Joan of Kent - Marriages

Marriages

In 1340, at the age of twelve, Joan entered into a clandestine marriage with Thomas Holland of Upholland, Lancashire without first gaining the royal consent necessary for couples of their rank. The following winter (1340 or 1341), while Holland was overseas, her family forced her to marry William Montacute, son and heir of the first Earl of Salisbury. Joan later averred that she did not disclose her existing marriage with Thomas Holland because she had been afraid that disclosing it would lead to Thomas's execution for treason upon his return. She may also have become convinced that the earlier marriage was invalid.

Joan is often identified as the countess of Salisbury who, legend says, inspired Edward III's founding of the Order of the Garter. It is just as possible, though, that that countess was her mother-in-law, Catherine Montacute, Countess of Salisbury.

Several years later, Thomas Holland returned from the Crusades, having made his fortune, and the full story of his earlier relationship with Joan came out. Thomas appealed to the Pope for the return of his wife and confessed the secret marriage to the king. When the Earl of Salisbury discovered that Joan supported Holland’s case, he kept her a prisoner in her own home.

In 1349, Pope Clement VI annulled Joan’s marriage to the Earl and sent her back to Thomas Holland, with whom she lived for the next eleven years. They had four known children (though some sources list five), before Holland died in 1360.

Their children were:

1. Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent
2. John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter
3. Lady Joan Holland (1356–1384), who married John V, Duke of Brittany (1339–1399).
4. Lady Maud Holland (1359–1391), who married firstly to Hugh Courtenay and secondly to Waleran III of Luxembourg, Count of Ligny (1355–1415).
5. Edmund Holland (c. 1354), who died young. He was buried in the church of Austin Friars, London.

When the last of Joan's siblings died in 1352, she became the Countess of Kent and Lady Wake of Liddell.