Royal daughters in the fourteenth century were instruments of policy, and Joan, born to Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, was used as one from childhood. Her marriage was meant to bind England to Castile in the long struggle against France. She died before she reached it.
The Horror
Joan was born on either December 19, 1333 or January 28, 1334, probably at the Tower of London. Her first intended marriage, arranged in 1336 to the son of the Duke of Austria, was dissolved in 1340 when Edward concluded the Austrian court was leaning towards France. In 1345 she was betrothed instead to Peter of Castile, son of Alfonso XI, the man later known as Peter the Cruel.
In the summer of 1348 she left England for Castile with a heavily armed retinue, her parents’ blessing and a route that took her through Bordeaux, then held by the English crown. The Black Death had not yet reached England, and her party probably did not grasp what lay ahead. Plague was already severe in Bordeaux. At first Joan and her advisers stayed in the city, but members of her entourage began to fall ill and die. The leader of the retinue, Robert Bouchier, died on August 20.
Joan probably moved to the village of Lormont, on the river just outside Bordeaux. That she did so is likely rather than certain. She died there suddenly on September 2, 1348, aged fourteen, and is described as the first victim of the disease in her camp. She never met her husband. The marriage never took place.
Edward III wrote to Alfonso XI. In Rosemary Horrox’s translation, he describes how “destructive Death” had “lamentably snatched from both of us our dearest daughter.” He calls her “free of all stain” and takes comfort that she has been “sent ahead to Heaven”, where she can intercede for the family’s offences. The letter turns a failed alliance into the grief of a father.
Legend and loose ends
A popular detail says her wedding trousseau was so large that it needed a ship to itself. It is repeated widely and is unconfirmed. Her age at death, about fourteen, is solid, but the day she left England and the exact route are not recorded here.
The Modern Relic
Where Joan lies is unsettled. Some accounts say Bayonne Cathedral, others Bordeaux Cathedral, and no marked grave is identified. There is a statue of her on the south side of her father’s tomb in Westminster Abbey, among the children of Edward III. The scale of what killed her makes her story small: one girl among a population the plague was emptying, whose rank bought no protection.
