00:00:30.000Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History. My name is Anne Foster, and this is a, it's a pandemic special. I'm still brainstorming what cute name I'm going to give it. It could be a poddemic. It could be plague stories. It could be, I don't know, quarantine, pod, podentine.
00:00:51.660anyway i just um recording my regular episode i thought i would do a special episode with just a
00:00:57.500little shorter story too because lots of content creators are putting stuff out and i really
00:01:03.300appreciate it and i thought people who listen to my podcast might also appreciate it and also i
00:01:08.060just like really want to share this story because it keeps going through my head um so content
00:01:13.840warning i'm going to be telling you a story about the black plague and everyone in the story dies
00:01:20.600So if you're not in the mood for a story about literally everyone dying of a horrible disease, perhaps tune into a different episode of this podcast or just wait for Wednesday when the next episode of this podcast comes out.
00:01:34.340Anyway, I don't think there's any plague content in that. I don't think there is. But this one is just all plague content because it's a pandemic special. Cute name to be determined. And what we're talking about today is Joan of England.
00:01:49.360so she and again just like she's gonna die everyone's gonna die of plague you just like
00:01:57.800keep that in mind so um and the sources for this because i'm just sort of whipping this up together
00:02:03.760without doing um usually i like to look at all kinds of different sources and put them together
00:02:08.800and make like maybe a little script for myself um but i'm just going to going directly from a
00:02:13.380couple sources so the first one is uh the history of royal women.com i'm also looking at some
00:02:20.120writing from rebecca star brown.com uh the creative historian.co.uk and also from a little
00:02:29.240website called wikipedia so there's pretty much a consensus on how much information all these sites
00:02:36.580have about her because there's not much known about her but um hopefully we can get a good
00:02:41.340picture by going bopping around between these different things so here's the situation so
00:02:47.020joan of england so she was born in either 1333 or 1334 and she was a daughter of king edward
00:02:57.200the third and his wife philippa of heinote heinot um she was french so edward the third
00:03:04.600was a descendant so this is the house of plantagenet which started with empress matilda's
00:03:10.420husband Jeffrey who we talked about last time so so Joan herself um her father Edward they are
00:03:16.820descendants of Matilda Empress Matilda because it was her son Henry became the king and then there's
00:03:24.760just like a whole bunch of Henry's and Edwards and then we're on Edward III so she's she's descended
00:03:29.680from Empress Matilda in that way uh she was also known as Joanna we're going to be looking at
00:03:36.760another Joanna later in another episode of this podcast people's names were very flexible like
00:03:42.380they sort of wrote them with sort of just deciding on the spur of the moment I guess what vowels
00:03:47.980they're going to put where but we're going to call her Joan even though maybe people called her
00:03:51.780Joanna so her early life um let me just see this is like you know it's it's pandemic times I feel
00:04:00.580like everyone myself I'm hopeful other people are just a little bit more forgiving of seeing the
00:04:05.460seams going on behind the scenes of what people are up to i feel like everyone's being sort of
00:04:10.640more especially sort of honest um by everyone i mean the people who i follow on social media
00:04:17.880and that sort of thing um just sort of less artifice people are just kind of kind of warts
00:04:23.340and all we're all just kind of being out here anyway so um this first part is from rebecca
00:04:30.120star brown.com so joan of england was born perhaps december 1333 perhaps january 1334
00:04:38.560you know we've been over this people didn't really write down when people were born
00:04:42.320back then they had other things to worry about so she was the second daughter and the third child
00:04:46.780of edward iii and his wife philippa of heino so she was princess princess joan which i think is
00:04:52.700a really cool name some royal baby somewhere should be called joan i think the name joan
00:04:57.560to just make a comeback in general anyway so by the time she was born so she was the third child
00:05:02.200second daughter she had an older brother who was prince edward and she also had an older sister
00:05:06.260called isabelle and a bunch of dramatic stuff happened before all of this happened that we're
00:05:12.400going to talk about on some other podcast episode i promise but effectively joan's grandmother0.98
00:05:18.260isabelle of france um sort of kicked her so isabelle of france was a super badass amazing
00:05:25.040woman who i was going to do a podcast about this and but i just haven't had time to research it
00:05:30.600properly because of pandemic reasons so what happened isabel of france was married to edward
00:05:37.340i think um edward ii was not a great king and isabel and her lover roger mortimer kind of
00:05:44.820stormed into england took over and made her son the king isabel france's son was edward the third
00:05:50.380and that is the father of joan of england but that all happened in the past by the time joan
00:05:55.320is born things are like pretty kind of consistent edward iii's been king for a while uh so a few
00:06:01.320weeks after joan's birth queen philippa which again amazing name philippa uh traveled with
00:06:07.880her three children uh so joan to york to accompany the king during an ongoing military campaign
00:06:14.120in berwick with her husband preoccupied with the scots philippa spent the next several months
00:06:18.540traveling through the north, acquainting herself with a towns and villages she had hitherto not
00:06:22.760seen much of. It's likely that the children accompanied her on some of these journeys.
00:06:26.740Again, I'm reading from RebeccaStarBrown.com. I am not cool enough to use a word like hitherto
00:06:32.900in a thing that I wrote. So indeed, RebeccaStarBrown.com. War, or rather finding one's
00:06:39.860life around a war, became a fixture of Joan's life. In October 1337, her father declared war
00:06:45.060on france thus beginning the hundred years war between the two countries the hundred years war
00:06:49.720that's the one that um joan of arc becomes allied with the low countries edward took this as an
00:06:54.520opportunity to betroth joan to frederick friedrich the eldest son and heir to duke otho of austria
00:07:00.880the following summer so joan at this point aged like three um joan three-year-old joan traveled
00:07:06.800with her parents to antwerp decked out in finery with an agenda to impress the hosts this trip
00:07:11.460however was perhaps most memorable for a kitchen fire breaking out in Flanders forcing the royal
00:07:15.880family to move to a nearby abbey for shelter it was here where Philippa gave birth to another
00:07:20.340child Prince Lionel the future Duke of Clarence and soon after the queen bid a formal goodbye to
00:07:25.580her four-year-old daughter so peace out just like Joan you're four you're gonna just be in Antwerp
00:07:32.060now you're gonna marry this guy that's your life so Joan four years old uh traveled with her
00:07:37.840governess um and someone called lord john de montgomery to austria where she was established
00:07:43.340at her father-in-law's court to be educated because she's four and she there's a lot of0.99
00:07:47.320educating to do ostensibly care of joan was overseen was to be overseen by her mother's1.00
00:07:51.960sister margaret of heino the holy roman empress but her aunt proved to be a negligent guardian
00:07:57.480joan's wardrobe upkeep and even food were often sorely lacking and philippa became concerned
00:08:02.360enough that she forced edward to withdraw her like to remove her um so not cool aunt margaret
00:08:08.400politically this worked because duke otto died shortly after joan's arrival and power transferred
00:08:13.900to his brother whose sympathies lay with the french so as such joan so let me just see so
00:08:20.080now age six uh she left austria age six and was turned to her mother so rejoined with her family
00:08:26.200she also had the opportunity to meet her new brother john of gaunt who is like john of gaunt
00:08:32.200is patient zero not in like a plague way but in like a the history of england way i made um a
00:08:40.320giant family tree on a bulletin board a couple months ago maybe i'll put a picture of it somewhere
00:08:45.320in the show notes for this podcast episode anyway john of gaunt is where where that begins it's my
00:08:51.800murder board of british history to try and straighten out for myself who fits in where and
00:08:57.480who is the father of who because all the especially the men's names are just like the same name over
00:09:01.660and over again and in some historical sources they're always just referred to as like clarence
00:09:05.620or gloucester even though that's like what they were duke of that's not their name anyway i refer
00:09:10.100to that murder board it just sits in my living room and it's uh when i was watching the hollow
00:09:15.680Crown, the recent-ish, within the last 10 years, recent-ish British TV miniseries version of some
00:09:22.920of Shakespeare's history plays. I kept like kind of referring back to that, to this bulletin board
00:09:28.740I made up to see who is who. But anyway, it starts with John of Gaunt. So he's a majorly important
00:09:32.560person. And in fact, it was from making that family tree that I first learned about Joan of
00:09:38.640England. So here we go. So Joan, age six, she returned back to England and she was set up in a
00:09:45.420oh and john have gone so her little that's her new little baby brother she just met so she
00:09:49.320returned to england and was set up in a separate household with her sister her older sister isabel
00:09:53.360staffed with a lady-in-waiting maids a valet and a minstrel personal minstrel it was to hear that
00:10:00.160the queen sent elaborate gifts like robes trimmed in fur silk stockings and fine dresses for the
00:10:04.500occasions at which they were seen by the rest of court the girls who became quite close shared a
00:10:08.500bedroom hung in silk and velvet based on household accounts it can be discerned that joan took a
00:10:14.040liking to needlework and her mother also often sent through thread for her to practice on the
00:10:19.160girls would eventually be joined by two more sisters mary and margaret a few years later so
00:10:23.540the family's just getting bigger and bigger and then uh it's time to prepare for joan's second
00:10:29.320betrothal and here i'm switching over to read from creative historian.co.uk uh so her second
00:10:37.140wedding was arranged with the castilians so castile who we're going to learn about them a bit
00:10:43.400later on but that's one of the kingdoms that would eventually sort of merge together with other ones
00:10:47.460to become Spain so the Castilians were allied with the French and their ships were a perpetual
00:10:52.260problem for English merchant ships which were frequently attacked a marriage between a Castilian
00:10:56.520prince and an English princess would hopefully pacify the Spanish if not lead to a proper
00:11:00.900alliance it wasn't the first time there was a wedding between the two kingdoms Joan's great
00:11:05.040grandmother was Eleanor of Castile but it was the last such wedding for over a hundred years between
00:11:10.300England and the Spanish kingdom. And you know what happened 100 years later, which was the marriage
00:11:14.940of Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Isabella of Castile, to King Henry VIII. So this is her new
00:11:23.280situation. This is where she's now going to be married to. So in the summer of 1348, so she is
00:11:31.940what now? She is about 15 years old. She departed England with a heavily armed retinue. So now I'm
00:11:39.380switching over to read from history of royal women.com the fleet consisted so this her fleet0.96
00:11:46.040it's like major so the fleet consisted of four english ships which departed from portsmouth and
00:11:51.480arrived in bordeaux the company settled into a castle joan traveled with a portable chapel so
00:11:56.840she would not have to use the local churches her trousseau consisted of 150 meters of fabric for
00:12:04.240her wedding dress a suit of red velvet two sets of 24 buttons made of silver gilt and enamel which
00:12:10.520is like just traveling with your silver button five corsets with gold patterns of stars crescents
00:12:16.300and diamonds and two elaborate dresses beds bed curtains ceremonial garments and different sets
00:12:20.500of clothes for writing and daily wear so like her entire life was there with her um and then
00:12:28.660a switch over i'm trying to like give equal weight to all these so when she went over um this is from
00:12:35.640wikipedia so her companions so her entourage included three leading officials uh robert
00:12:42.220bouchier the former royal chancellor andrew olford a diplomatic lawyer and the cathedral
00:12:46.980priest of bordeaux gerald depodio who is to see to the princess's spiritual needs joan also brought
00:12:53.400along her minstrel her castilian minstrel gracias de guyville who had been dispatched
00:12:58.540to england by prince pedro in order to entertain her with music and songs of the land of which she
00:13:02.840was to be queen that's so sweet um prince pedro presumably is the person yeah so peter of castile
00:13:10.140is the person that she was going to marry aka pedro so he was the kiss that's so nice he sent
00:13:15.360a minstrel for her it's like sending her like a mixtape so joan was escorted by over 100 formidable
00:13:21.820english bowmen like bow and arrow men um you see oh so her portable chapel as per wikipedia says
00:13:29.280it featured a couch decorated with fighting dragons and a border of vines powdered with
00:13:33.860gold byzantine coins while the altar cloth was decorated with dragons and serpents this is just
00:13:38.820like everything 15 years old okay um let me a lot about the fabric that she had with her i guess
00:13:45.300people just wrote that all in in some sort of like inventory situation but here's where it all
00:13:50.700gets awful so because this is a plague story so what happened um there's a good description of it
00:13:58.460so the first stage of the journey she went over to france at the time she left the plague this
00:14:03.520is from creative historian at the time she left england the plague hadn't reached england like
00:14:08.360england so stories of it were becoming known but the plague a disease we've all probably heard of
00:14:15.420the symptoms of which i should probably look up but i haven't but i will um so people didn't know
00:14:21.940about it then i'm gonna look up because i think it's not as we're faced with now a respiratory
00:14:27.660virus the plague was like so the bubonic plague um aka the black death also known as the pestilence
00:14:35.540um the great plague or the plague sometimes known as the great mortality or the black plague
00:14:40.640um this is again just wikipedia god bless um so i'm just want to look up what the um
00:14:48.340symptoms are so we can imagine that if you're listening to this like i've given you the
00:14:52.300warning like if you're listening to it and like here comes so the plague oh god there's pictures
00:14:59.300um so the most commonly known of symptom was the appearance of buboes so that's what's called
00:15:04.680bubonic plague which in the groin the neck and armpits which oozed pus and bled when opened so
00:15:09.220it's gross okay that's all we need to know it's gross um it's gross your body gets pustules and
00:15:14.720you die horribly that's all we need to know right okay so the plague had not been in england yet so
00:15:21.080she was just like cool okay i'm just going from england through france to castile that's what's
00:15:26.800going on so but as her ships with her hundred bowmen her like portable chapel etc as they
00:15:34.340arrived at Bordeaux they were told not to come on land because the town of Bordeaux was in the grip0.98
00:15:39.240of the plague and it wasn't safe for the English retinue to be there they were like whatever we're
00:15:44.440God's chosen people etc and so the party they ignored the warnings moved to the castle in the0.95
00:15:50.880town and that's just like this is the point at which I feel like this would be a really good
00:15:55.680horror movie sort of like the lighthouse or the witch where it's like really historically like
00:16:02.220feels really historically accurate and it's just this sort of like suspense of like oh god what's
00:16:06.500gonna go on so they moved to the castle in the town of bordeaux a town that was like beset with
00:16:11.800this horrific plague and weeks later members of the group started to fall ill so um so as soon as
00:16:20.380the members of the entourage began to fall ill in this like gruesome bubonic plague way uh joan
00:16:27.460was probably moved to a smaller village to so they're like oh you know they didn't people didn't
00:16:32.420there wasn't germ theory people didn't know about washing hands at this point but i think you just
00:16:36.760kind of know like if you're surrounded by people who are sick it's like let's not be here right now
00:16:41.400so she and other people from the entourage were moved to a smaller village oh here's um a little
00:16:48.680bit more backstory about bubonic plague so while we're in suspense joan moved to a smaller village
00:16:53.080to try and not die so the plague reached england in the late spring of 1348 and that was the
00:17:00.200that was the same year that she was traveling but anyway um so people started hearing about it but
00:17:05.960it wasn't like widespread so at like literally the same time she was traveling so it had moved
00:17:11.140sort of west through the traditional trading routes making its way to england which is kind
00:17:15.580of the furthest west the english government went into crisis mode the military campaign in france
00:17:19.820was paused and strict measures to contain the disease were implemented even so the european
00:17:24.820population um after this including the english was decimated um so this is this is just like the
00:17:31.920beginning of this horrible thing happened so okay so joan fled they fled towards castile which is
00:17:37.860where her husband pedro who sent her the minstrel was so they fled there to a smaller town um but
00:17:43.080the disease caught up with them quickly so let me just see where the best sort of yeah so as per
00:17:50.700wikipedia soon they watched in horror as members of the entourage began falling sick and dying
00:17:55.360robert bouchier the leader of the retinue died on august 20th um so joan feared for her life and
00:18:01.260she moved to a small village called loremo where she remained for quote some time however she could
00:18:05.960not escape the disease and became its first victim in the camp suffering a violent and quick attack
00:18:11.700and dying on july 1st 1348 so this is a letter um rebecca star brown has it quoted i'm going to
00:18:21.360kind of skim through it just for podcast reasons so this is a letter sent by so edward her father
00:18:28.340her poor father wrote to king alfonso the father of pedro so they were going to be fathers-in-law
00:18:34.120and now they're not recently died so he wrote we are sure that your magnificence knows how
00:18:38.540after much contracted negotiation about the intended marriage of the renowned prince pedro
00:18:42.760your eldest son and our most beloved daughter joan which was designed to nurture perpetual peace and
00:18:47.740to create an indissoluble union between our royal houses we sent our said daughter to bordeaux en
00:18:53.700route for your territories in spain but see with what intense bitterness of heart we have to tell
00:18:58.360you this destructive death who seizes young and old alike sparing no one and reducing rich and
00:19:03.480poor to the same level has lamentably snatched from both of us our dearest daughter whom we
00:19:08.320love best of all as her virtues demanded no fellow human being could be surprised if we were inwardly
00:19:13.760desolated by the sting of this bitter grief for we are humans too but we who have placed our trust
00:19:19.160in god and our life between his hands where he has held it closely through many great dangers we give
00:19:23.940thanks to him that one of our own family free of all stain whom we have loved with our life has
00:19:28.680been sent ahead to heaven to reign among the choirs of virgins where she can gladly intercede
00:19:33.200for our offenses before god so mystery still surrounds the fate of her remains um so no one
00:19:41.280quite knows what happened to her because i don't know a lot about plague history but i'm gonna
00:19:49.420guess people maybe don't want a plague body to be sent um back there because maybe they would
00:19:55.560even if you don't know about germs you're like this might bring some bad um luck to us all so
00:20:01.780in October so she died and then in October the grieving Edward III paid for Joan's body to be
00:20:08.420recovered but there is no record of it being returned to England instead there are differing
00:20:13.280accounts of her burial in Bayonne and of her actually dying in Bordeaux with the mayor setting
00:20:18.260fire to the Plantagenet castle where Joan's body lay so regardless of where her remains ended up
00:20:24.620if anywhere her statue did make its way into Westminster Abbey near her father's tomb and
00:20:29.640that's kind of the only um publicly available image we have of her which is statue i'm going
00:20:35.760to see if there's any more details i can give you so yeah so that no tomb has been found suggesting
00:20:41.080that if she was indeed buried in a church near the place of her death it would have been a kind
00:20:44.980of anonymous grave that many plague victims were given like there's that many people dying you'd
00:20:49.300bury them all together um let me just see so one of the people from her entourage andrew olford
00:20:56.420the diplomatic lawyer was not affected by the plague so he was immune magically so he traveled
00:21:03.200he's the one who traveled to england to inform the king of his daughter's death and everyone was
00:21:07.320shocked uh not only was she one of the earliest english victims of the epidemic which by then had
00:21:12.220begun attacking england but her death also seemed to prove that even royalty would not be spared
00:21:16.320and this was the sort of situation where people were sort of like but we're rich which means we're
00:21:21.520good and better and so nothing bad can ever happen to us and that um i think in some other
00:21:27.680plague mini episodes we're going to look at that as well because um there's other royals in
00:21:33.980histories who were like well we're we're royals we can't ever die of plague but as we all know
00:21:39.880especially right now um anyone is susceptible to anything because we're all just fragile little
00:21:45.260human bodies so um so there's a bit more detail here in wikipedia about trying to reclaim her
00:21:52.360body so edward the third tried to retrieve her body to return return it for burial the leader
00:21:58.480of this expedition and i mean brave of them to go back over into like plaguelands although i guess
00:22:04.500everywhere is plaguelands at this point but it feels like going into like the thing like that
00:22:09.820arctic place where it's like okay here's a place where like everyone died so the leader of this
00:22:14.840group was uh the bishop of carlisle oh who was overpaid by the king because of the high risk
00:22:20.680involved so that's good he got some hazard pay it is unknown what happened next again there's no
00:22:26.240record of jones remains being returned to england or any account of a funeral of any kind um oh
00:22:32.400here's some more details so according to medievalist norman cantor in his book the last night
00:22:37.060the twilight of the middle ages and the birth of the modern era so norman cantor theorizes that
00:22:42.740joan died in bordeaux where the mayor in an effort to stop the plague set fire to the port um so just
00:22:49.060everywhere that anyone had ever been burning the plantagenet castle there as well so her body was
00:22:53.980inside the castle and could not recovered and that is the story of joan of england we're not going to
00:23:02.160give her a score because it's not that kind of episode um but but that's that's just a mini
00:23:09.200episode a story of pandemic and plague and what i find so fascinating about the story that why
00:23:15.480once everyone or most people have been um going into uh social distancing and or isolation and
00:23:24.860or quarantine like just when this started happening in the world i was just like oh who
00:23:28.220was that person who like i just remembered from when i was putting together the my family tree
00:23:34.680of the british royal family i remembered coming across somebody so the thing with my family tree
00:23:38.380that I made is it's not the size of a wall of a house it's um modestly sized so I couldn't put
00:23:45.780everybody on so I wound up only having to having space to keep on people who were the parents of
00:23:51.020someone who were the parents of someone who became important later and so Joan never had any children
00:23:56.180never got married um so her story was really interesting but there wasn't on this murder
00:24:01.160board but I think her story is worth remembering and I also think it would make a really great
00:24:05.060horror movie um if someone out there is a get on that so i'm gonna i think record some more of
00:24:13.080these little mini podcast episodes if it's something you want to listen to awesome if it's
00:24:19.440not like skip these episodes that's fine um you in real time just heard me unable to even read
00:24:25.980the wikipedia description of what bubonic plague is like so i understand very well not everybody
00:24:32.900wants to listen to everything all the time but for me I find some sort of not comfort but just
00:24:37.900like commiseration knowing that like humanity has been through this sort of thing before and
00:24:44.960the world continues on and tragedy can happen and do happen and are happening and it's all just kind
00:24:52.720of I don't know so just feeling like we're part of a larger thing like all of the in this way we're
00:24:58.940also vulnerable in these very huge ways so anyway um my name is ann foster and this is a vulgar
00:25:05.940history pandemic special plague story mini episode um wash your hands don't touch your face
00:25:13.540stay indoors and there'll be a regular episode come on wednesday that i think i'm gonna do my
00:25:20.460best to promise you that it'll be totally plague free content if that's not something you want to
00:25:25.100listen to but if it is i'm gonna also be doing some more of these episodes so uh stay safe um be
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00:26:07.340your next move tomorrow. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders
00:26:15.540an army scattered like bones in the dust.
00:26:19.140Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world,
00:26:23.340praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight.
00:26:26.600But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.
00:26:30.880This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.