2 Duchess: Wife, Mother, Regent

DOI: 10.4324/9780429261022-4

Joan arrived in Brittany in September 1386 as a young infanta, daughter of an infamous king whose politics had been controversial and divisive. She had two important assets which had convinced Jean IV to make her his new duchess: her august lineage and familial connections and her potential fertility. Joan arrived in the duchy at a time when Brittany was struggling to settle down after years of prolonged conflict over the succession between the Montfort and Penthièvre branches of the ducal dynasty. While Jean IV had been able to reassert his claim to the duchy and re-establish his rule after a period of exile in England, there was still considerable internal tension between Joan's new husband and the great lords of the duchy, particularly the powerful Olivier de Clisson, which still threatened to undermine Jean's rule. Joan had to negotiate this potentially treacherous political landscape and fill the role of duchess, which had not been completely fulfilled by either of Jean IV's previous wives, who had both been largely absent from the duchy and had failed to produce a much-needed heir to ensure the continuation of Montfort rule.

In spite of this difficult situation that Joan was presented with, her years as duchess of Brittany were an unqualified success. By the end of her tenure, she had built a positive personal and political partnership with Jean IV, secured the succession with the birth of numerous sons and daughters, and assisted in stabilising the realm both internally and externally. This chapter will trace this period of Joan's life chronologically, investigating the challenges that Joan faced and how she responded to them, and mapping the transition she made not just from infanta to duchess, but from wife to mother and eventually to become regent of Brittany after the death of Jean IV in 1399.

The new duchess: 1386–89

As noted in the previous chapter, Brittany and Navarre were in very similar political situations. Both were small autonomous states, strategically located between two larger, rival powers. Both Joan's new husband, Jean IV, and her father, Carlos II of Navarre, had clashed repeatedly with the French king and struggled with the inherent tension of being both a vassal of the king of France and a peer as a territorial ruler. Arguably, Carlos II's situation was far more clear-cut in terms of being an independent ruler and his stature somewhat higher as a crowned king. However, Jean IV was keen to assert his independence and his quasi-royal standing in his own duchy. Michael Jones has argued that “without exaggeration it can be said that in the last ten years of this reign Jean IV acted as though he were an independent prince whose state was contiguous with and not within, the bounds of Valois France”.¹ Beginning with Jean IV and continuing with his (and Joan's) heirs, the Montfort dukes adopted an increasingly royal stature in their representation, from iconography and visual depictions and in modes of address.²

Jean's marriage to Joan of Navarre could be seen as a means of strengthening his royal standing and stature. While his first wife had been an English princess, his second wife was, though a stepdaughter of a Prince of Wales, in effect the daughter of an English noble. Joan, on the other hand, was the daughter of a king and, as discussed thoroughly in the previous chapter, closely related to not only the kings of France, but many of the greatest lords of the realm and royal houses across Western and Central Europe. Not only could Joan boast an illustrious pedigree but indeed Jean's very selection of her as his bride could be seen as a signal of his changing political allegiances. Jean's English wives had been a product of his close political ties with England, who had given him support during the Breton war of succession. Jean's first wife was Mary of Waltham, a daughter of Edward III—their marriage was part of the English king's strategy to keep Brittany closely bound to England, but she died only months after their wedding in June 1361. Edward III required Jean IV to obtain his express permission to remarry, and when he eventually married again in 1366, it was to Joan Holland, the Black Prince's stepdaughter, thus renewing the Anglo-Breton bond.³ However, Joan Holland's death in October 1384 removed this human tie to England and gave Jean IV a political opportunity to make alliances elsewhere. Henneman has argued that a clear change could be seen in Jean's relationship with England immediately after, demonstrating a “more independent stance in dealing with England in 1385 and 1386” which reflected both how the political landscape had changed and Jean IV's adaptability in steering a course between France and England as tension continued between the two powers.⁴

Thus Jean made a different choice with his third bride, choosing a young woman who had both blood ties to the Valois as well as a father who shared Jean's political sympathies with the English. Yet, looking beyond the political context of his three marriages, Joan was left with two considerable gaps which Jean's two English brides had not been able to fill. The first was establishing a strong presence for the duke's wife in Brittany—Jean's first duchess, Mary of Waltham, had never left England during her short tenure, which according to one contemporary source was only “thirty weeks” or approximately seven months, although the marriage may have been even shorter than this brief span.⁵ Jean's second wife, Joan Holland, spent the bulk of her 18 years as duchess in her native England—indeed, while she was sharing Jean IV's exile from the duchy for some of this period (1373–79), she refused to return an additional four years after Jean was restored to power in Brittany. While Joan Holland did exercise the role of countess of Richmond in Jean's absence and look after her husband's interests in England, she did not establish a firm role for the duke's wife at the Breton court.

More importantly, perhaps, was the gap left by the two previous duchesses with regard to the succession. Joan had been brought in, effectively, as a brood mare, for after two marriages without issue, Jean IV was desperate for an heir. The first treaty of Guérande in 1365 clearly stipulated that if Jean IV failed to produce male heirs, the line would revert to his enemies, the house of Penthièvre.⁶ In effect, this would mean that the entirety of Jean's struggles for the Breton succession and his reign would be pointless—the house of Montfort would disappear and his rivals would regain the ducal crown.

Joan soon proved her worth in terms of providing dynastic continuity, becoming pregnant only months after the wedding—as will be discussed further in Chapter 5, Joan was granted an extensive dower on 24 February 1387 when she was at the stage where her pregnancy would have been established.⁷ Moreover, roughly ten days earlier on 15 February, the ducal couple had made a covenant of mutual donation of their possessions—the timing of these two documents suggests that Jean IV was keen to confirm his new wife's position now that she had effectively held up her end of the bargain by demonstrating her fertility.⁸ This pregnancy and her more established position at the Breton court would have also reaffirmed the Navarrese alliance, which had been altered somewhat by the death of Joan's father, Carlos II, who had died on 1 January 1387—various accounts of his death, supposedly burned alive, were perhaps emphasised by those who wished to portray him as Carlos “the Bad” and make accounts of a horrific death compensatory for his supposed crimes in life.⁹ Whatever the mode of his death, it brought Joan's brother, Carlos III, to the throne of Navarre, and Jean IV would have needed to consider the repercussions of this change to the Breton-Navarrese alliance which Joan personified.

Yet instead of solving Jean's succession issues, his remarriage and Joan's swift pregnancy may have only encouraged his enemies, the Penthièvres and Olivier de Clisson, to move against him. At the same time as Jean IV was negotiating with Carlos II to obtain a Navarrese bride, Clisson was negotiating a matrimonial alliance to marry his daughter Marguerite to Jean (or John of Blois), the Penthièvre heir. To achieve the marriage, Clisson had to seek a papal dispensation for the match, which was granted in 1386, around the time of Joan and Jean IV's wedding, and negotiate for the release of Jean de Penthièvre who was being held by the English. Jean IV engaged in strenuous diplomatic efforts with the English to block the release of his rival and aimed to secure strong allies in France to support him against his enemies with Joan's powerful uncles, the dukes of Berry and Burgundy.

The tense situation broke in the summer of 1387, when Jean IV moved against Clisson, inviting him to Vannes in late June, where he was arrested and forced to sign “a document which could only have been extorted from him by the direst threats” renouncing his matrimonial alliance with Penthièvre and turning over the Clisson and Penthièvre strongholds in return for his freedom.¹⁰ Joan gave birth soon after, but the child was not the long-awaited son and heir that Jean IV had hoped for but a daughter, named Jeanne for her mother—and arguably her grandmother Jeanne de Valois and great-grandmother Juana II of Navarre.¹¹ Things became even worse for Jean IV as the backlash to his rash seizure of Clisson became apparent—Joan's cousin, Charles VI of France, was appalled at the arrest of Clisson, and the ransom agreements for Jean de Penthièvre suddenly bore fruit, resulting in his release on 19 November 1387 and his marriage to Marguerite de Clisson on 20 January 1388.¹² If Penthièvre and his new bride managed to produce a male heir, they would pose a serious threat to the Montfort line and the war for succession could reignite into open conflict. Moreover, this situation demonstrated a break within Joan's Valois family—previously her cousin Charles VI had been influenced by his uncles, the dukes of Berry and Burgundy, but here he had chosen to support Clisson, a man whom his uncles (and Joan's) and Jean IV were allied against, demonstrating that the so-called Marmouset faction now held greater sway over the king.¹³

Charles VI sent an ultimatum to Jean IV that he must restore the holdings of Clisson and Penthièvre, which Jean reluctantly agreed to do when he met with the French king in April 1388. But while Jean had been brought to heel by the French king, he had not given up on his attempts to block a Penthièvre heir from taking the duchy. In August 1388, he signed an agreement known as “the Articles” with England where he agreed that Richard II would be his heir, instead of the Penthièvres, if he died without issue—contravening the terms of the treaty of Guérande.¹⁴ While this step seems somewhat premature given the youth of his bride and her rapid initial pregnancy after their marriage, Jean may have been recognising his own advancing age and the vagaries of infant mortality. Indeed, according to some sources, Joan may have borne a second daughter who died shortly after birth in 1388—others suggest that Joan's first pregnancy might have been twin girls.¹⁵ It is possible that the Articles were drafted after Joan produced a second, short-lived daughter, prompting Jean to be less sanguine about the prospect of a male heir to follow him, or he may have simply sought to repair his relations with the English by throwing them the possibility of annexing Brittany even if he still had hope of a male heir. But by the end of the year, Jean had even more reason to be pessimistic about the succession as his first child, Jeanne, died on 7 December 1388.¹⁶

However, if Jean had been disappointed in her sex or had dismissed her as a potential heir in life, Jean-Yves Copy has argued convincingly that he treated her in death as his successor, using the symbology of the crown on her tomb to reinforce both his own quasi-royal status as duke and her place as a rightful heir, in spite of the provisions of the treaty of Guérande.¹⁷ Yet all was not lost—Joan's next pregnancy followed swiftly after and resulted in the birth of a son, on Christmas eve 1389, at Vannes—the very place where Clisson had been arrested, turning the wheel of fortune back in Jean IV's direction and rallying the position of the Montforts through the advent of a male heir. The Grandes Croniques de Bretaigne, while truncating the time between her marriage and the birth of an heir, noted the joy generated by Joan's successfully bringing forth a male heir, underlining the importance of her fertility and maternity in the history of the duchy: “[on] Christmas Eve 1489, she gave birth to a son who was named Jean, which made the duke very happy, as his two previous wives had no children. And afterwards this lady had many other sons and daughters”.¹⁸ The birth of this long-awaited son, first named Pierre but then christened as Jean, resolved the long-standing crisis over the Montfort succession, which had come to a head in the early years of Joan's marriage to Jean IV and marked the end of the 1380s, leading to a new decade in which Joan would fully establish herself as an appreciated wife, a fertile mother, and an active duchess.

Figure 2.1 Illustration of Jean IV of Brittany, Joan of Navarre and their children, from Garrett MS. 40, “Missal, Carmelite use (French c. 1440–76)”, folio 15v.

Source: Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. Image supplied for use courtesy of Princeton University Library.

The 1390s: Maternity, family, and politics

While Joan's early years in the duchy had been marked by the crisis over the succession, the 1390s provided a more stable footing for Joan to mature into her marriage and new position. This decade in Joan's life was marked by three major elements which were themselves deeply intertwined: the births of six further sons and daughters (Arthur, Gilles, Richard, Marie, Marguerite, and Blanche), connections with and grafted by her Breton, Navarrese, and Valois family, and the continually turbulent politics of the period.

While Joan left the Navarrese court when she married, she was clearly not forgotten—documents from the Navarrese archives show a steady traffic between the two courts both to maintain familial ties and the Navarrese-Breton alliance which had been the reason for her marriage. Indeed the lengthy stay of Pierre Godeile, abbot of Monreal, secretary of the Navarrese king, in Brittany during 1387 on the king's business certainly indicates protracted discussions, likely triggered by the regime change in Navarre itself, as Joan's brother Carlos III had succeeded to the throne at the beginning of the year.¹⁹ The exchange of frequent messengers bearing letters and gifts between the courts does seem to indicate a desire on the part of the young duchess to stay in close contact with her family: her messengers Bordat and Guiffre Alaoust and her squires Boloyte, Johan de Ochagavia, and Mahieu de St Germain made frequent trips to Navarre and back to the duchy—multiple payments were made to these men for trips between 1390 and 1400.²⁰

Joan's interaction with her family was not only based on letters and gifts exchanged but on the physical presence of family members. One of these was her aunt, another Joan, Juana, or Jeanne of Navarre, the youngest sister of Carlos II, who had married the vicomte de Rohan, one of the most important nobles in Brittany, in 1377. Having her aunt at the Breton court must have been a source of reassurance to Joan and they appear to have formed a family bond as Joan granted a considerable pension to her aunt of 1,000 livres in 1402.²¹ Joan was also geographically much closer to her aunt Blanche, dowager queen of France, as well as her Valois uncles and cousins at the French court.

An interesting incident during the early 1390s serves as a useful illustration of the intertwined nature of maternity, family, and politics, underlining the importance of Joan's family connections in the often tense relationship between France and Brittany. In late 1391 Joan's uncle, the duke of Berry, came to Nantes on behalf of Joan's cousin Charles VI of France, who was keen to see Jean IV reconciled with Olivier de Clisson and the Penthièvres. The Saint-Denys chronicle notes Joan's prominent presence in the party sent to welcome the duke, with her children and “a large cortege of illustrious ladies”. Joan “graciously welcomed her beloved uncle and gave him the kiss of peace”, asking after his health and exchanging news on the health of her family. Through her effusive welcome, which included entertainments and lavish gifts, the chronicler notes that she assured her uncle how delighted she was at his arrival.²² This warm welcome could indicate both the strength of family feeling and a bond of alliance between Berry and Jean IV, as the chronicler notes that Berry was “the one that he loved best” out of all of Joan's uncles, the Princes of the Blood.

While this visit was clearly a success with regard to renewing family bonds between Joan and her uncle, the political element of Berry's visit nearly turned into a disaster. Berry aired the king of France's grievances against Joan's husband, Jean IV of Brittany, in front of an assembly of the Breton barons and demanded that the duke come to Tours to meet with Charles VI and reconcile with his enemies, Clisson and Penthièvre. Understandably, Jean was angered and was considering rebuffing the French embassy in his rage, a move which would have had serious repercussions and could have led to open war between the duchy and France. Again, family ties came to the rescue here—according to the chronicler of Saint Denis, Joan's brother Pedro was visiting the Breton court at the same time and sought Joan's help to intercede with her husband to prevent this political catastrophe. The chronicler notes that Joan promised to help as she wanted to keep peace between the duchy and France, noting that she was inclined towards the French “as the cousin of King Charles”. This account emphasises how Joan deftly used both her wifely and maternal status in order to encourage Jean to work with her Valois relatives:

She took her children in her arms, in spite of her encumbrance at the end of her term [of pregnancy] and went that night, unexpected, to the room of the Duke, followed only by a few of her ladies. I have learned from a reliable source that she went down on her knees before the Duke and in a voice broken by sobs she begged him to take pity on her and her children … she begged him to renounce his plans, so as not to alienate himself by an act of felony towards his king and the princes of the blood, who might after his [the Duke's] death protect his children.²³

Michael Jones has noted that this episode highlights Joan's “talent for reconciliation which remained one of her most conspicuous traits”, and we will continue to track her intercession and mediation as both duchess and queen.²⁴ This account was undoubtedly dramatised by the chronicler, however, with a deliberate emphasis on Joan's maternity and tearful emotion as a factor in her successful intercession. Intercession was an important element of a consort's role, and was not exclusively tied to maternity, as Joan's cousin and contemporary, Anne of Bohemia, who was queen of England at this time, was childless and yet praised for her extensive and successful intercession.²⁵ However, the added element of fertility and maternity could be seen as underpinning a consort's intercessory efforts, drawing on her role as mother of the heir as Joan did here by encouraging Jean to think of the impact on their children if Brittany and France went to war. A similar scenario can be seen with Philippa of Hainault's supposed intercession while heavily pregnant to help the burghers of Calais, made famous by Froissart—while this has been shown to be historically inaccurate, it reinforces the expectation of a consort's intercessory role along with the expectation of her fertility as the guarantor of dynastic continuity.²⁶

While it is unlikely that this tale of intercession occurred exactly as the chronicler described, one element could well be accurate—Joan's pregnant state. While the birth dates and order of Joan's children is subject to some contradiction in various sources, it appears that Joan gave birth to Marie, her eldest surviving daughter, in February 1391, and another daughter, Marguerite, was likely born the following year in 1392. The duke of Berry visited in late 1391, when Joan could well have been pregnant with Marguerite, although most likely not “at the end of her term” as the chronicler suggests unless she fell pregnant again very shortly after Marie's birth.

Joan's growing family quickly became the focus of matrimonial alliances, in spite of their young age. The marriage of the heir, young Jean, was of primary importance, and articles were signed in April 1391 for a proposed marriage between the infant groom and a daughter of Jean III, the count of Armagnac, which was part of a wider “politico-military agreement” with the count and his brother, the count of Charolais.²⁷ However, this marital deployment of the heir was quickly reversed when the political situation changed—Jean III died in Italy in July of the same year without a male heir, which made his brother Bernard count of Armagnac. Then, as discussed previously, at the end of the year the duke of Berry had arrived to summon Jean IV to meet with the king of France at Tours—Joan's intercession and the proffered marriage between the Breton heir and one of Charles VI's own daughters assuaged Jean's anger at the summons and encouraged him to meet with the king. Jean IV went to Tours in January 1392 and eventually accepted the concessions that Charles VI wanted regarding Clisson and Penthièvre, and to reinforce their existing treaties with a matrimonial alliance between his young heir and Charles's year-old daughter Jeanne de Valois, although Jean penned a secret document that these concessions had been forced upon him.²⁸

Yet matters with Clisson were hardly finished, as an assassination attempt was made on his life on 13 June 1392, only six months after Jean's meeting with the king of France. Charles VI was furious at the attack on his constable, which was blamed on the duke of Brittany who was believed to be hiding the assailant, Pierre de Craon, and encouraged by the Marmoset faction, the king prepared to attack Brittany to avenge the attempt on Clisson's life. Jean IV protested that he had nothing to do with the attack, and in Froissart's account reminded Charles of “the alliances that have been entered into between us” including “the marriage of our children”—while this appeared to satisfy Joan's uncles Berry and Burgundy, who were against the attack, Charles was keen to push on with the campaign.²⁹ Joan may have been distraught at the prospect of her cousin leading an army against her new marital home, but the campaign stopped abruptly on 5 August, when Charles VI had the first of his many attacks of madness—a tragedy for her cousin and indeed for France, but it saved Joan and her young family from potential ruin. The political pendulum swung the other way—Joan's uncle, the duke of Burgundy, seized control of the government while the king was incapacitated and dismantled the Marmoset faction, including Clisson, by accusing them of using their positions to line their own pockets. Burgundy made a deal with Jean IV to bring down Jean's enemy if the duke cut off contact with the English, and Clisson was forced to resign as constable of France in December 1392.³⁰

Regardless of the whims of politics, Joan effectively spent the bulk of the 1390s in a state of pregnancy or postpartum, as after the birth of Marguerite in 1392 she then produced three more sons, which ensured that young Jean's life was not the only means of continuing the Montfort succession. On 24 August 1393, Joan gave birth at Suscinio, a favoured residence of the duke and duchess, which will be discussed further in Chapter 7, to her second son, Arthur, who would become a significant figure in the Hundred Years War and Breton history. He became known as Arthur de Richemont, in connection with the disputed honour of Richmond in England which had been held by the rulers of Brittany since the Conquest when William I bestowed it on his kinsman Alan Rufus of Brittany for his support for the invasion, and had been a continual bone of contention between the rulers of England and Brittany. Joan produced two more sons in the years which followed, Gilles in 1394 and Richard in 1395, and a final daughter, Blanche, born in 1396/7 and named for Joan's aunt, the dowager queen of France.

Marguerite and Blanche were later wed in a double wedding in 1407—while this was during the reign of their brother Jean V, they were furthering established patterns of alliance for both Jean IV and his Navarrese relatives. Marguerite married Alain, count of Porhoët, a scion of the powerful Breton house of Rohan—Joan's aunt, Juana of Navarre, was married to Alain's grandfather, Jean I of Rohan, and, as noted previously, the couple played a major role in furthering the arrangements for Joan's own marriage to Jean IV.³¹ Blanche married Jean, the son of Bernard VII d’Armagnac, bringing about the alliance to which her father had initially pledged his young son and heir before changing course with a Valois bride.³² When Blanche passed away c. 1416, Jean d’Armagnac then married Joan's niece, Isabel of Navarre, which offered Carlos III an alliance with the Armagnac faction during the Hundred Years War.

The marriage of Joan's first daughter, Marie, also demonstrates the shifting political tides of the 1390s between Brittany, England, and France and links to matrimonial alliances of her Navarrese family connected to the counts of Perche and Alençon. Richard II of England had become a widower when Anne of Bohemia died in 1394, and while he grieved for his wife, as they had no children it was imperative for Richard to remarry to beget an heir. An English embassy had been dispatched to Navarre and Aragon to negotiate a possible marriage for the king in February 1395, but while the embassy was travelling southwards, a French embassy, keen to prevent an Anglo-Aragonese marriage, arrived in England with a choice of three brides: Marie, the sister of the count of Harcourt and Aumale, Yolande, daughter of the duke of Bar, or Jeanne, daughter of the count of Alençon. J.J.N. Palmer noted that out of these candidates the Alençon marriage “would undoubtedly have brought Richard the greatest political advantage”, as the family were important lords who held strategically located lands between Brittany and Normandy.³³ Yet none of these ladies were Iberian princesses, and when Richard did not immediately spring for any of these options, in May the French king wrote an emotional plea that he and Richard should put an end to decades of war with a peace sealed with the hand of his young daughter Isabella, which began protracted negotiations for an Anglo-French marriage.

In the midst of these negotiations, in November 1395, John of Gaunt was negotiating with Jean IV for a marriage between the houses of Lancaster and Brittany for his grandson Henry (later Henry V) with Joan's daughter Marie, which would cement a bilateral alliance between them that Jean IV hoped would get the support he needed to get back both the honour of Richmond and control of Brest.³⁴ While the matrimonial alliance suited both John of Gaunt and Jean IV, it did not suit Richard II, who reacted angrily to the news when John arrived back in England just after Christmas. Joan wrote two effusive letters to Richard II, in March 1396 and February 1397, to smooth over feathers ruffled by the proposed Lancastrian marriage.³⁵ In both letters she stressed that she was “desirous to hear of your good estate” and stressed her maternal role by noting the good health of her children. She also noted the good health of her husband in the 1396 letter, with a gentle plea regarding the “the deliverance of his lands”, which appears to reference the ongoing dispute over the honour of Richmond or possibly the restoration of Brest. Joan signed off both letters with pledges that “if anything I can do over here will give you pleasure, I pray you to let me know it, and I will accomplish it with a very good heart, according to my power”.

The blockage of the Lancastrian marriage and the Anglo-French negotiations opened up a new opportunity for Jean IV to redeploy Marie. Isabella de Valois had been betrothed to Jean, the count of Perche and Alençon heir, and now that she was being lined up to become the queen of England, Jean IV snapped up the young count of Perche for his own daughter, signing matrimonial agreements for Marie's marriage in June 1396, shortly after ratifying the marriage contract for his heir Jean with Isabella's sister, Jeanne de Valois.³⁶ A postscript to this marriage, which further underlines the importance of the Alençon family in the wider schemes of Breton and Navarrese matrimonial alliances, is the union of Joan's brother Pedro with Marie's sister-in-law, Catherine d’Alençon, in 1411.

Shortly after Marie's marriage was arranged with the count of Perche, Joan had the opportunity to attend the wedding of her cousin Isabella de Valois with Richard II, which had inadvertently made her daughter's own union with the Alençon family possible. While royal weddings are always an impressive occasion, this one was perhaps even more so as the English king came across the Channel to meet with his new father-in-law and bride in October 1396. Each king was accompanied by an impressive retinue of the most powerful lords of the realm and their ladies, in an event which Ian Mortimer describes as “one of the spectacles of the age, foreshadowing the later Cloth of Gold”.³⁷ Contemporary chroniclers such as Froissart and the chronicler of Saint Denis commented on this important event; while Joan's specific presence is not mentioned in these accounts, her participation seems a given considering how important this event was to her Valois family and the fact that her husband was a noted attendee.³⁸ Moreover, as the great French and English lords, including Princes of the Blood, do appear to have brought their wives who played an active part in the proceedings, with the French ladies noted for hosting banquets and attending on the young Isabella de Valois, the new queen of England, it seems extremely likely that Joan herself would have been an active participant in her cousin's wedding festivities as well.

This spectacle had several outcomes beyond the royal marriage which were important for Joan and her family. On a personal level, it is very likely that she encountered Henry of Bolingbroke at this event, the man whom she would marry only a half a dozen years later. Neither Joan nor any of the other attendees at this event would ever have guessed that she would be her cousin Isabella's successor as queen of England or that Joan would be the first consort of an entirely new Lancastrian dynasty under Henry IV. This may not be the only time that she and Henry met, but it is one of the most likely possibilities, as it is less certain that Joan accompanied Jean IV to England when he became a member of the Order of the Garter in 1398.³⁹ Froissart and the Grandes Croniques de Bretaigne insist that Henry came to Brittany en route back to England to unseat his cousin Richard II in 1399—the Grandes Croniques note that Joan, “who was a very beautiful princess”, received him with Jean IV when he arrived in the duchy.⁴⁰ Fernando de Ybarra repeats this scenario, noting a legend which claims that on his departure Joan gave him a bouquet of forget-me-nots, which later inspired his motto “Soverayne”, most likely a shortening of “Souveyne vous de moi” or “Remember me”.⁴¹ However, Henry's biographers Chris Given-Wilson and Ian Mortimer are very clear that he departed from Boulogne, not Brittany, when he left France to unseat Richard II, though Mortimer notes Henry might have visited Brittany earlier in 1399.⁴² While the significance of this meeting between Henry and Joan at the wedding festivities in 1396 was yet to bear fruit, a more tangible by-product of the meeting of Richard II and Charles VI was a confirmation that Brest and Cherbourg, which had been held by the English, would be returned to the duke of Brittany and the king of Navarre respectively, a major political benefit for Joan's marital and natal families.⁴³

Joan had further opportunities to connect with her natal family in 1398, when Carlos III of Navarre also came to the Breton court for an extended visit. Carlos arrived on 27 June, not long after he had paid a visit to their aunt Blanche, the widowed queen of Philip VI of France. Carlos stayed in the duchy until the end of August, basing himself in Nantes for the first two weeks but later riding out to visit other regions of the duchy in the company of his brother-in-law, Jean IV. This visit clearly had political, rather than purely familial motives. Eloísa Ramírez Vaquero notes that the extended time that Carlos III had with his brother-in-law and other key Breton nobles, such as the powerful Olivier de Clisson, was a key opportunity to renew his alliance with Brittany and for them to consult with one another regarding their mutual stance vis-à-vis both England and France in an ever-shifting political landscape.⁴⁴ Indeed, Carlos signed pacts of alliance with both Richard II of England and Jean IV in August 1398, reflecting the same triangular dynamic between Navarre, Brittany, and England which had been a key factor in the creation of Joan's marriage. This visit was also an opportunity for Carlos to renew his relationship with his sister, whose marriage made her the physical bond between her natal family and Brittany, cementing their political alliance. Carlos also made connections at the Breton court; his expenses for this period include gifts not only to nobles but to the servants of the lords of Rohan and Clisson and to members of Joan's household, including 20 francs which was given to Joan's lady-in-waiting, Jehanne du Boiz, who had once been Carlos's wet nurse.⁴⁵

The regent

Jean died in November 1399, leaving an heir and multiple spares, but his eldest son, who became Jean V, had not yet reached his majority, being only just shy of ten years old at the time, so a regency would clearly be needed. Jean IV entrusted this duty to Joan—she was now around 30 years old and had proven her worth as both duchess and mother. The regency was an excellent political opportunity for Joan, but also a serious challenge given the fractious politics of the duchy and the keen desire of her cousin, Charles VI of France, and her uncles, the French Princes of the Blood, to increase their control of the duchy, if not annex it altogether. Brittany had also been “piggy in the middle” between France and England over the course of the Hundred Years War. Moreover, as noted earlier, the Penthièvres, the ancient rivals of the Montfort dynasty, had unseated Jean IV during the early years of his reign and clearly still had ambitions for the ducal crown. As regent, Joan would have to protect her son's claim and steer a careful course through these turbulent political waters.

The first challenge she had to address was a confrontation between Jean IV and the major barons of the realm, Penthièvre, Rohan, and Clisson, which had reached a head in 1399, just before her husband's death. These three lords had taken an action against Jean IV at the Parlement of Paris in the spring of 1399, with wide-ranging grievances against the duke, particularly concerning taxes and complaints regarding ducal officers.⁴⁶ By September the Parlement had agreed to hear the appeal—the situation was unresolved by Jean IV's death in November. This was the most urgent item on her desk as Joan assumed the regency, as she knew that the support of these powerful barons was critical both for her regency and, more importantly, to solidify her son's position as the new duke. These three lords were all bound by ties of marriage and, together, the three lords were well positioned to prise the ducal coronet from her son's grasp. Indeed, Clisson's daughter Marguerite was married into the Penthièvre clan, who were rivals for the ducal throne—according to Lobineau's Histoire de Bretagne, Marguerite urged her father to kill the children of Jean IV so that her son could claim the duchy. Apparently, Clisson reacted to his daughter's suggestion so violently that he pushed her down the stairs and she retained a permanent limp, for which she was known thereafter as Marguerite la Boiteuse or “the lame”.⁴⁷

While Joan could not have known the contents of Clisson's conversation or his reaction to his daughter's murderous suggestion, Joan was well aware of the threat that the rebellious barons posed and how fragile her son's hold on the duchy was. Joan immediately dispatched her own lawyer to Paris to negotiate at the Parlement and moved to reach an accord with the three lords.⁴⁸ On 1 January 1400, exactly two months after her husband's death, Joan signed a treaty with Penthièvre, Rohan, and Clisson “to nourish peace, tranquility and accord” between them with the “bon plasir” of the king of France and the Parlement.⁴⁹

As soon as she had the three barons on side and at peace, Joan became embroiled in a dispute with the Church, ironically with one of the bishops who had supported her in procuring peace with the barons. A local official, Jean de Malestroit, had seized a shipment of wine from merchants in Quimper as the necessary taxes had not been paid to the duke. The bishop of Quimper, outraged, seized the wine, proclaiming publicly in the main square of the town that the duke had no right to impose duty on it and summarily excommunicated Jean de Malestroit on 7 February 1400. Jean de Malestroit appealed to the duchess, who immediately dispatched two of her officers to remonstrate with the bishop and to appeal to the archbishop of Tours as metropolitan to revoke the excommunication and bring the bishop of Quimper back in line.⁵⁰ Yet while Morice's account suggests that the archbishop procured a speedy resolution to the crisis, which placated both the duchess and bishop, documentary evidence suggests that the dispute took over two years to resolve, possibly because the archbishop was distracted by another ecclesiastical rebellion in the duchy when he was shut out of the city of Dol on 25 May 1400, which resulted in the excommunication of the bishop and clergy there.⁵¹

Joan was able to secure a swifter resolution to another long-running dispute with the dame de Retz. Jean IV had effectively forced the dame de Retz to swap her lucrative lands for territory elsewhere in the duchy before his marriage to Joan in 1386—this land was later given to Joan as part of her dower lands.⁵² The dame de Retz had appealed to the Parlement of Paris and even had support from Richard II of England for her plea for the return of her lands and castles. In 1393, the Parlement accepted her appeal and in 1399 Joan's uncle, the duke of Burgundy, acted as arbitrator to hammer out an accord. Joan signed off on this agreement on 1 September 1400, ending more than 15 years of dispute and getting another powerful family back into the ducal fold.

After resolving these disagreements between her husband and important nobles, Joan used ceremonial to her advantage to further secure her son's position, planning an elaborate coronation in Rennes in March 1401. This was a key opportunity to publicly unite the nobles and prelates of the realm behind the young duke and his mother as regent. Joan both drew on and enhanced the traditional quasi-royal coronation rituals for the dukes of Brittany—indeed this ceremony was effectively set down as a template for later dukes to follow in the contemporary Chronicon Brionese or Chronique de Saint-Brieuc.⁵³ The duke, with a large entourage of nobles and his mother, the regent, presented himself at the Porte Mordelaise in Rennes on the afternoon of Tuesday 22 March 1401.⁵⁴ There he was made to swear upon sacred relics to defend the Church, the rights of the nobility to their lands, and to preserve the sovereignty, laws, and customs of the duchy before he was allowed entry to the city. The duke then kept vigil all night at the altar of St Peter in the cathedral. In the morning a great Mass was celebrated and the duke repeated his oaths before being invested with the ducal coronet and regalia. Clisson himself knighted the young duke and his brothers Arthur and Gilles. The procession filed out of the cathedral with the duke at the rear, and processed around the building before returning through the Great Door to make an offering. Then the procession, led by the duke and his brothers on horseback, continued through the streets of the city to the Market Hall where an impressive coronation banquet was held.⁵⁵

Joan not only used the oaths of coronation to support her son's position, she also collected oaths of fidelity from knights and her servitors to secure their loyalty to her as regent. Shortly after her husband's death on 28 November 1399, she collected oaths from five knights as well as Geoffrey, lord of Quintin; Bertrand Gouyon, lord of Matignon; and Jean Raguenel, vicomte of Dinan, to herself and her young son Jean V. This was followed by oaths from other strategic personnel including Olivier de Maillechat, capitaine of Hédé; Jean de Painhouet, captain of the castle of Morlaix; and Jean de Langueouez, captain of the guard at Quimper.⁵⁶ She also moved to get the support of major cities of the duchy at the outset of her regency in 1400 by freeing the burghers of Vannes from the duty of the “corvée de guet” and confirming the privileges that Jean IV had bestowed on the city in 1397.⁵⁷

From duchess to queen

While some of these oaths were made in the immediate aftermath of her husband's death, other oaths followed in late 1402 when Joan's proxy marriage to Henry IV had already been accomplished and her plans to leave the duchy and the regency were in train. As will be discussed further shortly, her matrimonial negotiations with Henry IV were concurrent with her efforts to crown her son in Rennes in March 1401, and thus it is unclear to what extent Joan's efforts to bring peace to the duchy were purely for the benefit of Brittany versus a means to free herself from the regency, by ensuring that her son's reign was stabilised before she left to pursue a new husband and a crown. Yet as she had demonstrated her political ability as regent, why give up her powerful position and leave Brittany at all?

The Breton historian Borderie praised Joan's regency claiming that she “seemed to have the secret of reconciling minds and unifying all of her subjects around her son” and bemoaned her abandonment of the regency. His logic for Joan's decision to leave Brittany for a marriage to Henry IV was that “the beautiful and still youthful duchess could not resist so flattering an offer”.⁵⁸ Other historians, such as Knowlson, Jean V's biographer, and Fernando de Ybarra, have argued that Joan was driven by ambition and seized, or even created, the opportunity to upgrade her status from duchess to queen as soon as she was widowed in 1399.⁵⁹ However, some of Joan's collective biographers, such as the Victorian queenly prosopographers and even modern examples like Lisa Hilton, have framed Joan's decision in light of her widowhood—that Joan felt vulnerable as a young widowed mother and sought a powerful protector for herself and her large brood.⁶⁰ The issue of remarriage was a potentially thorny one for widows—James Brundage notes that medieval moralists were split on whether a widow should remarry or whether remarriage “signified shameless slavery to the voluptuous enticements of sexual passion”.⁶¹ Yet Barbara Hanawalt notes that a royal widow may not have had the same options as other women to become a vowess, remain single, or even choose their next husband, as that choice could be taken by her liege lord or natal family, who might want to use them to contract another matrimonial alliance.⁶² Michael Jones offers a more logical rationale for Joan's abandonment of the regency—that she knew that it would be short lived as her son would shortly reach the age of majority at 14 or 15 years old, thus she needed to carve out another role for herself beyond her widowhood and regency.⁶³ Clearly, remarriage to one of the most eligible men in Europe and the elevation to a royal crown was too good an opportunity to pass up—and, in her mind, may have been worth abandoning the regency and even her children for. It also offered her the possibility of deciding her own future in negotiating a marriage of her own choosing before her Valois cousins or her Navarrese family foisted a match on her that would be to their political benefit but not necessarily to her own liking.

Beyond Joan's issues of abandoning the regency and children, Henry's motivation for the match has long baffled historians—Paul Strohm went so far as to call Joan “that obscure object of desire”.⁶⁴ Unlike Jean IV, Henry had no need to wed as he already had several heirs and he had other potential candidates, such as Lucia Visconti, cousin of the duke of Milan, who had formed an attachment to him when they met in 1393—a potential marriage with her was still under discussion in 1399.⁶⁵ Moreover, Joan brought no dowry and their marriage created a diplomatic storm that ultimately weakened relations with France and brought war, not peace, between England and Brittany. If Henry sought to control Brittany by marrying the regent, his strategy failed miserably. Given Joan's sacrifices and Henry's lack of immediate political or financial advantage, many have assumed that the pair were motivated by romance—that their previous meetings sparked a desire in Henry to wed Joan as soon as she was free. While we can never be certain of the potential emotional considerations of the pair, Henry might well have had a different set of motivations in mind. As an insecure king, whom many still saw as an illegitimate usurper, Joan's illustrious pedigree, her unquestionably royal status, and her extensive dynastic connections across Europe, as well as her regional connections in the Midi region close to English Gascony, may have been very attractive to Henry to bolster his own arguably shaky position. Indeed, it must be noted that concurrent with his own negotiations to marry Joan, Henry was arranging marriages for two of his daughters with European royal houses which resulted in his daughter Blanche marrying Louis III, elector Palatine, and Philippa wedding Eric of Pomerania. These three marriages for himself and his daughters were all part of a wider programme to build pan-European alliances and legitimise the new Lancastrian dynasty.⁶⁶

In contrast to the extended and formal negotiations between Navarre and Brittany for Joan's first marriage, Henry and Joan conducted their negotiations with complete secrecy. Given the secretive nature of the discussions, it is difficult to say with complete certainty when they began; however, in the Close Rolls there is an entry on 7 February 1400, less than three months after the death of Jean IV, for the passage of Anthony Rys and Nicholas Alderwiche “who by command of the king are sailing to the duchy of Brittany with letters on his behalf addressed to the duchess”.⁶⁷ Both men played a vital role in the negotiations—they returned to England for intense discussions in November 1401 and, as will be discussed in the last chapter, returned the following month laden with gifts for the duchess (and for themselves). Rys was particularly vital—he was clearly trusted by Joan as he was appointed as her procurator with full powers to negotiate on 15 March 1402 and stood in for her at the proxy ceremony at Eltham on 3 April.⁶⁸ On the king's side was another trusted individual, John Norbury, whose “long friendship with Henry IV particularly qualified him as a confidential agent in matters such as the arrangement of the King's marriage”.⁶⁹ Only after the proxy ceremony did news of the match become more widely known, triggering a very negative reaction in the Breton and French court—precisely the reason why the pair had chosen to negotiate in a more personal and private fashion rather than formally and publicly as Jean IV and Carlos II had negotiated her first match.

Joan's Valois relatives—her cousin Charles VI and her uncles, the dukes of Burgundy and Berry—were very concerned about Brittany becoming subject to English influence through Joan's new husband. Burgundy was dispatched to the Breton court to take the regency from Joan and the custody of her four sons, Jean V, Arthur, Gilles, and Richard. Joan's two youngest daughters, Blanche and Marguerite, were initially allowed to go to England with her, but both returned home to Brittany only a few short years after Joan's marriage to make marriages of their own.⁷⁰ The nobles of the Breton court reacted badly to the duchess's marriage as they were also keen to avoid English control and were not enthused about the choice of Burgundy for the regency—indeed antipathy to the match could be seen as a factor in increasing tension between Brittany and England, which broke out into open conflict only months after the wedding took place in 1403.⁷¹

While her Valois relatives were displeased by Joan's English marriage, her Navarrese relatives had quite a different reaction. Ramírez Vaquero argues that Carlos III may have seen this marriage as a way to solidify the alliance that he was attempting to build between England, Navarre, and Brittany.⁷² She also hints that Carlos may have been involved in his sister's clandestine arrangements—as the cardinal of Pamplona appears to have been involved in Joan's efforts to obtain permission from Benedict XIII to marry, it is certainly possible that Carlos was involved in, or at least aware of, his sister's impending remarriage.⁷³ Joan's marriage also sat perfectly with the “anglófilo” alliances that Carlos was crafting at the same time with the marriages of his daughters Juana and Blanca with the heirs of Foix and Aragon, respectively, and offered the opportunity for a closer bond with the Castilian queen Catalina of Lancaster, Henry IV's half-sister, as well. However, this collection of English-leaning alliances for Navarre, and the fact that Carlos, now the brother-in-law of the king of England, had regained the strategic Channel port of Cherbourg, provided even more reasons for “all the alarms ringing in Paris” due to Joan's remarriage.⁷⁴

Once the matrimonial agreement was finalised and the proxy marriage had taken place, the last piece of the puzzle was bringing the new queen to England to join her husband. One entry in the Close Rolls dated 25 March 1402 notes that a great fleet at sea was to be assembled in Southampton by 7 May to bring Joan safely across the Channel. Another entry a few months later, on 11 August, called for the port of Southampton to give passage to ships including one called la Trinite and another called le Andreu which were bringing the new queen to England.⁷⁵ Two weeks later, on 27 August, John Drax was commissioned to bring 20 ships from both Bristol and the mouth of the Thames and assemble them at Southampton, again to form a flotilla to ensure Joan's safe transit to her new realm.⁷⁶ There were even rumours in 1402 that Richard II would return and that Henry would then flee across the Channel to marry Joan.⁷⁷ Clearly, these preparations and even the rumours indicate that there was an expectation that Joan's arrival would follow on swiftly after the proxy wedding, but it took her longer to unwind her affairs as regent in Brittany. Joan's uncle, the duke of Burgundy, arrived in October 1402 to take on the regency and the custody of her sons and smoothed any tensions with his niece by showering her and her sons with gifts.⁷⁸ Joan and Jean V then on 18 November signed a treaty of alliance with Burgundy to be mutually allied against everyone except the kings of France and Navarre.⁷⁹ Once the transfer of power and guardianship from niece to uncle was achieved, Joan was free to depart for England—facing a rough winter's crossing in the New Year in order to make her transition from duchess to queen complete.

Conclusion

This chapter has outlined the key events in Joan's life during her 13-year marriage to Jean IV of Brittany. Joan arrived in the duchy as a teenager—young, inexperienced, and nubile—but matured over the course of her time as duchess to become a mother several times over, a wife who was appreciated and trusted by her older husband, and, through her engagement with the political crises and shifting alliances of her immediate and extended family, a woman who was prepared to take on the mantle of the regency and exercise it effectively to provide a strong foundation for her son Jean V's extended reign. Yet Joan was willing to let go of all she had built as duchess of Brittany, including giving up her position as regent and the custody of most of her children, to start a new life in England as Henry IV's queen. Whether motivated by love, ambition, or the desire to decide her own future, Joan took a major risk when she began secret negotiations with the English king. Her fateful decision to remarry entailed a move north across the Channel to England, even farther from her Navarrese homeland and separated from her children, cousins, and siblings in France as she transitioned from duchess to queen.

Notes

1. Michael Jones, Ducal Brittany 1364–1399: Relations with England and France during the Reign of Duke John V (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 114.
2. See Michael Jones, “‘En son habit royal’: Le Duc de Bretagne et son image vers la fin du Moyen Âge,” in Representation, Pouvoir et Royaulté, ed. Joël Blanchard (Paris: Picard, 1995), 253–78.
3. James Bothwell, “An Emotional Pragmatism: Edward III and Death,” in Monarchy, State and Political Culture in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of W. Mark Ormrod, eds. Craig Taylor and Gwilym Dodd (York: York Medieval Press, 2020), 60–1.
4. John Bell Henneman, Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France under Charles V and Charles VI (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 114. Jones, Ducal Brittany, 204.
5. In “Le libvre du bon Jehan”, Guillaume de Saint André comments “Trente semaines furent ensemble/Sans plus ne moins come il me semble” (“Thirty weeks they were together/Not more or less it seems to me”): Guillaume de Saint-André, Chronique de l’État Breton, eds. Jean-Michel Cauneau and Dominique Philippe (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005), 248.
6. Morice, I, cols. 1588–99; Erika Graham-Goering, Princely Power in Late Medieval France: Jeanne de Penthièvre and the War for Brittany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 64–5.
7. ADLA E17-12, 24 February 1387.
8. ADLA E17-10, 15 February 1387. The ducal couple renewed their mutual donation on 2 February 1398; see ADLA E17-16.
9. See André Plaisse, Charles, dit Le Mauvais, Comte d’Evreux, Roi de Navarre, Capitaine de Paris (Evreux: Société Libre de L’Eure, 1972), 73–76, for four contemporary and early modern accounts of the death of Carlos II. For more on his funeral and will, see Nelly Ongay, “Testamento y exequias de Carlos II de Navarra,” Arquelogia, historia y viajes sobre el mundo medieval 25 (2008): 72–82.
10. Michael Sumption, Divided Houses: The Hundred Years War III (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), 629–30.
11. There is some disagreement about date of birth, given alternately as June 1387 by Pere Anselme or August 1387 (“the Monday after the feast of the Assumption”) from the Chronicon aliud Brittanicum, in Pere Anselme de Sainte Marie, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royal de France, vol. 1 (Paris: Compagnie des Libraries, 1712), 220; Lobineau, II, col. 365.
12. Jean-Yves Copy, “Du nouveau sure la couronne ducale bretonne: le temoignage des tombeaux,” Memoires de la Societe d’Histoire et d’Archeologie de Bretagne 59 (1982): 175; Jean-Yves Copy, Art, Société et Politique au temps des Ducs de Bretagne; Les gisants haut-Bretons (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1986), 107.
13. Eloísa Ramírez Vaquero, Carlos III, rey de Navarra, Principe de sangre Valois (1387–1425) (Gijon: Ediciones Trea, 2007), 60–1.
14. Jones, Ducal Brittany, 110; Copy “Coronne ducale,” 176. The articles of 1388 are reprinted in Ducal Brittany, 212–14.
15. Lobineau claims that this second daughter was born in 1388 and died shortly thereafter “after having been baptized in the chapel of Sucinio by Guillaume de St. Andre”. However, Pere Anselme has suggested that this second daughter was named Marie and was Jeanne's twin, instead of a second birth in 1388; see de Sainte Marie, Histoire Généalogique, 219–220; Lobineau, I, 471.
16. Lobineau, I, 471.
17. Copy, “Couronne ducale,” passim.
18. Alain Bouchart, Grandes Croniques de Bretaigne, eds. Marie-Louise Auger, Gustave Jenneau, and Bernard Guenee, vol. II. 3 vols (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la recherche scientifique, 1986), 171. Original text is “la vigille de Nouel quattre vingts et neuf, elle enfanta ung filz qui fut nomme Jehan, dont le duc fut moult joieulx, care de ses deux premieres femmes il n’avoit eu aucuns enfans. Et depuis eut celle dame plusieurs autres filz et filles”.
19. See Catálogo XVI, no. 881, 29 April 1387, and no. 884, 30 April 1387, for expenses paid to Godeile for his Breton trip.
20. For examples, see Catálogo XVII, no. 831, 9 June 1390; XIX, no. 830, 29 October 1392; XXI, no. 982, 20 August 1396; XXII, no. 69, 28 Jan 1396.
21. Foedera 8, 1 March 1403.
22. Saint-Denys, I, 723–25.
23. Saint-Denys, I, 727.
24. Michael Jones, “Between France and England: Jeanne de Navarre, Duchess of Brittany and Queen of England (1386–1437),” in Between France and England: Politics, Power and Society in Late Medieval Brittany (Aldershot: Variorum, 2003), 5.
25. On the intercession of Anne of Bohemia, see Kristen Geaman, Anne of Bohemia (London: Routledge, 2022), chapter 2, “She Settled Quarrels”.
26. See John Carmi Parsons, “The Pregnant Queen as Counsellor and the Medieval Construction of Motherhood,” in Medieval Mothering, eds. John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996), 39–63; Paul Strohm, Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 95–120; Anthony Musson, “Queenship, Lordship and Petitioning in Late Medieval England,” in Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, eds. W. Mark Ormrod, Gwilym Dodd, and Anthony Musson (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2009), 156–72.
27. ADLA E8-1, 13 April 1381. Jones, Ducal Brittany, 123.
28. The documents for the matrimonial negotiations are ADLA E8-2, 3 and 4, dated 15, 24, and 26 January 1392 respectively. For more on the negotiations at Tours, see Morice, II, col. 577–90, and a copy of the matrimonial agreement for Jean and Jeanne is col. 590–93.
29. Jean Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining countries, from the latter part of the reign of Edward II to the coronation of Henry IV, ed. Thomas Johnes, vol. 2 (London: H.G. Bohn, 1852), 531.
30. See Jones, Ducal Brittany, 128–29; Sumption, Divided Houses, 796–801.
31. Alain Boulaire, Les Rohan, “Roi ne puts, duc ne daigne, Rohan suis” (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 2001), 30; Henneman, Clisson, 190; Morice, II, col 794–96; Lobineau, II, col. 794–96).
32. ADLA 9-3, 4, 5, and 8 dated 2 and 30 July 1406 and 20 June 1407, respectively. To note, while it is beyond the scope of this study, there was a later dispute over Blanche's unpaid dowry several decades after her death; see ADLA E9-8 and 14 for the original dowry agreement, both dated 15 April 1407 and ADLA E6, 7, 10, and 13 for the dispute, dated 20 January 1448, 19 November 1446, 6 July 1448, and 1 September 1448.
33. J.J.N. Palmer, “The Background to Richard II's Marriage to Isabel of France (1396),” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 44, no. 109 (1971): 5 n3. See also Sumption, Divided Houses, 823–29.
34. ADLA E8-5, dated 25 November 1395, and E8-10, dated 1395. Jones, Ducal Brittany, 135–36. See also Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 91–2.
35. Both letters are printed in Anne Crawford, Letters of the Queens of England (Stroud: Sutton, 1997), 113–15. Crawford notes that these letters have repeatedly been misunderstood as letters to Henry IV during their matrimonial negotiations due to their affectionate nature.
36. ADLA E8-7 and 8 for the ratification of the French marriage, dated 26 April 1396 and E8-9 for Marie's marriage to Jean, count of Perche, dated 26 June 1396.
37. Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV; The Life of England's Self-Made King (London: Vintage Books, 2008), 133.
38. Jean Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining countries, from the latter part of the reign of Edward II to the coronation of Henry IV, by Sir John Froissart, ed. Thomas Johnes, vol. 2 (London: H.G. Bohn, 1852), 618–21; Saint-Denys, 450–73.
39. Jones, “Between France and England,” 6–7.
40. Froissart, Chronicles of England, 685–7; Bouchart, Grandes Croniques, 223.
41. Fernando de Ybarra, Matrimonios Reales Hispano-Británicos el el Medievo, vol. I: Póker de Reinas (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca: 1999), 302. For a discussion of Henry's motto and its meaning, see Mortimer, Fears of Henry IV, 384–87.
42. Mortimer, Fears of Henry IV, 170; Given-Wilson, Henry IV, 125–26. Jones also corrects Froissart's account in Ducal Brittany, 141.
43. Saint-Denys, 476–79.
44. Ramírez Vaquero, Carlos III, 117–20.
45. Catálogo XXII, no. 1080, dated 9 September 1398.
46. Henneman, Clisson, 191.
47. Lobineau, I, 498–9; Henneman, Clisson, 193; Michael Jones, “Marguerite de Clisson, comets de Penthievre et l’exercise du pouvoir,” in Femmes de pouvoir, femmes politiques durant les derniers siècles du Moyen Âge et au cours de la premiere Renaissance, eds. Éric Bousmar, Jonathan Dumont, Alain Marchandisse, and Bertrand Schnerb (Brussels: de Boeck, 2012), 349. Erika Graham Goering makes a note of caution of the veracity of this source and excellent point on the way in which the term “boîteuse” has been applying unfairly to several medieval women “as a conventional trope used (especially long after the fact) to slander elite women”; Graham-Goering, Princely Power, 36 n1.
48. Henneman, Clisson, 191.
49. Morice, II, col. 702 (treaty col. 701–3). Response Nantes Mediatheque ms 1695, no. 18, dated 22 January 1400.
50. Morice, II, col. 704–5 and ADLA E73-3 to 14, dated 18 Feb 1400–19 Apr 1402.
51. Morice, Pierre-Hyacinthe. Histoire ecclesiastique et civile de Bretagne (Paris: De l’imprimerie de Delaguette, 1750), 430; Lobineau, I, 499–500.
52. See Michael Jones, “Jean IV et le pays de Retz: l’exercise et les limites du pouvoir ducal a la fin du XIVe siècle,” in Echanges et pouvoirs au pays de Retz (Actes du colloque a Machecoul 14 Avril 2007) (La Bernerie-en-Retz: Societe des Historiens du Pays de Retz, 2008), 31–41, and further discussion of the Retz lands in Joan's dower in Chapter 5.
53. Morice, I, cols. 81–2.
54. Jones, “Habit royal,” 266.
55. See Michael Jones, “The Rituals and Significance of Ducal Civic Entries in Late Medieval Brittany,” Journal of Medieval History 29 (2003): 289–90; Arthur de la Borderie, “La jeunesse de Jean V, duc de Bretagne,” Revue de Bretagne de Vendee et d’Anjou 23 (Mar 1900): 163–64; Jones, “Habit royal,” 263–68.
56. ADLA E143-29, 28 November 1399, E136-23, 28 October 1402, E138-7, 18 November 1402, E139-2, 25 September 1400.
57. Jean-Pierre Leguay, Histoire de Vannes et de sa Region (Toulouse: Privat, 1988), 67; Inventaire Sommaire des Archives Communales antérieures à 1790, Vol. 1: Ville de Nantes (Nantes: Imprimerie du Commerce, 1888), 4.
58. Borderie, “Jeunesse,” 165.
59. George Akenhead Knowlson, Jean V, duc de Bretagne et l’Angleterre 1399–1442 (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1964), 25; de Ybarra, Matrimonios Reales, 304.
60. See Francis Lancelott, The Queens of England and their times from Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror to Adelaide, Queen of William the Fourth, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1859), 249–50; Hannah Lawrance, Historical Memoirs of the Queens of England, from the Commencement of the Twelfth Century, vol. 2 (London: Edward Moxon, 1840), 284–88; Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest; with Anecdotes of their Courts, vol. III (Philadelphia, PA: Lea and Blanchard, 1848), 53–7; Lisa Hilton, Queens Consort; England's Medieval Queens (London: Phoenix, 2009), 359. For an extended discussion of Joan's remarriage and the perception of it, see Elena Woodacre, “The Perils of Promotion: Maternal Ambition and Sacrifice in the Life of Joan of Navarre, Duchess of Brittany and Queen of England,” in Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era, eds. Carey Fleiner and Elena Woodacre (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 125–48.
61. James A. Brundage, “Widows and Remarriage: Moral Conflicts and their Resolution in Classical Canon Law,” in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 17.
62. Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Widows,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing, eds. Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 64–6.
63. Jones, “Between France and England,” 9.
64. See Paul Strohm's consideration of the match, “Joanna of Navarre: That Obscure Object of Desire,” in England's Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 153–72.
65. Given-Wilson, Henry IV, 75, 101 n6, 120 n6.
66. See Anthony Tuck, “Henry IV and Europe: A Dynasty's Search for Recognition,” in The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society, eds. R.H. Britnell and A.J. Pollard (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995), 116–22. See also Mortimer, Fears of Henry IV, 248.
67. CCR Henry IV, I, 7 February 1400.
68. Jones, “Between France and England,” 10; Morice, I, 83–4.
69. C. Rawcliffe, “Norbury, John (d.1414), of Hoddesdon and Little Berkhampstead, Herts,” in HoP.
70. Henneman, Clisson, 194; Bouchart, Grandes Croniques, 243–4.
71. Nicolas Travers, Histoire civile, politique et religieuse de la ville et du comté de Nantes (Nantes: Forest, 1836), 463.
72. Ramírez Vaquero, Carlos III, 132.
73. Jeanne-Marie Poupart, “Un mariage Anglo-Breton au XVe siècle,” Nouvelle Revue de Bretagne 2 (March–April 1951): 85–6; Ramírez Vaquero, Carlos III, 130.
74. Ramírez Vaquero, Carlos III, 132.
75. CCR Henry IV, I, 25 March and 11 August 1402.
76. CPR Henry IV, II, 25 August 1402.
77. Given-Wilson, Henry IV, 209.
78. Borderie, “Jeunesse,” 167.
79. L&M JV, IV, no. 1, 18 November 1402.