5 The Avaricious Queen: The Fight for Financial Stability

DOI: 10.4324/9780429261022-8

The link between money and power is a truth which is universally acknowledged. It might be taken for granted that a queen, as the foremost and theoretically most powerful woman of the realm, would have a constant and ample supply of funds to draw from—yet the lives of Joan of Navarre and other medieval queens show that this was not necessarily the case. Money and majesty were also closely linked—queens needed adequate funds to maintain their household and clothe themselves and their retinue in a way which befitted their rank as their lives were constantly under scrutiny from their own court and subjects to foreign visitors. As the female element of the monarchy, it was vital that she represent the power and wealth of the realm as well as affirm her own status through the clothing and jewels that she wore. Moreover, money gave the queen greater agency as patronage was a means for the queen to be a driver of cultural production and enabled her to support favoured religious orders, building links with the church, and demonstrating her piety.

While medieval queens could and did receive money from a variety of sources, a key aspect of her finances was the income received from her dower lands. Dower grants were originally designed to provide for a widowed royal woman in their dowager years—this was the case in Brittany when Joan was a duchess, but when she became queen of England, she was given a dower to provide income for her both as a consort and after her husband's death. The lands that Joan possessed as part of her dower not only gave her revenue but increased her authority and visibility in the realm as a major landowner. It also allowed her to effectively build her own affinity of those who served her by managing her lands and those who held land from her, which we will explore further in the following chapter. Thus, the economic element of queenship was central to the queen's day-to-day function and her ability to fully exercise her office.

Joan makes an excellent case study for the economic element of queenship due to the heady combination of a very long life during a particularly turbulent political period, which made her time as a consort and dowager queen fiscally challenging. As noted earlier, Joan has often been overlooked by scholars due to her very light presence in the chronicles of the period which gives the erroneous impression that she was of little significance and that there is no material to work on to study her life. However, when one turns to documents and records linked to the economic aspect of her life, there is a wealth of evidence to work with. While this present chapter is too brief to encompass all the surviving documentation, it will draw on a range of examples from records of expenditure, grants of lands and annuities, account books and manorial administration, and more to give an overarching picture of Joan's economic activity and financial challenges.

Previous chapters have reflected on Joan's transitions from infanta to duchess, queen, and dowager—here we will examine the economic impact of these changes in lifecycle stage and status. This chapter will follow the framework laid down by Hilda Johnstone regarding the queen's three sources of revenue: dower grants, supplementary grants (including special/one-off endowments for chamber expenses or other annuities), and queen's gold—giving an overview of all three elements in the context of Joan's life.¹ In the first section, we will discuss both Joan's Breton and English dower in terms of what she was granted, her struggle to hold on to the entirety of her portfolio and realise the revenues from it, and her administration of her lands. Then we will move on to other forms of revenue: supplementary grants, wardships, and the queen's gold. While this means we will go back and forth in time slightly, it gives us the opportunity to clearly dissect the three revenue streams that Joan had access to. In the final section, we will move from revenue to expenditure, looking at account books which reveal how Joan spent her money.

Overall, this chapter will highlight the problems that Joan encountered in realising all of the revenue which she had a right to from her English sources and demonstrate the impact that her inconsistent and often inadequate revenue had on Joan's ability to fund her household, meet her expenses, and maintain her queenly status. As we will see, Joan met these challenges actively, fighting to obtain adequate revenues, maintain her income and portfolio of lands, and retain her rights and prerogatives in her lands. This tenacious behaviour, including petitioning kings and parliaments and bringing suits against those who contested her rights to fees or lands, has earned Joan a reputation as an avaricious queen, perhaps due to the judgement of the Strickland sisters who claimed that “avarice was certainly the besetting sin of Joanna of Navarre”.² This prompts the question which each reader will have to answer for themselves at the end of this chapter—was Joan greedy or just keen to maintain her position by defending her rights to ensure that she had adequate funds to maintain her household, support her affinity, and effectively exercise the queen's office?

FIGURE 5.1a Map of the dower lands of Joan of Navarre in England.

FIGURE 5.1b Map of the dower lands of Joan of Navarre in Brittany.

Dower: Developing, maintaining, retaining, and regaining an international portfolio

Yet another unusual aspect of Joan's life and experience as a royal woman is that over the course of her life she held two dowers from her marriages to Jean IV of Brittany and Henry IV of England. Moreover, it was not a case of one dower replacing another when Joan remarried, as she managed to retain the lands granted to her as duchess when she crossed the Channel and gained another dower grant as queen of England. In this section we will work chronologically so that we can see how Joan was able to accrue lands, rights, and revenues first in Brittany and then in England and the struggles she faced due to political and personal turbulence to retain such a wide-ranging portfolio in terms of both geography and the types of holdings and sources of income that she possessed. Finally, we will consider Joan's connection to her lands and her role in administering them, both in terms of her own personal activity and her engagement with the network of officials who represented her across the realm and tenants on her lands.

In the previous chapters we explored how Joan came to Brittany in September 1386 to become the bride of Jean IV, duke of Brittany. During the negotiations for the marriage, back in April of 1385, Jean IV promised that his young bride would be suitably dowered according to Breton custom. The Tres Ancienne Coutume de Bretagne stipulated that duchesses should have a dower which would maintain them in their widowhood according to the rank and status she held during her marriage to the duke.³ Indeed the bride's rank was also arguably a factor in terms of assigning a dower which would maintain her station over the long term, and Joan was a royal princess by birth. In return for the dower, the duchess was charged to merit the funds through her loyalty and service to her husband. However, Joan's dower was not granted for six months after the wedding, in February 1387, by which time she was likely pregnant with her first child—perhaps demonstrating to Jean IV, whose need for an heir had motivated the marriage, that she was holding up her end of the bargain. Joan was formally assigned the territories of the entire county of Nantes, the lands of Guérande, the barony of Retz, and the lordships of Touffou and la Guerche, with all dependent revenues, on 24 February 1387.⁴ In addition to her lands, Joan had revenues from benefices such as Notre Dame la Blanche de Saillé and fees and customs due to her including a levy on all ships entering the port of Pouliguen.

Jean IV chose the lands for Joan's dower carefully, very deliberately centring her lands in the secure Nantes region where there were several comfortable ducal residences and stable revenues which should assure Joan of a reasonable income in her widowhood.⁵ This region had often featured in the dowers of previous duchesses; Guérande, which was an area which had proven its loyalty to Jean in the civil wars in his early reign, was likely to provide consistent revenue. Touffou was a part of the ducal patrimony with a castle in the forest of Bignon, which featured again in the dowers of later duchesses such as Catherine of Luxembourg and Joan's distant relative Marguerite de Foix, mother of Anne of Brittany.

While these territories were secure options for Joan's dower, the barony of Retz was a questionable choice. This was not economically questionable as it had useful forests and drainage schemes and had provided good arable land—even though it had suffered some depopulation during the civil war and due to outbreaks of plague, it still would have been a good source of revenue for Joan's dower. However, the land was disputed as it was claimed by Jeanne Chabot, dame de Rays, who had succeeded her brother Girard V to the territory back in 1371.⁶ Jeanne Chabot had struggled to maintain the territories due to two failed marriages which had resulted in conflict with the Church and significant financial difficulties. Jean IV had used her troubles to force her to exchange the lucrative Retz lands for others in western Brittany, promising that she could still have the use of two chateaux, and her heir, Brumor de Laval, was convinced that his rights to the territory would be respected. Giving the territory to Joan for her dower may have convinced Jeanne Chabot and Brumor de Laval that Jean IV had no intention of returning the lands and Jeanne appealed to the Parlement of Paris on 1 February 1393. Given this ongoing dispute over the ownership of the lands, Retz was removed from Joan's dower in her second settlement in 1396.⁷ This dower settlement was effectively the same as the original, but the barony of Retz was replaced with lands at Pirmil, Batz, and St Pierre en Retz, which were arguably equitable in terms of revenues. The powerful dukes of Burgundy and Berry favoured Jeanne Chabot's case and forced a settlement in 1399—Jean IV signed an agreement with Chabot on 24 April that year, by July Jeanne retook the Retz castles, and in November of the same year Jean IV died, putting an end to the dispute. However, Joan reaffirmed the accord with Jeanne Chabot after Jean IV's death, ironically confirming Chabot's tenure of lands Joan had once believed would be hers.⁸

As noted previously, in Brittany, in contrast to the situation in England, as will be discussed later, the dower was intended to support the duchess as a widow, not necessarily during the lifetime of her husband. On Jean IV's death in November 1399, Joan not only came fully into her dower possessions but had to cope with governing the duchy itself on behalf of her young son, now Jean V. In the following section on administration, we will see Joan's attention to the management of her dower lands despite the demands of the regency and her clandestine efforts to arrange a match with Henry IV.

When Joan remarried, there were a number of complications as noted in earlier chapters which had to be addressed: Joan's position as regent in Brittany, the custody of her seven surviving children, the fact that they were on different sides of the Schism, the potential reaction of the king of France (Henry's enemy and Joan's first cousin), and, most relevant here, what might happen to her substantial dower and the rights to her dowry from Navarre. We have seen how keen the duke of Burgundy and the French court were to ensure French control of the duchy and stem potential English influence once they were aware of her impending English marriage, thus the custody of her children, particularly the young duke, was a key issue. The Breton historian Fonssagrives claims that the duke of Burgundy encouraged Joan to exchange the custody of her children for surety on continued rents on the lands of her dower. Indeed, Fonssagrives even claims that immediately prior to her departure in January 1403, Joan attempted to make a lucrative deal with the powerful noble Clisson to give him charge of the city and castle of Nantes in exchange for 12,000 gold ecus, but the deal was foiled by Gilles de Lesbiet, who refused to give charge of the city to anyone but the incoming regent, the duke of Burgundy.⁹ These claims have reinforced an impression of Joan as a woman who was both avaricious and ambitious—more concerned with money and titles than retaining the custody of her children.

Ultimately, Joan made the decision to sacrifice the regency and the custody of her sons (though not necessarily her Breton dower) to start a new life in England as Henry IV's queen consort. Henry IV and Joan were married at Winchester Cathedral in February 1403—after the celebration of their wedding and her subsequent coronation at Westminster, the next step in confirming her new status was to formally grant the new queen her English dower in June.¹⁰ Henry IV promised Joan a dower of 10,000 marks per annum (approximately £6,600), a generous sum equivalent to over £4 million a year today, which he could not easily satisfy given the straitened circumstances of the Crown in this period. Anne Crawford notes that before Joan, the precedent for a queen's dower was normally about £4,000–4,500, thus this seems like a considerable increase, yet in the fourteenth century Philippa of Hainaut had an income of £7,000 yearly and her mother-in-law, Isabella of France, had an even more substantial £13,000 at the height of her power as regent for Edward III.¹¹ Michael Jones argued that compared to the lavish dower of Joan's contemporary Isabeau of Bavaria at 140,000 francs per annum, Joan's dower was not out of line with other queenly dowers of the period.¹² Interestingly, the value of Joan's dower was due in part to Isabeau's daughter, the young Isabella de Valois, second wife of Richard II. Katia Wright has noted that the peace treaty between England and France, which brokered Isabella's marriage, stipulated a dower of 10,000 marks—while Isabella never held a dower of that size due to her very young age during her tenure as queen, it still set a precedent for Joan and her fifteenth-century successors.¹³ The generous size of Joan's dower was also not out of line with Henry's character as he has been described by his biographers Kirby and Bevan to have been both uxorious and generous, perhaps to a fault.¹⁴ While Joan, and possibly Henry, may have felt that this substantial dower was merited by her august royal lineage and in turn enhanced his own fledging kingly status, given the financial difficulties of the Crown in this period, criticism of royal largesse under Richard II and Henry himself, and the fact that she still had another Breton dower as well, this grant was bound to be controversial.

Lands made up a substantial proportion of the dowers of English queens. While Joan did largely come into the lands of Anne of Bohemia as will be discussed later, there was not a fixed set of territory which every queen possessed. All the lands they held came from the larger collection of Crown lands and were held at the king's pleasure—they could be granted or taken away at any time, and at the queen's death any lands she held were reabsorbed into the royal holdings. Joan's dower was not exclusively composed of lands; to satisfy the 10,000 marks per annum of income she had a variety of funding streams including:

• Lands (manors, castles, forests, etc.)
• Wardships (revenues of their lands, rights to their marriage, etc.)
• Fee farms (largely payments from urban centres)
• Duties from ports and customs
• Alien priories and their apports

The focus of the initial 1403 grant was lands, including substantial manors such as the one at Hamstead Marshall, forests, and several castles including Odiham, Devizes, and Rockingham, which had all been commonly held as part of previous queenly dowers.¹⁵ Several important wardships followed later that year, which will be discussed in the following section on supplemental income. It is important to note here, however, that many of the wardships she held included substantial and significant landholdings which both augmented the income of her dower and increased the complexity of administration through the greater number of properties and its wider geographical spread, particularly into Wales where Joan otherwise had little holdings.

As Chapter 3 demonstrated, the royal couple faced a turbulent political landscape at the outset of their marriage, with Henry facing rebellion at home and conflict with Brittany where Joan's young son ruled. This conflict arguably complicated the issue of her dower rights and the fact that she had not only remarried but had been granted an even more generous dower from her new husband. This put into question her right to continue to hold her dower lands in Brittany, as custom varied regarding whether a widow who remarried continued to retain her dower.¹⁶ However, despite these complications, Joan continued to negotiate with her son over her rights in Brittany. In August 1404 her rights as “usufructaire” of the county of Nantes were confirmed and she in turn confirmed her son's right to collect outstanding payments from her brother, Carlos III of Navarre, on her original dowry in November of the same year.¹⁷

In an attempt to satisfy the full 10,000 marks promised to her, Joan received further grants in 1404 for her English dower.¹⁸ The first included several small parcels of land, shares of rent, and some very specific items such as the yearly rent of a leash of greyhounds in the hamlet of Minsterley at Michaelmas valued at 2d per annum. More substantial were two grants received in July 1404 of £1,000 from the customs and subsidies normally reserved for the king from the port of Boston and £3,000 from the tenth granted to the king by the clergy of the provinces of Canterbury and York. However, according to her petition to Parliament in October 1404, Joan was still lacking sufficient income and was not receiving most of what the king had already granted.¹⁹

Although it had been specifically noted back in June 1403 that Joan would have the same rights and holdings as the late queen, Anne of Bohemia, first wife of Richard II, had, “reversions excepted”, it seemed there was a lack of clarity as to exactly what this entailed. Perhaps in response to the queen's petition, entries on the Close Rolls and the findings of contemporary inquisitions show that a commission was sent out to various counties in early 1405 to ascertain what the late queen Anne held and thus what could be ascribed to now fall within Joan's dower as the current consort. Concurrent with this commission Joan continued to accrue more grants between February and August 1405, including the entirety of the Isle of Wight and Carisbrooke Castle on 5 April.²⁰

At the same time as the king was attempting to satisfy the generous terms of Joan's dower, Henry was being pressed by Parliament to curb expenditure to address the severe financial problems facing the Crown. Perceptions of excessive household expenditure had been an issue since the reign of Richard II, and Rogers notes in his thesis on the household of Henry IV that expenditure had been extremely high during the early years of Henry's reign as he secured the throne and set up his court.²¹ The royal marriage in 1403 had incurred significant expenditure and added to the cost of funding the queen's dower and household. Granting away sources of revenues which could support the household not only to the queen but also to other loyal supporters exacerbated the situation and incurred criticism, though interestingly less of this criticism was directly targeted at the queen herself.

Although there is insufficient space to discuss the challenges of funding the royal household and the Long Parliament of 1406 at length here, it is important to note that Joan's dower was addressed in the wrangling over royal finances. At the beginning of the Parliament in March, the speaker, Sir John Tiptoft, brought another petition to Parliament that the queen was still lacking most of the revenue due to her, apart from some income from her wardships. It was noted that this was an issue of consistency with past queenly dowers.²² On 19 June Tiptoft called for serious economies in the royal household and the cancellation of all grants made by the king, with the significant exception of those made to the queen and the princes, so that revenues from Crown lands could be diverted to fund the royal household instead. The queen was requested to fund the expenses of her household when she was in residence with the king in order to avoid further drains on the Exchequer, but she clearly needed her own funds coming in consistently in order to do this and make her household self-sufficient. Perhaps in response to all of these elements, the March petition, a desire for the royal household to fund itself through its receipts, and Tiptoft's influence, entries on the Close Rolls as well as from local records between June to October 1406 indicate payments made to the queen as well as requests to pay her what was due, particularly with regard to urban fee farms.²³ From 1406 to 1410 there is also increasing documentation with regard to the administration of her lands and payments of rents such as receivers’ accounts from various holdings, including her manor at Havering-atte-Bower and her lands in Staffordshire and around Melton Mowbray and Leicester.²⁴ Improving relations with Brittany may have helped her gain access to revenues from her Breton dower, with a flurry of orders from Jean V in March 1406 to support her officials and approve her gifts to them, and in May 1407 the governor of the county of Nantes, Tristan de la Lande, was given a safe conduct to transport a flotilla of salt which was due to Joan as part payment for her dower.²⁵

However, this uptake in payments does not mean that Joan's struggles to receive what she was owed was over. Indeed, in March 1408 there was a flurry of documentation including two supplications from the queen regarding lands that she believed were rightly hers from the king's grants, including the castle of Barton Seagrove and the patronage of the priory of Ware—the queen won both of these suits.²⁶ Perhaps in response to the queen's suits and a desire to clarify what rightly belonged to her, two months later, on 20 May 1408, there was a confirmation of the grants made to Joan with specific reference again to her right to the lands previously held by Anne of Bohemia.²⁷

As we have already seen, Henry's health, often precarious during their marriage, reached a serious crisis over the winter of 1408–9. Henry made a will on 21 January 1409 which specified that the queen's dower should be paid from the revenues of the duchy of Lancaster on his death. While Henry recovered, both Kirby and Crawford have argued that his ill health may have increased his concerns about the instability and insufficiency of the queen's dower.²⁸ In April 1409 he dispatched a missive to the chancellor with a handwritten note: “Reverend and well beloved cosin, I send yow a bylle for the Quene towchyng her dower, wych I pray yow micht be sped, and ye shall do us gret ese ther inne, wherefor we woll thank yow with al owre hert”.²⁹ A few months later, on 1 July 1409, a new grant to the queen followed—in contrast to previous grants, it consisted largely of the keeping of alien priories and their apports. Alien priories were religious houses which were tied to mother houses on the Continent—normally in France. The Hundred Years War had provided a pretext for the Crown to begin to suppress or take control of these houses, ensuring that the apports or payments which normally went back across the Channel could be redirected into the king's—or in this case queen's—finances. In the same grant, Joan also received several substantial rights to payments and revenues from urban centres and ports, including London and Southampton of £333 6s 8d each.³⁰

Yet it appears that Joan's dower was still failing to produce sufficient income—the queen petitioned Parliament again in January 1410 that she “had yet to receive grants amounting to more than £1,683 of this sum [i.e. her £6,600 dower] and requested that she would receive the remaining £4,983”.³¹ This appears to be the last of the major grants and petitions regarding the insufficiency of her dower in Henry IV's reign. The following three years did see a steady flow of documentation regarding the administration of her dower. The queen was involved in more suits regarding disputed lands and revenues and the king and queen sent commissions to ferret out profits concealed from them.³² Records from the later years of Henry IV's reign show that, although she was likely still not receiving her full dues, payments were coming in from various sources such as receivers’ accounts from Wiltshire, receipts from the ports of Great Yarmouth and Ipswich, and court rolls from her manor of Willington.³³

The death of Joan's husband, Henry IV, in early 1413 and her shift in status from queen consort to dowager did not initially make a major change to the documentation generated by her lands and income in England. However, on 27 January 1414, the new king, Joan's stepson Henry V, made a significant grant to the queen, acknowledging that she had still not received the full amount promised by his late father. The majority of the 1414 grant is a confirmation of what she already held, but there were some notable changes. Joan was given more alien priories and their apports, payments of ulnage (a tax on the sale of cloth) from various counties (including £100 each from Somerset and Wiltshire), and also some small fee farms from towns such as Cambridge and sums owed from individuals.³⁴ Yet it was also noted in the grant that a few individuals had successfully claimed back lands and revenues from the queen, such as the earl of Suffolk, who reclaimed a disputed portion of the revenues from Rockingham Castle and forest, and that the lands of three of Joan's wards, Fulk Montho, Thomas West, and John de Mowbray, had all been delivered to the heirs. At the end of the grant, it was noted that the total sum of the queen's holdings were 6,089 marks, 3s ½d yearly, nearly 4,000 marks short of what she had been originally promised. However, the grant recognised that there was a considerable shortfall from the income that Henry IV had originally granted her and noted that deficiencies would be rectified. Entries on the Close Rolls from the early years of Henry V's reign also show a series of mandates going out to customs collectors in ports such as Kingston-upon-Hull, Boston, London, Bristol, and Southampton to pay the queen what she was due, and to other tenants who owed Joan money or had usurped her rights to lands, fees, and rents, showing the queen still had strong royal support to collect her revenues.³⁵

While Joan's position as dowager was bolstered by this confirmation of her English dower (even if on a reduced scale) by her stepson, her position vis-à-vis her Breton dower was in crisis. Both Kermabon and Knowlson have argued that Joan's son Jean V may have felt that his mother had no need of her Breton dower after being widowed for the second time, as his stepbrother Henry V would assure her comfort as dowager. Moreover, Jean V may have felt that the financial needs of the duchy were greater than his mother's, thus her revenues were fair game to retain for his own needs. However, Joan was unwilling to let her son interfere in the administration of her lands and his assumption of her revenues. When Gontier Col, the secretary of the French king, was despatched on an embassy to the English court in early 1414, Joan met with him and charged him with a message to her son, the duke of Brittany. Gontier duly reported the message to Jean V at an audience on 28 October 1414 in the Chateau de l’Hermine in Vannes.³⁶ The ambassador reported that Joan sent her loving regards “in true love and maternal affection … as the creature whom she loved best in the world”. She in turn hoped that “he would act towards her as an obedient son, a true and loyal friend”. Gontier assured the duke that his mother felt that he would never be the one responsible for the actions with regard to her dower which were causing her such dismay and displeasure; indeed he claimed that Joan, crying, told him that she believed that her son “who she had always found to be a true, natural, loyal, humble and obedient son to her” was being led astray by evil counsellors who had turned him against her. However, Gontier also reported that Joan threatened to marry for a third time, to a powerful prince “in England, France or another country” who could press her rights for her or bring war upon Brittany to get back what was owed to her, potentially bringing great damage to her son's beloved duchy. The French ambassador then attempted to broker a deal between mother and son which was very favourable to Joan, not only honouring her rights but offering compensation for back revenues. Jean V refused Gontier's deal, countering that he would respect Joan's dower grant but that he reserved the right to nominate captains and officials in her lands as long as she was living in England. Knowlson suggests that Jean V was insinuating that if she really wanted to fully exercise her dower rights in Brittany, nothing was stopping her from returning to administer her lands in person.³⁷ However, Jean V did issue a statement in early November in response to Joan's entreaty, which noted her grief at the treatment of her rights and interference with her officials, and that “we want to repair and improve the situation” and that “we desire with all our heart and power, to serve and obey our very formidable lady and mother”.³⁸ The duke stated that “we swear and promise in good faith to our lady and mother, on pain of incurring her perpetual indignation” that her rights to her dower would be respected and her officials would be free to act on her letters and that any of Joan's goods “that we have taken in her absence from Brittany” would be restored to her or she would receive payment in accordance with their value.

Back in England, the initial years of Joan's second widowhood show reasonable activity in terms of receipts and receivers’ accounts for her English dower, including a steady stream of income from the ports of Bristol, Yarmouth, and Ipswich.³⁹ In 1419, as discussed in the previous chapter, Henry V placed the queen under arrest and sequestered her dower, most likely to secure funds for his campaigns in France. Over 1420 and 1421 there followed a series of accounts which took stock of what the queen held in various counties as well as documentation which shows that some of the queen's lands were reassigned to others.⁴⁰

Joan's Breton dowry had continued to be under dispute while she was imprisoned in England, leaving the queen with the serious prospect of being completely landless and without income. Perhaps emboldened by Joan's imprisonment and the obvious lack of support from her powerful stepsons, Jean V dismissed her receiver-general and effectively dispossessed her of her lands in Brittany, with his ducal treasurer only sending Joan part of the revenues that she should have had the rights to.⁴¹ Fortunately for Joan, the crisis abated when Henry V decided in July 1422 to release her and charged three of the greatest prelates of the realm, the archbishop of Canterbury (Henry Chichele) and the bishops of Winchester (Henry Beaufort) and Durham (Thomas Langley—then chancellor), to ensure the restitution of her dower. Henry V died the following month on 31 August 1422, leaving his young son, Joan's step-grandson, to come to the throne as Henry VI. The queen lost no time campaigning for the restitution of her lands, petitioning the king's uncle and Joan's (favourite) stepson Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and the council in November 1422 to ensure her lands were fully restored to her.⁴² Henry V's widow, Katherine de Valois, also petitioned the council regarding her own situation, as her dower settlement was also unclear. Given the need to satisfy the terms of Henry V's decree to restore the lands previously granted to Joan, it was decided that Katherine would be provided for out of the de Bohun lands and the duchy of Lancaster to ensure that both dowagers were suitably dowered. Interestingly, Katherine became the only queen who did not hold lands normally given to queen dowagers, as Joan already held these and, ironically, Joan outlived Katherine by about six months, though both queens died in 1437.⁴³

Concurrently with the petition to the council in November 1422, Joan sent her agents out to negotiate over the payment of rents and fees, including fee farms from cities. Some of these fee farms could be theoretically lucrative, for example Joan should have had £200 pounds (or 300 marks) annually from the city of Southampton. However, they had protested at the payment of these fees and in 1415 the city had successfully petitioned Henry V to receive a reduction in their payment to £93 (140 marks) a year for the next ten years.⁴⁴ When Joan sought to re-establish her rights to the fee farm in 1422, she cannily chose Thomas Marlborough, a Southampton lawyer who had been part of the 1415 delegation, to negotiate with the city on her behalf. She appointed him on 6 November and by 12 November 1422 an agreement was reached with the mayor, William Nichole—on the same date, a similar agreement was signed with nearby Winchester whose mayor, John Veel, also agreed to resume payment of their £31 annual fee.⁴⁵ Despite these successes, Joan faced a sizable challenge to retake the entirety of her dower—her struggle to regain her revenues can be seen in another petition to Parliament in October 1423 which asked for the full restitution of her property and income so “that the said queen shall have and enjoy peaceably her aforesaid dower for the term of her life”.⁴⁶ While documentary evidence does show that payments to Joan began to resume, once again at the Leicester Parliament of 1426 a petition was made regarding the queen's lands—this is mirrored by entries on the Close Rolls in December 1426 and in 1427 which affirmed that the queen was due restitution of her lands after Henry V's decrees of July 1422.⁴⁷

While Joan's dower had been reconfirmed by Parliament and the Crown and she did enjoy some of the revenues due to her, the remaining years of her life were marked by a series of disputes over property. In 1431 Joan won two disputes over the custody of the alien priories of Modbury in Devon and St Clear in Wales, when letters patent granting the properties to others were annulled after the queen protested that these properties were part of her dower.⁴⁸ The queen also brought several suits before the Court of Chancery, but was also challenged by Henry Percy, the earl of Northumberland, over some London properties which had been seized by Henry IV from his father and granted to the queen.⁴⁹ Joan succeeded, however, in a long-running dispute with Winchester College: in 1414 the college had been granted the priory of Andover, which had a 20 mark (£13 6s 8d) pension attached to it for Joan. The college fought for decades to be released from paying Joan the pension—petitioning in 1435 that a recent fire at Andover had diminished the profits from the priory making the payment of the pension untenable.⁵⁰ However, their protests were unsuccessful, and they had to continue paying Joan until her death in 1437.

During this same period, Joan also continued to dispute with her son Jean V over her rights and revenues for her Breton dower. The situation regarding the county of Nantes, arguably the heart of her dower, had been complicated by the assignment of 500 livres a year from the county to Joan's daughter-in-law, Marguerite d’Orleans, the countess of Étampes (wife of her younger son Richard). The revenues from the county were not substantial enough to support both women and clearly Joan expected that the full revenues from the county would be paid to her. It appears that Jean V found a compromise in this situation, reducing his sister-in-law's pension to 250 livres and agreeing to honour his mother's payments from the county in November 1428.⁵¹ Yet negotiations continued between mother and son with evidence of at least six embassies between Joan and Jean V between December 1429 and August 1432, including payments to her long-standing courtier, Bérart de Montferrand.⁵² It appears that a breakthrough was reached in December 1430, when Jean and Joan signed an agreement that the duke could have the revenues of the county of Nantes for five years in return for a payment of 5,500 gold ecus.⁵³ However, this agreement expired at the end of 1435, and even months before her death in 1437, Joan continued to wrangle with her son over unpaid revenues, claiming she was still owed 2,250 ecus and demanding that 1,000 ecus be immediately paid to her.⁵⁴ When Joan died in July 1437, Knowlson suggests that Jean V must have been relieved that the problem of his mother's dower was over at last.⁵⁵ In England, her death triggered another wave of documentation to first ascertain what she held in various Inquisitions Post Mortem and then reassign her lands—ultimately some of these lands would again form part of a queen's dower when her step-grandson Henry VI wed Margaret of Anjou in 1445.

The queen's business: Examining the administration of her dowers

Having now established the extent of her Breton and English dowers and Joan's efforts to receive the revenues from them and retain them over her long life, this next section will explore various facets of her connection with her lands and examine her management of her vast collection of land holdings. As it is impossible to thoroughly examine Joan's administration of such a large portfolio of property over four decades in this limited space, we will be focusing on a few key areas and presenting some examples or case studies to demonstrate a sense of connection in various ways. First, we will think about Joan's role in managing her two dowers. Then, we will look at examples of particular types of properties, in this case castles, manors, parks, and forests, noting her physical connection with these places and her efforts to maintain or improve her holdings. The remaining issue which will be explored will be Joan's efforts to preserve and press distinctive and ancient rights she held as a landowner in her parks and forests.

In 1399 Joan came into the possession of her Breton dower on the death of Jean IV, beginning her career as the administrator of what eventually became a large, international portfolio of lands, rights, and revenues. The terms of her dower agreements clearly stipulated that Joan had complete seisin or jurisdiction in her own lands and the power to designate all captains and receivers in her territories.⁵⁶ The revenues of her lands in the county of Nantes were ostensibly administered via receivers, but Joan decided to create a new office, that of a receveur de Baillie, who sat over these receivers and brought together the receipts from the county, which was an innovation in ducal domains at the time. This innovation arguably gave Joan greater control than previous duchesses over her revenues and even allowed her to bring together receipts from her lands in Nantes and Guérande, potentially thwarting unwanted interference from agents of the duchy—this would prove to be particularly important during her second marriage, as will be discussed later.⁵⁷

The surviving documents in connection with Joan's Breton dower demonstrate her network of officials at work managing and maintaining her sizable dower, as well as her own role in administering her dower lands. For example, two different documents in 1402 show the duchess dealing with issues of inheritance within her lands, one of which concerned the rights of a girl named Jeanne who was the natural daughter of an Englishman known as Jacques Roux.⁵⁸ The receivers’ accounts from her holdings in Guérande give a full tally of revenues and the names of her receivers in the area, helping to illuminate the identity and activity of her officials and ascertain the level of revenue that Joan received from the region.⁵⁹

Joan's decision to leave Brittany in early 1403 to marry Henry IV of England made it much more difficult to retain her connection to and administration of her Breton properties. Joan clearly remained engaged with matters in her lands across the Channel, as a letter sent back to Brittany regarding the tenure of a farm in 1418 demonstrates. Interestingly, the letters sent back to Brittany give us some of the best surviving examples of her “letters patent”, which have been largely lost. In the heading of the letters sent to Brittany, Joan not only used all her royal and ducal titles (daughter of the king of Navarre, by the grace of God queen of England, duchess of Brittany, lady of Ireland) but notes that she holds the county of Nantes “en douaire” or “in dower”.⁶⁰ While her seal only survives in fragments, Joan hand-signed many of her documents, showing a personal connection to the documentation going out to her lands on both sides of the Channel.

As queen of England, Joan's territorial holding expanded, requiring more of her attention to manage and administer her lands, and the need for dedicated space for this activity. At Westminster Palace, Joan was granted a new tower situated by the great gate in December 1404 which was a specifically designated space for the administration of her lands for both the queen and her officials to work in.⁶¹ Effectively, Joan obtained an office from which she could manage her extensive portfolio of lands and residences and more generally exercise the administrative and financial element of queenship. Brown, Colvin, and Taylor note that this office started a new tradition as it was “subsequently used by later queens in the same way”.⁶² It is important to note that this space was in close proximity to other administrative areas such as the Exchequer and that a similar space in the northeast tower was given to her stepsons for their “office” use—first to John, duke of Bedford, and later to Humphrey of Gloucester.

The space appears to have consisted of a council chamber on the first floor with a muniment room for storage below. This chamber would have been a vital meeting room for Joan's council who helped her to manage her extensive estates across the realm. Anne Crawford's study of the working of the queen's council in medieval England notes that while the surviving evidence of the workings of these councils is patchy, they played a “judicial, administrative and advisory” role.⁶³ Indeed, one of their major aspects, which may have been even more pronounced during Joan's tenure, was resolving disputes and enforcing the queen's rights. The membership of the council was often drawn from the queen's wider household and network of officials, reflecting her affinity as we will discuss further in the following chapter.

As part of her dowers, Joan held many castles which offer interesting case studies of her engagement with her lands and the work of the queen and her council to manage her portfolio of properties. These castles ranged from semi-ruinous establishments which had once been important royal residences but had fallen out of favour, to substantial fortified centres which were still frequently used by the royal family and held significant strategic value. Two examples of castles held by Joan and several other medieval queens in their dower are Odiham and Devizes. Odiham, in northern Hampshire, sometimes referred to locally as “King John's Castle”, had been a royal residence since the early twelfth century as it was a convenient stopping point for the household as it travelled between the important centres of Windsor and Winchester. By the early fifteenth century it was no longer a key residence and it was in need of considerable work—at the beginning of Henry IV's reign he noted that “we understand from information we have received that our Castle and the lodge situated in our part are very ruinous … and also our Chapel within our said castle is on the point of falling into the fosse of the Castle if speedy measures are not taken by us”.⁶⁴ Extensive repairs to the building were thus made, including dispatching 15,000 roof tiles and nearly the same number of nails to the site.⁶⁵ In 1426–28, during Joan's tenure of the castle, lead was brought by the king's plumber to cover the roof of the staircase of the great tower.⁶⁶ Yet, even with this work being done, it appears that Joan and her officials had not sufficiently prioritised the maintenance of Odiham and its estate, as more repairs to the castle were made in 1438–39 shortly after her death, and the roofing work done on the castle had not been replicated elsewhere on the estate. The findings of an Inquisition Post Mortem after the queen's death noted that various buildings at Odiham were unroofed and “ruinous”, including a granary, a water mill, and a mill for grinding malt, commenting, “Thus on the day of the queen's death the buildings of the manor were wasted for lack of repair”.⁶⁷ Other entries also noted that the queen's lands had been poorly managed, for example Joan and her “farmer and minister”, Thomas Dene, were criticised for poor management of the lands of the priory of St James in Exeter. It was noted that several buildings on the site had been left unroofed causing considerable damage and that the woods had been cut and sold off.⁶⁸

Devizes Castle in Wiltshire offers a similar example of a castle held by several queens which had once played a key role in royal history as a stronghold of the Empress Matilda during the “Anarchy” or civil war of the twelfth century, but had slowly transitioned from an important defensive fortress to a rarely used residence by the time it was included in several queens’ dowers. Brown, Colvin, and Taylor note that “its maintenance consisted a considerable burden on the queen's revenues, and repairs did not always keep pace with dilapidations”, necessitating the earmarking of particular rents from nearby forests being dedicated to a maintenance fund.⁶⁹ In contrast to Odiham, we can see Joan taking a more engaged role with the maintenance of Devizes over several decades, including major commissions for repairs in April 1410 and February 1433.⁷⁰ In particular, 1410 provides an interesting example: we can see an entry in the Patent Rolls for 19 April for a commission to John Brydde, John Bartloit, and Robert Tyndale to take a team of workmen to undertake repairs at Devizes Castle.⁷¹ Brydde (or Brid) and Tyndale were key members of Joan's affinity or network of officials, which will be discussed further in the following chapter. Another important figure in her affinity was Sir William Sturmy, the chief steward of her estates and a powerful figure in the region and at the courts of Henry IV and V to whom Joan rented the manor and castle of Devizes between 1413 and 1417. Tyndale was Yeoman of the Queen's Beds, and Joan made him parker for life at Devizes from 1408; for this role he received 4d daily from the issues of the lordship of Devizes as well as ½d for each animal agisted in the parks and “browsing” rights to ferns, old or windfallen wood and hedges—we will return to these important rights in park and forest land later in this section.⁷² Yet even with a team of trusted officials on the case, Joan was not willing to take it on faith that the repairs were undertaken—in the manorial records there is a note about repairs being made in preparation for the queen's arrival and she did visit Devizes castle in September 1411.⁷³

Nottingham Castle is an important stronghold that Joan held along with several other significant properties in the region, including the fee farm of Nottingham town, Sherwood Forest, Beckswood Park, and Clipstone Manor, which contained another twelfth-century castle, known, like Odiham, as “King John's Palace”. While several sources claim that Nottingham Castle was one of Joan's primary residences, particularly in the later years of her life, there is not a great deal of documentary evidence to securely link her to the site. However, Henry IV did visit Nottingham several times in the early years of their marriage between 1403 and 1407; it is very likely that Joan may have spent time at the castle during one of his visits in the summer of 1403, 1404, or 1405—particularly as we know she was with him in the region in late summer 1404 at Leicester. Even if a visit cannot be securely established, we know that Joan did send “stone cutters, carpenters and other workmen” along with “timber and carriage” to Nottingham, Beskwood, and Clipstone to make necessary repairs in March 1406—if she had visited shortly before this, she might have been made aware of works which needed to be made to her properties in the area.⁷⁴ She was also engaged in the repair of the mills in Brewhouse Yard at the castle, known as Sparrow, Donne, Dosse, and Gloff.

Havering-atte-Bower was not only the site of one of Joan's favoured residences as will be discussed in a later chapter, but the property also included a sizeable park. As David Rollason notes, the combination of a royal residence with a surrounding park and/or forest was fairly typical in the Middle Ages.⁷⁵ In Joan's portfolio we can see similar combinations including Havering and its park, Woodstock palace with its park and the adjoining Wychwood Forest, Rockingham Castle and forest, and the aforementioned Nottingham Castle, which Joan held in combination with the nearby parks at Beskwood and Clipstone and Sherwood Forest. In Brittany, Joan also held the forest of Bignon, attached to the lordship of Touffou, which was a key source of timber for the city of Nantes and productive fisheries on the river, making it a profitable holding.⁷⁶ Indeed, Rollason notes the ways in which park and forest land not only provided space for hunting but was a means of enhancing the power, and wealth, of rulers through their control of the resources:

forests were an important tool in the hands of rulers. They could convey messages of bureaucratic power through the sheer administrative control that the ruler was capable of exhibiting with regard to them, and from the resources, in venison and other materials and produce, that he was able to derive from them. They could convey messages of personal power through the hunting that took place in them ... but it is argued here that they could also convey messages of ideological power.⁷⁷

Central to this was the unusual level of control that rulers had over forest areas as land which was outside the normal common law and had a distinct set of administrative offices and its own system of courts to monitor and enforce the rights of the king—or queen in this case. Indeed, Amanda Richardson has collectively examined the role of medieval English queens’ engagement with forest and park land, noting both how this was a key aspect of their “lordly authority” and how they “altered the ecological signature of these landscapes”.⁷⁸ This included ancient rights that the ruler could exercise and extract revenue from in park and forest lands, which could become a bone of contention. These rights, which Joan was keen to exercise and protect, include chiminage, or a toll for carts passing through forest lands, the right to “hamble” dogs or remove some of their claws so that they could not pose a threat to game in the forest, and various pasturing rights including herbage, agistments, and pannage, which allowed pigs to graze in the forest for acorns. The latter right was also known as “garsanage” (or garsanese) and caused considerable conflict during Joan's tenure of Havering. In her study of the manor, Marjorie McIntosh noted that while it was a very profitable fee for previous holders of the manor, the revenues from garsanage had fallen considerably by the time that it came into Joan's hands. Perhaps because of this decline, it appears that Joan “attempt[ed] to collect ‘garsanese’ more assertively”, leading to resistance from local leaders and two suits by the queen against them at the Court of Chancery.⁷⁹

Another interesting example of a dispute triggered by the queen's desire to exercise her rights in park and forest lands comes from Sherwood Forest, where Joan again brought court cases against those who failed to pay fines for the hambling of dogs and chiminage in the forest.⁸⁰ Interestingly, these cases come from the later years of Joan's life, in the early 1430s, as does one of the Havering cases on garsanage. To contextualise this, it is worth remembering that after Joan was restored to her English dower in 1422, she fought near-constant battles to regain her rights to properties and revenues which had been taken from her during the period when her English dower was seized. These court cases are only a few examples of a wide range of disputes, suits, and petitions to Parliament to exercise and defend her rights as discussed earlier. It appears that Joan became increasingly aggressive about her rights both to properties and rights pertaining to them, perhaps because she was very aware of her vulnerability in this regard after her period of house arrest—and as we have seen, she was equally keen to defend her rights in Brittany as well, being involved in extended negotiations over the revenues of Nantes in this same period.

However, it must be said that Joan was keen to protect and preserve her rights, revenues, and properties throughout the whole of her life, not just in her later dowager years. An example of her efforts to protect her forest lands from her period as consort can be seen in relation to Wychwood, an ancient forest which bordered on the park and palace of Woodstock. In July 1412, letters patent were issued by her husband Henry IV to commission William Sturmy, Roger Westwood, John Willicotes, John Barton the Younger, Thomas Beckyngham, and John Brid to investigate reports trees had been cut down and damage done to the queen's forest at Wychwood.⁸¹ Here again we see Sir William Sturmy (chief steward of her estates) and John Brid, who was a member of the Devizes commission and also served as her bailiff and as parker at Woodstock. Another interesting member of the party was John Willicotes, who was likely the son of William Willicotes, who rented four manors from Joan, including Woodstock itself, for which he paid an annual rent of £127 16s.6d—his other son Thomas became controller of works at Woodstock after William's death in 1411.⁸² In the next chapter we will be looking at these men again in the context of Joan's networks of service, examining the ways in which appointing men to key, lucrative positions in her administration was a means of building connections at court and across the realm. Here it is important to note the role that Joan's officials played in maintaining her connection to her lands and administering them under her aegis.

As noted previously, the work of Joan and her officials was not always well perceived—we have seen criticism of buildings which became ruinous due to lack of repair on her lands and resistance from her tenants to her desire to collect the full dues owed to her from ancient rights and customs on her lands. Indeed, Joan perhaps went too far at times in her desire to exercise the rights she had as the “lord” of these forests and her exploitation of their resources. In August 1413, she was chastised for contravening the king's order to suspend the felling of “oaks, lopping of boughs or underwoods” in forests belonging to the Crown until further notice.⁸³ She admitted that “before the writ was made she sold certain underwoods within the said forest, whereof she is tenant for life by the grant of the late king, and that the buyers caused them to be cut down before the writ was made”.⁸⁴ Again, while criticism of queens and their officials were hardly unique to Joan's tenure, this kind of censure has added to her reputation as an “avaricious” queen who was more interested in extracting maximum profit and revenue than being a good steward of her lands.

Over the course of this section, we have explored a key aspect of Joan's life experience and queenship by looking at how she amassed an extensive international portfolio of lands and revenues. Despite the sheer size of her holdings and the revenue it was supposed to bring her, this examination has also revealed the intense struggles that Joan had to ensure that she had a consistent income, from difficulties collecting amounts due and constant challenge to her right to the lands from disputes with other lords and tenants, to seizures of her lands by her son and stepson. We have also seen how Joan was actively engaged with her dower over several decades by exploring the variety of means through which Joan maintained a connection with her widespread collection of landholdings on both sides of the English Channel. We have seen her defend her rights to lands and revenues—from engaging in lengthy disputes with her son over the revenues from the county of Nantes to bringing suits against those who failed to pay their due for customary rights in her parks and forests. We have seen her efforts, not always successful, to maintain or even improve castles and manors and her physical connection with these sites, which we will explore further when we look at Joan's residences in a later chapter. While Joan could not visit all of the properties that she held and was cut off from her Breton holdings by the Channel and the hostilities of the Hundred Years War, we can see a sense of connection maintained through her administration of them in tandem with her officials, who assisted her and represented her “on the ground”, which we will examine further in the following chapter. Next, we turn from her dowers to other forms of income she received—continuing a theme of struggles with inconsistent income and Joan's strident efforts to ensure she received what she was due as duchess and queen.

Supplemental income: Grants, annuities, wardships, and the queen's gold

Having thoroughly examined her English dower, we turn to the additional revenue streams that Joan had access to, starting with supplementary grants, which for Joan took the shape of Lancastrian annuities. As noted previously, Henry IV clearly encountered difficulty in providing Joan with the full 10,000 marks per annum he promised her in income from her dower. Another option that Henry had to provide funding for his wife was to reach into his own purse, as it were, and give Joan an annuity from his own lands—the duchy of Lancaster. Henry's stepmother, Katherine Swynford, had been paid a £1,000 annuity from the duchy during her lifetime. Katherine conveniently died in May 1403, only a few months after Henry and Joan's wedding—Henry lost little time in transferring this grant to Joan on 27 June 1403, roughly six weeks after Katherine's death.⁸⁵ Later that same year, in November, a slight adjustment was made to the specific lands in the duchy that the queen's grant was drawn from to ensure that she received the full amount due.⁸⁶ The grant broke down to 700 marks (£446 13s 4d) from duchy lands in Lincolnshire, 500 marks (£333 6s 8d) from lands in Staffordshire and Derbyshire, and another 300 marks (£200) from lands in Huntingdonshire. Surviving records of annuities from the duchy of Lancaster show the annuity being consistently paid out—at least the 500 marks (£333 6s 8d) from the Staffordshire and Derbyshire lands can be clearly traced to Joan between 1405 and 1410.⁸⁷

However, Henry V appears to have been keen to preserve the revenues from the duchy and reclaim some of the annuities and Lancastrian lands that had gone to his stepmother and others of his father's supporters. While Somerville notes that she continued to receive grants from the duchy, Joan no longer appears to feature as a key annuity holder in records from Henry V's tenure of the duchy. It seems possible then that Joan may have been part of the £10,000 cut in royal and duchy annuities that Christine Carpenter notes Henry V made at the outset of his reign.⁸⁸ Thus it seems that from at least 1415 onwards she was no longer receiving the same Lancastrian annuity—Henry V also refused to honour the request in his father's will that Joan be provided for from the duchy's revenues. Indeed, as we will see in our discussion of Joan's residences in a later chapter, in 1415 Henry also exchanged the manor and palace of Kings Langley for the castle, manor, and town of Hertford, which Joan had been granted from the duchy lands back in September 1404. Altogether it seems that this secondary stream of revenue decreased and may have entirely disappeared once Joan transferred from consort to dowager queen.

Another way that Henry IV sought to satisfy the hefty income that he had promised her was by granting her wardships. Earlier queens, such as Eleanor of Provence, also held many wardships; indeed, Crawford notes that these were a useful way for the king to “augment his wife's income with land without depleting the royal demesne”.⁸⁹ Michele Seah has also noted that “wardships proved to be another lucrative and important resource” for the finances of Joan's successors, such as Margaret of Anjou, who also held several wardships.⁹⁰ The financial benefits of wardship were multiple—first the queen would benefit from the revenues from their lands during their minority and could also reassign revenues to others to build their networks and reward supporters. There were additional monetary aspects if the wardship included the marriage, which could be lucrative to bestow, and the wardship itself could be sold on or reassigned. While these benefits were ultimately temporary, as they would cease when the ward came of age and married, it was a useful way for Henry to try to obtain more income for Joan in the short term. Moreover, there was a greater significance beyond a means to stabilise Joan's financial situation—as Chris Given-Wilson notes, “Henry IV habitually used trusted members of his family to oversee the rehabilitation of his opponent's heirs”, thus his assignment of some of the most important heirs of the realm to his wife, whether they were the sons of his opponents or not, indicated his trust in her to bring them up as Lancastrian loyalists.⁹¹

Joan began to accrue wardships very early on during her tenure, with four substantial ones granted in 1403: John Daubeney on 29 August, Humphrey Stafford on 29 October, and Richard Scrope (or Lescrope) and Fulk Montho, both dated to 14 December 1403 in the Patent Rolls.⁹² Henry was very quick to seize on the Daubeney wardship as a means of income for Joan, assigning to the queen the custody of the young John Daubeney's lands and possessions during his minority, as well as the rights to his marriage, only seven days after his father Giles had died on 22 August 1403. John's marriage was later arranged to Elizabeth Scrope, sister of another of Joan's wards, Richard, whose wardship the queen obtained in 1403 as well, but sadly John died shortly after this was arranged in 1409.

The Stafford wardship was a significant one due to both the size of the estate and the long potential for financial benefit, as the heir, Humphrey, was less than a year old when his father died, but perhaps it was an opportunity that Joan took too much advantage of. Within a week of obtaining the wardship, she granted the custody of the manor and town of Rothwell in Northamptonshire to “her knight”, John de Assheton, for £56 5s 10 ½d yearly, and she later granted another member of her network, Walter Brigge, £10 a year from the manor of Whatcote in Warwickshire, which was also part of the Stafford lands in 1412.⁹³ Indeed, her tenure of the Stafford lands was marked by controversy in multiple ways. In 1409 and 1410 commissions were sent out to deal with issues connected to the management of the Stafford lands—the latter was not only related to Joan's tenure of the wardship but a wider pattern of abuses and concealed profits in the lordship of the castle of Caux going back to the time of Richard II.⁹⁴ However, the 1409 case was in regard to a complaint brought by the queen over the treatment of her officials on the manor of Callington in Cornwall. It appears that as Joan did not receive the customary £45 fine that the tenants should have paid every 12 years, her officials confiscated some livestock in lieu of payments. Three tenants then broke in to the manor and not only took back the animals but assaulted her official, John Wachet, and threatened several of her servitors.⁹⁵ Perhaps in relation to this, Humphrey later brought multiple suits at the beginning of Henry VI's reign against Joan and her tenant farms, claiming that they had exploited his estates during his long minority.⁹⁶ At roughly the same time, when Joan was already in a prolonged battle to regain the rights to her lands seized by Henry V, she successfully fought another dispute connected to the Stafford lands over the custody of a messuage, land, and meadow in Levedale belonging to the young John Stafford, son of a knight, and the right to his marriage which Joan felt was part of the wider Stafford wardship, but Lady Bergevenny contested this.⁹⁷

Joan played an active part in the accrual of wardships as well, petitioning for the custody of wards which the king then granted her—this was the case for the wardship of Fulk Montho, for which she petitioned and was granted in December 1403, and for Richard Despencer, which she was granted in April 1405 after another successful petition.⁹⁸ Three other wardships were granted to her in 1405 besides Despencer: Thomas West in April, Robert Ughtreth in August, and Thomas Lovell in October.⁹⁹ After this date, grants of wardships appear to taper off—while she was granted the marriages of Fulk FitzWarin and Edmund Mortimer in 1407 and 1408, respectively, that appears to mark the end of major wardships given to the queen. Ultimately, wardships seem to have been another of Henry and Joan's strategies to secure her desired income of 10,000 marks per annum—while a useful stop-gap perhaps, these were a short-term solution. In January 1414, it was noted in letters patent that some of her wardships had ended as the heirs reached their majority. Indeed, wardships did not always last long, as we saw with the premature death of John Daubeney or in the case of Thomas Lovell, who reached his majority less than five years after the queen was granted the custody of his lands. Overall, like the annuities, this appears to have been a useful way to supplement Joan's income during her consort years, but may not have been a means to secure her long-term financial comfort as a dowager.

Collecting the queen's gold

Finally, we come to the third revenue stream of Hilda Johnstone's trifecta of queenly revenues—the queen's gold. Effectively this was a levy of 10 per cent on all voluntary fines made to the king. There is a lack of clarity on exactly how large the original fine had to be in order to incur a payment of queen's gold—while the twelfth-century Dialogus de Scaccario debated whether the minimum fine was ten marks or a hundred, Kristen Geaman has pointed out records which clearly indicate that the levy was collected on fines of much lower sums.¹⁰⁰ In effect the queen's gold was a payment to the queen which acknowledged her for her intercessory ability, recognising the queen's role as “their future Mediatrix and advocate to the king”.¹⁰¹ The queen's gold had the potential to be a key source of revenue to the queen—Eleanor of Castile took £1,564 17s 4d in 1290; indeed, Louise Tingle has claimed that Eleanor realised more revenue from queen's gold than from her lands at times.¹⁰² Thus, the queen's gold was clearly a key source of revenue that could provide useful funds to support the queen and her household.

Yet, while the levy was affirmed by law and long-standing custom, queens frequently struggled to collect their revenue from it, even though many queens such as Philippa of Hainault and Eleanor of Castile had specific officials designated for exactly this purpose.¹⁰³ Geaman underlines this difficulty noting that “queens did not always directly control this resource”; it was up to the diligence of their officials and the support of the king and his government to ensure that the levy was collected.¹⁰⁴ Johnstone argues that “the first problem [in collecting queen's gold] was the one in which the wits of her friends and officials were pitted against the ingenuity of those from whom the fines were due”.¹⁰⁵ Unsurprisingly, there was considerable loathing to pay an extra 10% on top of a voluntary fine and thus people tried to get out of it by any means possible—by merely failing to pay it unless they were forced to or by attempting to argue that their fine was not one to which the queen's gold was applicable. The officials of the Exchequer were not always vigilant to ensure that the levy due to the queen was paid when these voluntary fines were collected and when pressed to account for missing levies, Johnstone notes that the Exchequer's response could be “surprisingly evasive or slow”.¹⁰⁶

Joan found herself in exactly this situation—like many of her predecessors, she struggled to collect the queen's gold throughout her husband's reign. Indeed, Joan wrote to her husband in January 1412 to complain at the lack of revenue that Joan was receiving from the queen's gold levy.¹⁰⁷ Joan's letter to her husband is both frank and forceful—she began by thanking him for raising her to the estate of queen of England and bestowing the crown upon her. She then noted that all queens of England had had the right to claim the levy of the queen's gold for so long that it exceeded living memory—Tingle notes that the phrasing that this levy belonged to “all queens time out of mind” was enshrined at the time of Richard I's coronation and was continually repeated, even into Prynne's treatise in the Stuart era.¹⁰⁸ Joan was leveraging tradition here, calling on ancient and customary rights and also following the footsteps of her predecessors, like Philippa of Hainault, who similarly complained to her husband Edward III in 1338. Joan expressed frustration with the officials of the Exchequer and begged Henry to intercede on her behalf so that she might regain the funds that she had a right to collect as queen of the realm.

Henry did indeed respond to her letter—Prynne argues that Henry was “very zealous, out of his affection to his Queen” to collect the levy owed to her.¹⁰⁹ Tingle has noted that while many kings were enthusiastic supporters of their wife's right to collect the levy, the level of support of kings could be impacted by their personal relationship, noting that Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Aquitaine lost their access to the queen's gold during disputes with their husbands.¹¹⁰ In a document dated 27 April 1412, only three months after the queen's letter, Henry reasserted the rights of the queen to claim these fines generally, but also noted that outstanding fines would be collected retroactively as a list follows of all fines from the fifth year of his reign onwards upon which the queen's gold should have been levied.¹¹¹ There are 36 entries on the list; the fines themselves ranged from 15 to 1000 marks. Adding them altogether, the total fines came to £6,287—Joan's levy would have come to approximately £629, which was nearly 1,000 marks, a very tidy sum indeed, if she was able to collect all of the revenue due.

Henry died less than a year later, in March 1413, leaving Joan as a widowed dowager queen who was now at the mercy of her stepson, Henry V, to protect her prerogatives. The situation regarding the rights of dowager queens to collect the queen's gold was somewhat muddy. Dowager queens retained the right to collect the levy on fines which had been due to their husband and/or collected in his reign. But if there was a new queen consort, the levy should in theory go to them—although as Geaman notes, Eleanor of Aquitaine continued to claim queen's gold, perhaps because she was still seen as the primary intercessor during the reigns of her sons Richard and John, leaving Berengaria of Navarre and Isabella d’Angoulême bereft of these funds.¹¹² Yet, Henry V was not married at this point, leaving the possibility that Joan could continue to collect the levy.

Interestingly, the largest group of slips relating to Joan and the queen's gold levy date to the first year of Henry V's reign. Clearly Henry V and/or his officials were keen to ensure that his stepmother received what she was due.¹¹³ The impetus for this seems to have come from Joan, who petitioned her stepson at the very start of his reign to help her collect what was owed to her in a similar way to how she had entreated Henry IV in the aforementioned letter. In the Calendar of Close Rolls, an entry from 7 July 1413 notes that the king orders, in response to Joan's petition and in replication of his father's orders on the matter, that

all business of hers brought before them [the treasurer and the barons] which concerned lands, farms, fees and liberties to her granted by him in dower or for life, the queen's gold or other property, should be treated and furthered as his own [i.e. the king's] … debtors of the queen's gold and of all other moneys or farms should be treated as his debtors … as it is found in divers records thereof in the time of Queen Isabel in her widowhood after the death of King Edward II.¹¹⁴

An initial analysis of these records shows some interesting connections. Ninety-eight of the slips are related to collecting queen's gold or a specific fine or amount owed the queen—sometimes noted as being in connection with her dower. Yet only a few, however, can be connected to the debtors noted on Prynne's list from 1412—examples include Humphrey Stafford and the earl of Westmorland. The latter faced a large levy to Joan, for 1,000 marks, and it appears from these records that he may have been paying that to her piecemeal over time. Two more items of interest can be seen in the text of the slips. There is a note that Thomas Feriby was collecting these fines for the queen—this tallies with other records which note that he was her treasurer and receiver-general during this period. Another interesting item is the way that Joan was referred to in these slips—she is noted as “our beloved mother”. This is interesting in connection with the other references to Joan as the king's mother rather than the king's widow, and significant given the volte-face of 1419 when her stepson accused her of treason and detained her. Also, in a few places the word “matris” or mother appears to have been written in after a rub out—perhaps the clerks were used to putting her in as a “beloved consort” for the last ten years and had to correct their mistakes to note Joan's changed status as “beloved mother”.

In sum, this section has not only demonstrated other sources of revenues to which Joan had access but has demonstrated the difference between her relationship with Henry IV and Henry V and the impact of her change from consort to dowager. Henry IV was keen to support his beloved wife and ensure that she had adequate funds at her disposal to support her household and uphold her rights as queen using his funds from the duchy of Lancaster and supporting her claim to the queen's gold. While Henry V was also keen to do right by Joan and continued his father's efforts to support her reclamation of her rights and revenues, he was less willing to support her from the duchy of Lancaster. In addition, while we can see that Henry V continued his father's project to retroactively claim back all the unpaid queen's gold, it does not appear that he allowed Joan to continue to claim the levy as a dowager.

Expenditure: Spending like a queen

Finally, it remains to consider the impact that Joan's long-term struggle to realise the revenues that she was due had on her spending power and ability to maintain herself in a manner befitting her queenly status. It must be noted that it is much easier to trace Joan's revenues from surviving manorial accounts, receipts from ports and fee farms, and other documentation than it is to trace her outgoings, as this documentation has not survived in significant quantities. Indeed, a consistent issue when studying the financial situation of medieval English queens is the patchy survival of their household records and accounts, as there has been greater emphasis on the cataloguing and preservation of material connected to the Crown and the ruler, rather than queens consort and dowager. As noted previously, we have the best understanding of Joan's financial situation, as well as the composition and functioning of her household, during the period when she was under house arrest, as her accounts were being audited by the Crown and thus these records have largely survived.¹¹⁵ In addition to this, we are fortunate to have one surviving household account book from 1427–28, which is preserved in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries and gives an excellent overview of both her incoming revenue and outgoing expenditure during this period.¹¹⁶

Table 5.1 Daily average spend across key categories in Joan's surviving household accounts (in pence = d)

Category	1 Oct–15 Dec 1419	17 Mar 1420–7 Mar 1421	8 Mar–21 Jul 1422	4 Apr 1427–4 Apr 1428
Necessaria	23d	11d	12d	79d
Dona	19d	4d	11d	244d
Wardrobe	130d	N/A	N/A	325d
Queen's Chamber	76d	N/A	63d	565d
Oblaciones	N/A	2d	5d	17d

A review of her surviving account books demonstrates a clear difference between the level of expenditure for her household during the years of confinement versus the “normal” 1427–28 account books. To illustrate this, we can do a comparison of the daily average spend across the surviving account books for the major areas of expenditure: Necessaria (supplies for various departments), Dona (gifts), Wardrobe, the Queen's Chamber, and Oblaciones (offerings/alms). For example, the Wardrobe accounts show a difference of approximately two and a half times higher spending in 1427–28 versus the October–December 1419 accounts. The difference in the Queen's Chamber is even more marked—in this area Joan was spending seven and a half to nine times more in the 1427–28 accounts as she spent in the period of confinement. The average daily spend is also considerably lower for Necessaria and Dona from 1419 to 1422, but this can easily be accounted for with regard to her reduced circumstances—the smaller size of her household necessitated fewer supplies and Joan had less money at her disposal, meaning she could not be as generous in gifting. The Oblaciones section appears to have a less marked difference between the “normal” and detention period due to the smaller sums involved, but Joan was still spending three to six times more on offerings in the 1427–28 period.

There is also a clear trend towards overspending, which is unsurprising if Joan was spending the full extent of what she felt she was due, rather than what was actually coming in. As discussed earlier, revenues were often slow to arrive, in arrears, or even in dispute, but her own creditors would still expect to be paid. While it has to be noted that the majority of the surviving account books date to the period of her confinement when her revenues were considerably depressed given that her lands had been seized by the Crown, the most serious example of overspend actually dates to her later life, from the accounts for 1427–28, which has a significant “surplus” or overspend of £803 18s 7 ½d—a serious amount to be “in the red”.

This begs two questions—was her spending out of line with her contemporaries and what was she spending her money on? In connection with the first query, we can do a comparison of the daily diet accounts for food expenditure to place them in the wider context in terms of both royal and elite households, as the table demonstrates, by using accounts from two fifteenth-century bishops’ households in Woolgar's Household Accounts collection and the royal household account book for 1405–6.¹¹⁷ However, there is again a significant difference in total spending—as we can see in Table 5.2, Joan's household was much higher than the comparative elite examples but significantly lower than the royal household's expenditure. Even though this comparison comes from the beginning of Joan's period of detention, we can see that her household expenditure was on an entirely different level to that of the bishops’ households, spending far more on a daily basis even during a period of captivity with a reduced household. As to be expected, the scale of expenditure is completely different between the combined royal household and the dowager queen's, both in detention and in a “normal” period as we can see using examples from March. For example, on 20 March 1406 the royal household spent £75 21s ½d (1,521s ½d) to the queen's diet of 103s 3d on 20 March 1428—even less was spent during her detention on 20 March 1420, only 32s 9 ½d. Thus we can see that, even as a dowager queen in detention, Joan was spending like a queen at levels which exceeded her ecclesiastical counterparts, but nowhere near the amount of the entire royal household during her marriage to Henry IV.

Table 5.2 Comparison between daily household “diet” expenditure

Household account and date*	Comparison expenditure	Joan's expenditure
Richard Mitford, 20 Oct 1406	5s 5½d	101s 1½d
John Hales, 2 Oct 1461	5s 5d	119s 7½d
Royal Household, 20 Oct 1405	995s 6d	101s 1½d

Note: All of Joan's examples come from the same day or week in October 1419.

Looking at how anyone spends their money gives you a good idea of their day-to-day life and what was important to them—Joan's account books are similarly revealing about her life and the pressures of queenship, as the key categories of expenditure demonstrate. The two Dona sections in the 1427–28 manuscript comprise gifts, noted as being “from the hand” or “by the mandate” of the queen. Taken together, Joan spent £383 13s 10d on gifts during this period, equivalent to nearly £240,000 today. Most of these gifts were to servants, such as the queen's chaplain, John Sadyington, who received 40s, or Blanche Chalons, one of her ladies, who was gifted £20. Annuities form another significant element of expenditure, demonstrating that Joan spent a large proportion of her funds on gifts and annuities to those in her service or in her network of connections, who will be discussed in detail in the following chapter—some recipients can be found in both Dona and Annuities. Some of these annuities were very generous, such as the 500 marks a year that she granted her (arguably favourite) stepson, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Given the fact that many of the annuities were directly derived from her incoming revenue, such as the 500 marks reassigned to Humphrey from her wool customs from the town of Southampton, this would clearly have a crippling effect on her incoming funds. Even the accounts of the Queen's Chamber show Joan's generosity, with several items purchased noted as being gifts, which will be discussed further in the last chapter, such as the collar with 24 oriental pearls which cost £16 given as a gift to her stepdaughter-in-law Eleanor Cobham. Indeed, John Pattersley, a London jeweller, did very well in the accounts of the Queen's Chamber, though again most of the commissions she gave him were items gifted to others, although it was noted that she did keep one 19oz gold cup from him that cost £29 12s 6d for herself. The Wardrobe section shows much more varied and day-to-day expenditure, including the wages of carpenters making repairs or making a new window for the Queen's Chamber.

Thus, a large amount of Joan's expenditure was spent not on herself directly but on maintaining her household and house itself, as well as generous gifts to those who served her as well as to friends and family. Why was Joan spending way beyond her means—giving away her cash in gifts and grants to others? The answer is in two parts: keeping up appearances and in maintaining networks of service and court connections. A key element of being a queen was having a household and home which was befitting of her rank; being able to pay a large retinue of servants and keep the house in style was important to preserving one's position. Joan had clearly taken a step down from her days as queen consort, but she was still a queen and was determined to continue to live in a queenly manner as a dowager, even if she could not truly afford to do so. She might be living at her manor of Kings Langley, away from the central court circuit, but Joan clearly wanted anyone who visited her home to get the impression that she was regal and royal, with all the accoutrements of queenly status. The following chapters will pick up these two themes and explore the development and maintenance of Joan's networks of service as well as discuss her expenditure on gift giving, possessions, and her residences.

As we will shortly see, maintaining a cosmopolitan and sizable retinue was more than a key part of projecting her status and authority as queen, no matter how challenging the circumstances. Without the support of these long-standing and loyal servants, Joan would have been completely unable to function as queen and certainly would never have been able to survive the years of confinement nor re-establish herself after her release in 1422. Their loyalty and the financial records which chart her generous gifts to her servants demonstrates that Joan was a good mistress, rewarding those in her service with annuities and positions. Beyond her servants, Joan's largest “pensioner”, her stepson Humphrey, also showed Joan great loyalty and service—he attempted to get her confessor out of the Tower of London when he was implicated in the charge of treason, visited her when she was under house-arrest, and supported her petitions to Henry VI's minority council to restore her dower. Thus, while Joan may appear somewhat financially reckless in giving away a substantial portion of her revenues as gifts and annuities, it could also be seen as a shrewd investment in an affinity of servants and supporters who would give her both security and help her to retain or regain her position.

Conclusion

In summary, we can see the economic challenges that Joan faced, particularly over the course of her 34 years as an English queen consort and dowager. She struggled to receive the income from her Breton dower and the generous revenues promised by her husband, despite his steadfast support. Joan's relationship with her stepson was mixed, both economically and generally—on one hand he worked scrupulously to ensure she collected fines due to her and reaffirmed her dower when she was widowed, yet at the same time her dower grant was appreciably reduced by Henry V; he also appears to have cut off her duchy of Lancaster annuity and in 1419 he seized her dower altogether. Was she then his “beloved mother” or just an expensive and expendable foreign hanger-on who was seen by her stepson as a drain on royal finances? While Joan's revenues were eventually restored in the reign of Henry VI, her household account books of 1427 show that she still struggled to make ends meet and balance her queenly budget. Her own son, Jean V of Brittany, disputed her rights to her Breton revenues, leading to decades of disputes and negotiation after she left the duchy for a new life in England.

Regarding the queen herself, we can see that Joan was no shrinking violet—she had no problem protesting when she felt she was not receiving what she was due, keenly defending her rights where money was at stake, issuing letters of protests, petitions to Parliament, and taking matters to court when needed to try to obtain the full revenue that she felt was owed. We have also seen that part of her financial difficulties may have stemmed from maintaining her networks of service, which will be explored further in the chapter to follow—first from the large, costly foreign retinue that caused so much controversy as a consort and later in her generous gifts and revenues to those around her.

Looking at the bigger picture regarding what Joan's situation demonstrates about the economic aspect of queenship, it has highlighted the vulnerability of a queen's finances. She was dependent both on the king (whether it was her husband, son, or even grandson) for their grants of dower and supplements for her revenues. The queen also needed the support of the king and his government to ensure the collection of those revenues—but Joan's case demonstrates that a kingly husband's love and goodwill may not be enough to ensure a steady stream of revenue. As a dowager, a queen was even more financially vulnerable, as Joan's dower was seized under a shaky pretext, and without the support of the most powerful men on the regency council she may never have had her lands and revenues returned to her. In sum, while a queen may have sat at the epicentre of the realm, it does not mean that she was seated on a mountain of money per se. Her financial health depended on several factors—the support of the king and his government, stability in both royal finances and the political landscape, and finally her own prudent spending decisions.

Notes

1. Hilda Johnstone, “The Queen's Household,” in The English Government at Work, 1327–1336, vol. 1, Central and Prerogative Administration, ed. James F. Willard and William A. Morris (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1940), 253.
2. Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest; with Anecdotes of their Courts, vol. III (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1848), 67.
3. Jean Kerhervé, L’état Breton aux 14e et 15e siècles; Les Ducs, l’Argent et les Hommes, 2 vols. (Paris: Editeur Maloine, 1987), 61; Nicolas Kermabon, “Ego Dux Britannie Dotavit Eam: Le douaire des duchesses de Bretagne (XIIIe–XVe siècle)” (PhD thesis, Université de Rennes 1, 2007), 3 vols., I, 22.
4. ADLA E17-11, 12, and 13, dated 24 and 26 February 1387. This donation was ratified by the barons and prelates of Brittany by 18 April 138; see E17-14 and 15, both dated 18 April 1387.
5. Kermabon, “Douaire,” I, 114, 122–23. See also Jean-Pierre Leguay and Herve Martin, eds., Fastes et malheurs de la Bretagne ducale 1213–1532 (Rennes: Ouest France, 1982), 178.
6. 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.
7. Actes Jean IV, II, no. 1044, 26 February 1396; ADLA E17-13 and E16, f.31-35; Morice, II, 661–64. Note that a codicil of Jean IV's will of 26 October 1399 confirms her dower as per the 1396 settlement; see Kermabon, “Douaire,” II, 187–88, and Actes Jean IV, II, no. 1179, 697; Morice, II, 699.
8. Jones, “Pays de Retz,” 40. The agreements can be found in Morice, II, 691–93, signed 24 April 1399, and 706, signed 1 September 1400.
9. E. Fonssagrives, Les Trois femmes de Jean IV; conference donnée à la Société Polymathique du Morbihan le 10 Avril 1923 (Vannes: Imprimerie du Commerce, 1923), 12.
10. CPR Henry IV, II, 4 June 1403, 234–35, 268–69, 271–72.
11. Anne Crawford, “The Queen's Council in the Middle Ages,” EHR 116, no. 469 (2001): 1194.
12. 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), 12.
13. See Katia Wright, “A Dower for Life: Understanding the Dowers of England's Medieval Queens,” in Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty, eds. Aidan Norrie, Carolyn Harris, J.L. Laynesmith, Danna Messer, and Elena Woodacre (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
14. J.L. Kirby, Henry IV of England (London: Constable, 1970), 93.
15. John Rickard, The Castle Community; The Personnel of English and Welsh Castles, 1272–1422 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), 8–10 and tables on pages 79–83.
16. Phifer demonstrates that while a widow was generally able to retain her dower on remarriage, his study of litigation in relation to dower demonstrates that maintaining the dower of a woman who had remarried and gained additional resources could be seen as “an unreasonable imposition” which could be “the cause of social discontent”. In addition, he notes that some provisions made for wives by their husbands specifically included a caveat that this would be lost if she remarried. See Michael J. Phifer, “Property, Power and Patriarchy: The Decline of Women's Property Right in England after the Black Death” (PhD thesis, University of Houston, 2014), 177–85.
17. ADLA E9-1, 18 November 1404, on Jean V's rights to pursue dowry payments; see also E9-16, Accord of J V and C III regarding dowry 28 January 1409; Kermabon, “Douaire,” II, 231.
18. CPR Henry IV, II, 24 January 1404, 347–49; 18 July 1404, 402 and 418.
19. PROME, Henry IV: October 1404.
20. CPR Henry IV, II, 5 April 1405, 501.
21. Alan Rogers, “The Royal Household of Henry IV” (PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 1966), 62, 76–7, 95, 120, 348, 369, 383, 399, 408–9.
22. PROME, Henry IV: March 1406, part 1; Rogers, “Household,” 49, 124–25. See also Peter McNiven, “The King's Needs,” in Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV: The Burning of John Badby (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1987), 174.
23. See a demand for Scarborough to pay the queen 27l 15s 8d a year and the arrears since Michaelmas last in CCR Henry IV, III, 16 June 1406, 41.
24. See SC 6/844/14 from Havering 1407–8, Staffs D641/1/2/48 (1 July 1406), and for Melton Mowbray see SC 6/1092/18 (1405–07), SC 6/1092/17 (1406–7), and SC 6/1092/21 (1408–10).
25. L&M J V, IV, nos. 246, 247, 251 and 252, all March 1406. Foedera 8, 10 May 1407. George Akenhead Knowlson, Jean V, duc de Bretagne et l’Angleterre 1399–1442 (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1964), 53.
26. CPR Henry IV, III, 2 March 1408, 413–14.
27. CPR Henry IV, III, 20 May 1408, 438–39.
28. See Kirby, Henry IV, 222–23; Crawford, “King's Burden,” 43.
29. C 81/1362/46 quoted in Kirby, Henry IV, 223.
30. CPR Henry IV, IV, 1 July 1409, 85–87.
31. PROME, Henry IV: January 1410.
32. Examples of suits in 1410–11 include C44/23/6 and 8.
33. See SC 6/1093/2 (Wilts), E122/51/34 (Ipswich 1411–13), E122/150/15 (Yarmouth 1411–13), and Bedford and Luton R 6/62/12/13 (22 April 1411). Taxation records from 1412 also show the range of her holdings across several counties. For selected examples see Inquisitions and Assessments Relating to Feudal Aids, with Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office; A.D. 1284–1431: vol. VI (London: His Majesty's Stationery office, 1920), 399, 412, 428, 433.
34. CPR Henry V, I, 27 January 1414, 164–67.
35. CCR Henry V, I, 22 June 1414, 127–28; 12 July, 28 October and 4 November 1414, 130–1; 8 November 1414, 15; 14 October 1415, 239–40; 17 February 1416, 258; 28 April 1416, 301.
36. J. de la Martinière, “Un grand Chancelier de Bretagne – Jean de Malestroit,” Memoires de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archaeologie de Bretagne 1 (1920): 45–9. The full account is reprinted in Bulletin du Comité Historique des Monuments Écrits de l’Histoire de France. Histoire-Sciences-Lettres 4 (1853): 73–90. Note the quotations are all my translations in the text above.
37. Knowlson, Jean V, 91.
38. L&M JV, V, no. 1182, November 1414.
39. For examples, see receipts from Yarmouth and Ipswich; E122/51/42 and E122/151/10, 1414–15 and 1415–16.
40. For examples of assessment, see E199/19/41 for Kent, and for reassignment, see CFR XIV, 24 November 1420, 363.
41. Kermabon, “Douaire,” II, 255, 266.
42. PROME, Henry VI: November 1422.
43. Crawford, “King's Burden,” 44–5.
44. Harry W. Gidden, ed. The sign manuals, and the letters patent of Southampton to 1422 (Southampton: Cox and Sharland, 1916–1919), 2–7.
45. Hampshire Record Office W/A2/7/1, 12 November 1422 and Southampton SC 1/4/9.
46. PROME, Henry VI: October 1423.
47. CCR Henry VI, I, 5 December 1426, 296–7 and 1427, 363–66.
48. CPR Henry VI, II, 8 May 1431, 119, and 4 July 1431, 141–42.
49. See CPR Henry VI, II, 17 December 1435, 530–31, and C/44/27/12, 1436–37.
50. See Winchester College Archives 2170 a and b, 2171 for protests against the pension, and 2140, 2141, 2143–2150 in regard to payments to the queen. See also 2142, dated 31 July 1414, for a mandate from Henry V to pay Joan the pension.
51. L&M JV, VI, no. 1821, 16 November 1428.
52. Kermabon “Douaire,” II, 271. See also L&M JV, VI, nos. 1873, 1876, and 1922, dated 2 December and 26 December 1429 and 1 October 1430, respectively; Morice, II, 1231–32.
53. ADLA B 12838, f.133 v, 134 r; see also Kermabon, “Douaire,” II, 272; Kerhervé, L’Etat Breton, 66.
54. J. Trevedy, “Le douaire des Duchesses de Bretagne: Contrats de mariage des Ducs (1),” Revue de Bretagne 37 (Feb 1907): 37.
55. Knowlson, Jean V, 164.
56. See Kermabon, “Douaire,” II, 206, 235; ADLA E156-11, 18 May 1401.
57. Kerhervé, L’Etat Breton, 62; Kermabon, “Douaire”, II, 241.
58. See ADLA B124–10 and ADLA B675-1, both dated 1402. It is unlikely, but it may be possible that this was the same Jehan de Roux who worked for Carlos III as an official in his treasury.
59. ADLA B4245 fols 40r–42v. See also documents for collection of rents in the village of Carvarden and the parish of Avessac in 1401 from her receivers in the region; ADLA B1816, dated 1401.
60. See ADLA B130 (1418) and 152–20 (1437).
61. CPR Henry IV, II, 10 Dec 1404, 473.
62. King's Works, I, 533.
63. Crawford, “Queen's Council,” 1203.
64. Cited in Patricia MacGregor and Barry Stapleton, Odiham Castle 1200–1500: Castle and Community (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1982), 114.
65. MacGregor and Stapleton, Odiham, 114.
66. King's Works, II, 768.
67. CIM VIII, no. 154, 12 September 1438.
68. CIM VIII, 60, no. 108, 3 July 1438.
69. King's Works, II, 628.
70. CPR Henry IV, IV, 19 April 1410, 224; CPR Henry VI, II, 14 February 1433, 277; King's Works, II, 628.
71. CPR Henry IV, IV, 224.
72. CPR Henry IV, IV, 30 May 1409, 81.
73. King's Works, II, 628; SC 6/1062/25; CPR Henry IV, IV, 14 February 1412, 368.
74. CPR Henry IV, III, 30 March 1406, 228. See also Andrew Hamilton, Nottingham's Royal Castle and Ducal Palace (Nottingham: Nottingham Civic Society, 1991), 8, 13.
75. David Rollason, The Power of Place: Rulers and their Palaces, Landscapes, Cities and Holy Places (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 138.
76. Jones, “Pays de Retz,” 39.
77. Rollason, Power of Place, 166. A similar argument on the importance of revenues is made in John Steane, The Archaeology of the Medieval English Monarchy (London: Routledge, 1999), 149–50.
78. Amanda Richardson, “Beyond the Castle Gate: The Role of Medieval Landscapes in Constructions of English Medieval Kingship and Queenship,” Concilium medii aevi 14 (2011): 43.
79. Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, Autonomy and Community: The Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 64. Court cases: C/1/69/2 and C/44/24/5.
80. Records of the Borough of Nottingham, vol. II (Nottingham: Thomas Forman & Sons, 1882), 122–24, 138–39.
81. CPR Henry IV, IV, 8 July 1412, 373.
82. L.S. Woodger, “Wilicotes, Willliam (d. 1411) of North Leigh, Oxon,” in HoP.
83. CCR Henry V, I, 26 April 1413, 16.
84. CCR Henry V, I, 19 August 1413, 32–33.
85. DL 42/15 fol. 150v. Robert Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, vol. 1, 1265–1603 (London: Chancellor and the Council of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1953), 165.
86. DL 42/15 fol. 158. Somerville, Duchy of Lancaster, 165.
87. DL 28/27/1 (1402–4) and DL 28/27/3, 9, 10 (1405–10).
88. Christine Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 72; Helen Castor, The King, the Crown, and the Duchy of Lancaster: Public Authority and Private Power, 1399–1461 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 36.
89. Crawford, “Queen's Council,” 2001.
90. Michele Seah, “The Material Foundations of Queenship in Late-Medieval England, 1445–1509” (PhD thesis, University of Newcastle, Australia, 2019), 59. See also Sue Sheridan Walker, “Royal Wardship in Medieval England” (PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1966), 122.
91. Given-Wilson, Henry IV, 447.
92. CPR Henry IV, II, 29 August 1403, 263; 29 October 1403, 328; 14 December 1403, 329; 1 December 1403, 332; 14 December 1403, 362.
93. CPR Henry IV, II, 4 November 1403, 327 and IV, 19 April 1412, 395.
94. CPR Henry IV, IV, 24 July 1410, 226.
95. CPR Henry IV, IV, 18 July 1409, 111.
96. Carole Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham, 1394–1521 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 179.
97. CPR Henry VI, I, 2 December 1423, 155–56.
98. Petition for Montho SC 8/229/11446, and grant CPR Henry IV, II, 1 December 1403, 332. Petition for the wardship of Despencer SC 8/231/11526, and grant CPR Henry IV, III, 6 April 1405, 4.
99. See CPR Henry IV, III, 24 April 1405,11; CPR Henry IV, II, 23 October 1404, 463; CIM VII, no. 432, 233–34.
100. Richard fitz Nigel, Dialogus de Scaccario (The Course of the Exchequer), ed. and trans. Charles Johnson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 123; Kristen Geaman, “Queen's Gold and Intercession: The Case of Eleanor of Aquitaine,” Medieval Feminist Forum 46, no. 2 (2010): 13. See also William Prynne, Aurum reginae … (London: Thomas Ratcliffe, 1668), 2.
101. Prynne, Aurum reginae, 5.
102. Crawford, “Queen's Council,” 1196; Louise Tingle, “Aurum Reginae: Queen's Gold in Late Fourteenth-Century England,” Royal Studies Journal 7, no. 1 (2020): 83.
103. Johnstone, “Queen's Household,” 285; Crawford, “Queen's Council,” 1196; fitz Nigel, Dialogus, 122; Prynne, Aurum Reginae, 7.
104. Geaman, “Queen's Gold,” 15.
105. Johnstone, “Queen's Household,” 264.
106. Johnstone, “Queen's Household,” 264.
107. BL RP 6767, dated 7 January 1412. There is only one slip which appears to date from before this letter, E5/574 (11 Henry IV; 30 September 1409–29 September 1410).
108. Prynne, Aurum reginae, 8. Original quote from BL RP 6767 “apelle Aurum Regine le quel Or as Royns d’Engleterre pur le temps esteantz ad appentuz de droit de lour Corone et elles ount este en possession dicelles du temps dont memorie ne court.” Tingle, “Aurum Reginae,” 80.
109. Prynne, Aurum reginae, 64.
110. Tingle, “Aurum Reginae,” 80–1.
111. Prynne, Aurum reginae, 63. Original E159/288, Memoranda Roll 13 Henry IV, Michaelmas to Trinity.
112. Geaman, “Queen's Gold,” 17, 19–23. See also Crawford, “Queen's Council,” 1198, which affirms that dowagers should not collect queen's gold if there was a new consort.
113. This would fit neatly with Jonathan Sumption's comment that “Henry V devoted a personal attention to his finances unmatched since the reign of Edward I”. Sumption, Cursed Kings: The Hundred Years War IV (London: Faber and Faber, 2016), 419.
114. CCR Henry V, I, 7 July 1413, 25–26.
115. “Account Book of Thomas Lillebourne,” TNA E101/406/30, 1 October–15 December 1419; “Enrolled Accounts of Thomas Lilleburne” 1419–20, TNA E364/63, rot. 5; “Account Book of the household of Joan of Navarre”, 1420–21, University of Manchester John Rylands Collection Latin MS 238; “Wardrobe Book of Joan Queen of England, 9 Hen. 5”, 1422, Leeds Castle Archives E4/1.
116. John Bugge, “Queen Joan. Primus compotus Johannis Bugge (Household Accounts 1427–28)”, Society of Antiquaries SAL/MS/216.
117. See C.M. Woolgar, Household Accounts from Medieval England: Parts 1 and 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992–93); Diet account 14: Richard Mitford, Bishop of Salisbury and Diet account 16: John Hales, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and BL Harley MS 319.