Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/399

Joan accession of Richard in June he passed from her control (ib. p. 147).

In 1378 interposition made on her behalf by Sir Lewis Clifford arrested the proceedings against Wycliffe in the synod at Lambeth (ib. p. 183). According to Bishop Stubbs (Const. Hist. ii. 440), she acted at the instigation of Wycliffe's patron, John of Gaunt. Whether the Princess really leaned to Wycliffite opinions there is hardly sufficient evidence to determine. In Clement XI's bull of 22 May 1377, instructing the Archbishop of Canterbury to warn the King and nobles against Wycliffe's heresies, she seems to be mentioned with peculiar emphasis (Chron. Angl. p. 176), and several of her knights, William Neville, Lewis Clifford, and Richard Stury, are included in a list of the chief lollards (ib. p. 377). In her will, among the executors of which these knights were included with Bishops Wykeham and Braybroke (a relative of Joan), she expressly affirms her adherence to the catholic faith (, Royal Wills, pp. 78-81, ed. 1780). In 1378 Joan received a robe of the Garter (, pp. ccxxi, 246).

At the outbreak of the peasants' revolt in June 1381, she fell in, according to Froissart (ix. 891), with the Kentish rebels as she was returning from Canterbury to London, but escaped with a few kisses. The English authorities only mention the scene in the Tower on the morning of Friday, 14 June, when the rebels ran riot in the royal chambers, and `matrem regis ad oscula invitabant.´ The decline of John of Gaunt's influence after the rebellion gave new occasion for the Princess's mediation. In the early part of 1385, though she was oppressed by illness and her growing corpulence made travel difficult, she journeyed backwards and forwards between Wallingford, where she now lived, and Pontefract, to heal the breach between Richard and John of Gaunt, which threatened the realm with civil strife (, ii. 126). Her efforts were rewarded with success. Just before starting on his Scottish expedition, Richard, on 12 June, ordered Lewis Clifford, Richard Stury, and three other knights to remain with his mother wherever she might choose to reside, for her protection (Fœdera, vii. 474, orig. ed.). When news reached her of Richard's resolve to punish John, her son by her first marriage, for the murder of Ralph Stafford (see under, 1352?-1400), she sent messengers to implore the King to have mercy on his half-brother. Grief at Richard's refusal of her request proved fatal (, ii. 130;, col. 2675-6; Chron. Angl. p. 365). She made her will on 7 Aug., and according to Beltz (p. 219) died at Wallingford Castle the same day, being the Thursday before the feast of St. Lawrence; but Chauncy (Hist. of Herts. p. 204), referring to the same entry on the Escheat Rolls (9 Rich. II, No. 54), gives the Thursday after that feast (i.e. 14 Aug.) She left manors in twenty-six counties, mainly in Lincolnshire (ib.) In her will, which was proved 9 Dec. 1385, she ordered that she should be buried in her chapel in the Church of the Friars Minor at Stamford, near the monument of her first husband. Her body, wrapped in waxed swathings, was kept in a lead coffin until the king's return from Scotland. The date of interment seems fixed by the adjournment of the judges in the Scrope-Grosvenor case on 27 Jan. 1386, `on account of the interment of my lady mother´ (Scrope-Grosv. Roll, p. 38, ed. Nicolas). The King kept the chapel in repair (Fœdera, vii. 527, orig. ed.) The death of the Princess was followed by a fresh outbreak of those political quarrels which she had striven to heal.

There is a portrait of Joan as Princess of Wales, copied in Strutt´s 'Regal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities,' No. xxxv., ed. 1793, from a fine illumination perhaps by Alan Strayler, in the catalogue of benefactors of the abbey of St. Albans (Cott. MS. Nero, d. vii.). Peck, in his 'Annals of Stamford' (lib. xii. p. 11, 1727), figures a female bust with hair dishevelled about the shoulders, which was set in his time in the western outwall of the Greyfriars enclosure at Stamford. Peck suggested that it might be part of the monument erected to his mother by Richard, which survived till the dissolution of the monasteries. These portraits do not corroborate the traditions of her beauty.

 JOAN or JOANNA (1370?–1437), queen of Henry IV of England, second daughter of Charles d'Albret, surnamed the Bad, king of Navarre, and Joanna, daughter of John II, king of France, was born about 1370. In 1380 she was betrothed to John, the heir of Castile, but the match was broken off. Next