Ancestral Glimpses » Joan d'Acres Plantagênet Princess of England (± 1270-1307)

Personal data Joan d'Acres Plantagênet Princess of England 

• Alternative name: Princess Joan de Acre
• She was born about 1270 in Acre, Galilee, Palestine, ISRAEL.
• (TITL) : Countess of Gloucester and Hertford.
• She died on April 23, 1307 in Clare, Suffolkshire, ENGLAND.
• She is buried on April 26, 1307 in Austin Friars', Clare, Suffolk, ENGLAND.
• A child of Edward Plantagênet and Eleanor de Castile
• This information was last updated on November 12, 2017.

Household of Joan d'Acres Plantagênet Princess of England

She is married to Gilbert de Clare.

They got married November 1289.

Child(ren):

1. Margaret de Clare  ± 1292-1342 
2. Alianore de Clare  1292-1326 
3. Elizabeth de Clare  ± 1295-1360 
4. Gilbert de Clare  

Notes about Joan d'Acres Plantagênet Princess of England

Second of Edward II's five elder sisters.
Joan of Acre was the seventh or eighth child of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, and the second to survive childhood. She was born in Akko, Syria sometime in the spring of 1272, while her parents were on crusade, and was known as 'Joan of Acre' to distinguish her from another dau. of Edward and Eleanor named Joan, who was born and died in 1265. Another dau., name unknown, was born about a year before Joan, also in the Holy Land, and died as a baby. A few weeks after Joan's birth, on 17 Jun 1272, a would-be assassin stabbed her father with a poisoned dagger; the story that Eleanor of Castile sucked the poison out of the wound is, sadly, only a legend.
In Sep 1272, Edward and Eleanor left the Holy Land, with Joan, and traveled via Sicily and Rome to France and then Gascony; Joan's brother Alfonso was born in Bayonne in Nov 1273. Her grand-father Henry III had died in Nov 1272, when she was a few months old, and her father succeeded as king of England. In Aug 1274, Edward and Eleanor finally returned to England, after an absence of four years, and their coronation took place that month. A few weeks later, Joan's six-year-old brother Henry, whom she never met, died suddenly at Guildford, and Alfonso became heir to the throne.
Joan did not travel to England with her parents, but remained in France with her maternal grand-mother, Jeanne de Dammartin, countess of Ponthieu and dowager queen of Castile. After Jeanne's death in 1279, she set foot in England for the first time, at the age of seven. There, she finally met her siblings: Eleanor, ten, Alfonso, five and a half, Margaret, four, and the baby Mary. Two sisters had died the year before: two-year-old Berengaria and a baby girl, name unknown. (Edward I and Eleanor of Castile had a lot of daus.)
In 1277-78, Edward I arranged his dau.'s betrothal to Hartmann von Hapsburg, the seventh child and second son of King Rudolf of Germany and Gertrud von Hohenberg. Hartmann was born in 1263, so was nine years older than Joan, and had previously been betrothed to Kunigunde of Bohemia. According to the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy site, their wedding was to take place on 8 Sep 1278 at Westminster Abbey, but was postponed - because Joan was still in Ponthieu, or because she was still only six years old! Unfortunately for the plans of King Edward and King Rudolf, Hartmann drowned in the Rhine, after his ship sank, on 21 Dec 1281, supposedly on his way to England to marry Joan. He was only eighteen years of age.
Little is known about Joan's life in the 1280s. Her youngest (full) siblings Elizabeth and Edward of Caernarfon were born in 1282 and 1284, and Alfonso - the sibling closest to Joan in age - died in Aug 1284. In May 1286, when she was fourteen, her parents left for Gascony and didn't return for over three years. Joan is known to have quarrelled with a wardrobe clerk during this time, and refused to accept money from him to pay her expenses. On his return from Gascony, Edward set about organizing his children's marriages - and paying Joan's debts.
On 30 Apr 1290, around the time of her eighteenth birthday, Joan md. the rich, powerful and turbulent Gilbert "the Red" de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, who was nearly three decades older than she was, born in Sep 1243. Isabel, the elder of his daus. by his first wife Alice de Lusignan, was ten years Joan's senior. For her wedding, Joan wore a girdle and head-dress of gold, decorated with rubies and emeralds, bought for her in Paris at a cost of fifty pounds. She and Gilbert left court soon after the wedding to honeymoon at Tonbridge Castle in Kent, without her father's permission -- to the king's great annoyance. Very expensive girdles and head-dresses notwithstanding, the ceremony was a quiet, family affair, unlike the wedding of her younger sister Margaret a few weeks later.
There's no way of knowing what kind of relationship Joan and Gilbert had, though they produced four children in five and a half years of marriage. Their eldest, Gilbert, was born a little over a year after the wedding, at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. He was Edward I's eldest grand-child (Edward I was fifty-one at the time). Eleanor of Castile had died a few months previously, so never saw her grand-son, though perhaps she knew before she died that Joan was pregnant.
Gilbert de Clare died in Dec 1295, aged fifty-two, a few weeks after the birth of their youngest child Elizabeth, leaving Joan a widow at the age of twenty-three. Edward I set plans in motion for Joan to marry Count Amadeus V of Savoy, who was also decades her senior, born in abt. 1249. However, she calmly informed him that she was already md., to Ralph de Monthermer, a squire of her late husband. Edward I was furious, seized Joan's lands, and imprisoned Ralph. However, there was little he could do. He could not unmarry the couple - only the Pope could do that - and released Ralph.
The date of Joan and Ralph's marriage is not known, but probably took place in Jan 1297, and their first child, Mary, was born in Oct that year. Ralph de Monthermer's parentage is obscure, though apparently he was illegitimate - in 1304, the Annals of London called him "the bastard Ralph de Monthermer." He was born in abt. 1262, so was about ten years older than Joan. (His Inquisition Post Mortem of 1325 gives his age as sixty-three, which surprised me - I had always pictured him as about Joan's age, or a little younger).
It took a very long time for Edward I's anger towards Ralph to cool, and for him to accept the marriage, but by 1304, Ralph had become earl of Gloucester by right of his wife. (He lost the title on her death.) A letter sent by Edward of Caernarfon to Ralph on 30 May 1304 says "it pleases us very much, and gives us great joy, that our dear sister has the consent of our dear lord the king, our father and yours." Finally! After more than seven years and four children! Edward called Ralph, in the eleven letters he sent him in 1304 and 1305, "our very dear brother", and it seems that he considered Ralph to be a member of his inner circle, and a trustworthy and reliable confidant.
Edward was also close to Joan of Acre, twelve years his senior. In 1305, during the period he had quarrelled violently with their father and had his income cut drastically, Joan lent him her seal, so that he could buy goods. As her secret marriage to Ralph amply demonstrates, Joan was not afraid of her harsh father, or the fact that he would likely be furious at her helping Edward (their sister Mary made sure she had the permission of the king before writing to Edward, whereas Joan didn't bother).
Joan bore Ralph four children, two daus. and two sons. All of her children were older than her youngest half-sibling Eleanor, born in May 1306, when Joan was thirty-four. Edward I's eldest grand-child was fifteen years older than his youngest child.
Joan of Acre, countess of Gloucester and Hertford, died on 23 Apr 1307, around the time of her thirty-fifth birthday, and was bur. at the Augustinian friary at Clare, in Suffolk. Her death may have been pregnancy or childbirth-related, though it's not certain. A few weeks later, her father died, and her brother succeeded as Edward II.
Ralph de Monthermer remained a widower for eleven years, then md. Isabel Hastings, one of the sisters of Hugh Despenser the younger - also without the king's permission. As I've said before, Ralph must really have had self-confidence, to persuade two ladies to marry him without royal consent.

Children of Joan of Acre:
Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, 1291-1314, md. Maud de Burgh, no surviving children (Gilbert had a son John, born Apr 1312, who died young).

Eleanor de Clare, 1292-1337, md. Hugh Despenser the younger and William la Zouche, about eleven children.

Margaret de Clare, 1294-1342, md. Piers Gaveston and Hugh Audley the younger, two daus.

Elizabeth de Clare, 1295-1360, md. John de Burgh, Theobald de Verdon and Roger Damory, a son and two daus.

Mary de Monthermer, 1297-aft. 1371, md. Duncan MacDuff, earl of Fife, one dau.

Joan de Monthermer, 1299-?, nun at Amesbury.

Thomas de Monthermer, 1301-1340, md. Margaret, widow of Henry Tyes, one dau. (Thomas's grand-son John Montacute, earl of Salisbury, was beheaded in 1400 after taking part in the unsuccessful plot to restore Richard II to the throne.)

Edward de Monthermer, 1304-1340, never md.

Do you have supplementary information, corrections or questions with regards to Joan d'Acres Plantagênet Princess of England?
The author of this publication would love to hear from you!

Timeline Joan d'Acres Plantagênet Princess of England

Click on the names for more info. Symbols used:  grandparents    parents    brothers/sisters    children