Braose (the younger) in 1230. This is not the same William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber who was a court favourite of King John and the suspect in the death of Arthur of Brittany, but a grandson of that one. This particular de Braose was known to the Welsh as "Black William" and was imprisoned by Llewelyn ap Iorwerth in 1229 during Hubert de Burgh's disastrous Kerry (Ceri) campaign. He was ransomed and released after a short captivity during which he agreed to cede Builth as a marriage portion for his daughter Isabel on her betrothal to Dafydd, son and heir of Llewelyn. The following Easter, Llewelyn discovered "an intrigue" between his wife, Joan, and William when De Barose was found in her bedroom. Thus, he was not a prisoner of Llewelyn at the time of the supposed adultery. De Barose was hanged and Joan was placed under house arrest for twelve months, after which, according to the Chronicle of Chester, Llywelyn took her back and restored her to all her former positions and titles.

Following William's execution, in his correspondence to Eva de Braose, William's widow, and her brother, William Marshall, Llywelyn himself does not refer to Joan's participation in the affair. Deflecting responsibility for William's punishment, Llywelyn stressed it was his council who insisted that de Braose be hanged, but that he was still eager to ensure that plans for their children to marry remained intact. It is probable that the political advantages following the division of the de Braose lands amongst his daughters, including Isabella, swayed sentencing. Llywelyn may have also found popular support with the Welsh in making a move against a member of a historically cruel and oppressive Marcher family. In spite of the political reasoning behind de Braose's execution, the Marcher lord's fate was also very likely influenced by Llywelyn's own reaction to Joan's public betrayal and his loss of confidence in her as his foremost political partner, not to mention his wife of over twenty five years.

Related Pages

 * Ranulf de Blondeville;


 * John Canmore;

Online

 * Joan, Lady of Wales: on Wikipedia;


 * Joan, Lady of Wales: on The History Press;


 * Dictionary of Welsh Biography: on Joan;


 * Dictionary of Welsh Biography: on Llywelyn;


 * The First Marriage of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth 1195-1203;

Books

 * Ranulf of Chester: A Relic of the Conquest by James W. Alexander


 * Joan, Lady of Wales: Power and Politics of King John's Daughter by Danna R Messer