Joan of England (1210-1238)

Joan of England. Illumination from the 13th century.

Joan of England ( July 22, 1210 , † March 4, 1238 in Havering-atte-Bower ) was an English king's daughter who became Queen of Scotland by marriage .

Origin and engagement to Hugo X. von Lusignan

Johanna was the third child and the eldest daughter of the English King Johann Ohneland and his second wife Isabella von Angoulême . In 1212 Johann Ohneland negotiated with the Scottish King William the Lion , according to which the Scottish heir to the throne Alexander should be married to a daughter of Johann. The English king also received the right to marry Alexander, but he did not use this opportunity to improve Anglo-Scottish relations. Instead, he tried to achieve a politically even more advantageous marriage for his daughter. However , he abruptly rejected a proposal by the French King Philip II to marry Johanna to one of his sons. Instead, he offered Johanna, as it were, as an offer of peace from the Lusignan family, who were enemies in southwestern France . In 1214 Johanna was betrothed to Hugo X. von Lusignan , at whose court she grew up. As a pledge for a dowry to be handed over later, Hugo von Lusignan received Saintes and the Saintonge and the Île d'Oléron . After the death of Johann Ohneland in October 1216, Lusignan requested the early release of these areas. When the English Regency Council, which for Henry III. , Johanna's underage brother, who ran the government, refused to do so, he broke off the engagement and instead married her widowed mother, Isabella of Angoulême. This was 1200 with his father Hugo IX. von Lusignan , and her marriage to Johann Ohneland in 1202 had led to a falling out between the English king and the Lusignans.

Hostage in the conflict between Lusignan and the English government

After the failure of Joan's engagement, the English Regency Council asked on May 22, 1220 that she be handed over to representatives of the English government in La Rochelle . However, Lusignan used her as a hostage. He kept Saintes, Saintonge and the Île d'Oléron occupied and demanded the handover of Isabella's dowry, which was still withheld by the English government. On June 15, 1220, the Scottish King Alexander II, who had meanwhile succeeded his father William the Lion, announced at a meeting with the papal legate Pandulf and the Regency Council in York that he would marry Joan's younger sister Isabella if Joanna continued in Southwest France would be detained. Thereupon Pope Honorius III mediated . between the English government and Lusignan, whom he threatened church punishment if he continued to detain Johanna. On October 5, the English justiciar Hubert de Burgh and the Regency Council agreed to hand over Queen Isabella's dowry, which included Berkhamsted Castle and probably Rockingham , to Lusignan. In return, Lusignan was supposed to bring Johanna to England or to hand her over in La Rochelle. Thereupon Lusignan brought Johanna to La Rochelle in autumn 1220, from where she returned to England.

Marriage and marriage to Alexander II of Scotland

Her marriage to Alexander took place in York Minster in 1221 , although the exact date is not certain. The most likely is the indication of the Melrose Chronicle , according to which the marriage took place on June 19th. On June 18, 1221, Alexander gave Jedburgh , Crail , Kinghorn and other goods to his bride as a morning gift. From these estates she had an annual income of about £ 1,000. Johanna received no land from the English government as a dowry. According to the chronicle of Matthew Paris , several years later the Scottish king demanded from Henry III. the handover of Northumberland in vain , since this had been promised by Johann Ohneland as a dowry. There is no further evidence for this.

Johanna, who was only eleven at the time of their wedding, apparently never felt at home at the Scottish court. Due to the age difference to her husband, who was over eleven years older, due to her childlessness and because of her dominant mother-in-law Ermengarde , she was unable to gain importance and thus gain political influence. In addition, there were political tensions between her husband and Heinrich III., So that she found herself in a difficult position. Johanna was in correspondence with her brother. In one of these letters, believed to have been written in 1224, she presumably passed on information received from Alan of Galloway that the Norwegian King Håkon IV would support the rebellious Baron Hugh de Lacy in Ireland. In September 1236 Johanna accompanied her husband when he went to Newcastle and in September 1237 to York to negotiate with Henry III. traveled, but she probably had no influence in these negotiations either. Matthew Paris suspected that Johanna and her husband had already become estranged by this time and that she wanted to return to England. Her brother had given her the Driffield estates in Yorkshire and Fen Stanton in Huntingdonshire for use before 1236 .

Death and burial

After the Treaty of York was signed in September 1237, she went on a pilgrimage to Canterbury , probably already seriously ill . About half a year later she died in Essex in the arms of her brothers Henry III. and Richard of Cornwall . At her request, she was buried in the Cistercian Abbey of Tarrant in Dorset . Her brother Heinrich later made generous donations to the monastery and had an elaborate grave built for them, which was made in the workshop of Elias of Dereham in Salisbury . To this end, he later had a marble grave monument erected for them. The abbey was destroyed during the Reformation, neither grave nor funerary monument have been preserved. Her marriage to Alexander II had remained childless. After her death, he married Marie de Coucy for the second time .

Web links

Commons : Joan of England, Queen of Scotland (1238) - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Joan of England on thepeerage.com , accessed October 6, 2015.
Keith Stringer: Joan (1210-1238). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Individual evidence

^ David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 196.
^ David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 217.
^ David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 221.
^ David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 196.
^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 534.

predecessor	Office	Successor
Ermengarde de Beaumont	Queen Consort of Scotland 1221–1238	Marie de Coucy

personal data
SURNAME	Joan of England
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Wife of Alexander II of Scotland
DATE OF BIRTH	July 22, 1210
DATE OF DEATH	March 4, 1238
Place of death	Havering-atte-Bower

[1] David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 196.

[2] David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 217.

[3] David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 221.

[4] David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 196.

[5] Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 534.