It could be said there was never a more dashing or romantic profile of a man in history, with perhaps the exception of Robin Hood or Richard the Lion Hearted. John of Gaunt had possessed an incredible array of property and land, in today's value would be equal to 110 billion, making him the 16th richest man in all of history.
His first child, a daughter, was born out of wedlock to the lady in waiting for his mother, the queen. His next marriage was to his third cousin, Blanche of Lancaster. Her barren sister was unable to produce children, and at her death, the title of Duke of Lancaster was given to John, the son in law of the last Duke. She died of the plague, and her two daughters were given to Katherine de Swynford for raising. John held annual commemorations for Blanche the rest of his life. Of their seven children, four died in infancy or childhood, the daughters married well or to kings, and the son became the King of England.
John's second marriage to Constance of Castille was strictly political. While John never attached to the crown, his daughter by Constance would become Queen of Castile. Constance would die in 1394, 54 years old.
John's third marriage in 1396, was to the love of his life (besides Blanche) and after they had reared four children together. They were in their fifties and enjoyed each other's company for a very few short, precious years. He died in 1399, Katherine followed in 1403. John is buried next to blanch, Katherine is buried with her daughter Joan.
1342 Earl of Richmond
1361 Knight of the Garter1361 Earl of Derby, Duke of Lancaster, Lord of Beaufort and Nogent
1362 Earl of Lincoln, Earl of Leicester
1372 Abdicated Earl of Richmond
1390 Duke of Aquitane
Knight of the Garter, Duke of Aquitane, Earl of Derby, Lincoln and Leicester. Steward of England, Lieutenant of Aquitance.
In the right of his 2nd wife; titular King of Castile and Leon.
His first and illegitamate daughter, Marie, by his mother's damsel, was granted a pension from her father in 1399. Marie was living 1413.
John and Katherine de Roet, widow of Hugh de Swynford, started their affair in 1372. In 1377, John granted her the manors of Gringley and Wheatley in Nottinghamshire, for life. John stayed away from her in 1381 due to the notoriety of the situation, as he was still married to Constanza of Castile. In 1387, both Katherine and her daughter were living with John's daughter in law, Mary de Bohun, the Countess of Derby. In 1390, John and Katherine lived together openly, and married at Lincoln Cathedral 13 Jan 1396, their dispensation was dated 01 Sep 1396. Their four children were legitimized by Parliament 09 Feb 1397. John would live only two more years, Duchess Katherine would follow in 1403.
Very little is known about her mother, Clemence. In April 1226, Joan obtained a papal decree from Pope Honorius III declaring her legitimate on the basis that her parents had not been married to any other person at the time, and she agreed not to lay any claim to the throne.
William de Braose had arranged to marry his daughter, Isabella, to Llywelyn's heir, Dafydd. was found, Easter 1230, in Llywelyn's private bed chamber with Joan. He was hung 02 May 1230 at Abergwyngregyn. Joan was placed under house arrest until Isabella dn Dafydd were married after all.
It is said Llywelyn mourned Joan horribly when she died. He suffered a stroke abd relied on his sons to rule.
Joan's stone coffin can be seen in Beaumaris parish church, Anglesey. Above the empty coffin is a slate panel inscribed: "This plain sarcophagus, (once dignified as having contained the remains of Joan, daughter of King John, and consort of Llywelyn ap Iowerth, Prince of North Wales, who died in the year 1237), having been conveyed from the Friary of Llanfaes, and alas, used for many years as a horsewatering trough, was rescued from such an indignity and placed here for preseravation as well as to excite serious meditation on the transitory nature of all sublunary distinctions.
In 1297, after her husband's death, Joan secretly married Ralph de Monthermer, a knight in the Clare household. Her father, King Edward had other marriage plans for Joan, was furious, threw Ralph in jail but later sanctioned the marriage.
She was called "The Fair Maid of Kent" because of her extraordinary beauty. She was celebrated as one of the most beautiful women of her time and was probably the heroine upon which the "Order of the Garter" was founded. The French chronicler Froissart called Joan "the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving." She was much loved by the people of England and by her family.
Joan of Kent was born in 1328 to Edmund of Woodstock Plantagenet, 1st Earl of Kent, son of King Edward I of England, and Margaret Wake, 3rd Baroness Wake of Liddell. She was the third of four children. Her father, the Earl of Kent, was executed for political reasons when Joan was only a toddler. Her cousin, King Edward III, took responsibility for the family, and brought them to live at the royal court with him.
When Joan was twelve years old, she fell in love with a soldier named Thomas Holland. They married in secret, without the approval of Joan's parents. However, that same year, Thomas was sent overseas to fight in the Hundred Years' War, and that winter, Joan's parents married her to William Montague, son of the 1st Earl of Salisbury. Joan did not disclose her previous marriage to Thomas because she feared that he would be executed for treason. Several years later, Thomas returned to England and discovered that his wife had been married to another man. Now, Thomas confessed his secret marriage to Joan in the hopes that her marriage to Montague would be declared invalid. When Montague discovered that Joan supported Thomas's case, he became very angry and locked Joan in their home as a prisoner. The marriage between Joan and Montague was eventually annulled in 1349, when Joan was twenty-one. Joan then went to live with Thomas, and the happily reunited couple had several children before Thomas's death in 1360.
Their children were: Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent, born 1350; John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter, born circa 1352; Joan Holland, born 1356, who married John V, Duke of Brittany; and Maud Holland, born 1359, who married Waleran III of Luxembourg, Count of Ligny. Some sources also list a fifth child, Edmund Holland, born 1354, who died young. Joan inherited the titles of Countess of Kent and Lady Wake of Liddell in 1352 with the death of the last of her siblings.
Joan's second marriage in 1651 was to her first cousin once removed, Edward the Black Prince, the eldest son of King Edward III. They married secretly in the spring of 1361 and again in public at Windsor Castle 10 Oct 1361. Though their marriage would have been forbidden because they were closely related, Pope Innocent VI intervened and granted a dispensation which allowed the couple to be married. When Edward was invested Prince of Aquitaine, the couple moved to France, where they had their two children, Edward, born 1365, and Richard, born 1367. She requested in her will she be buried with her first husband, Sir Thomas, at Grefriars Church, which is now the site of a hospital.
Joan's son John, the 1st Duke of Exeter, had a terrible temper. One of his men was accidentally killed by Ralph Stafford's men. Stafford went to John to apologize, and was killed the moment he identified himself. Richard II, his half brother seized his properties, and Joan died during this time, it was said she died of grief at the fighting between her two sons.
Thomas Josselyn lived in 1637 at Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts. In Hingham he was a proprietor and town officer, and bought land in 1638 from his son-in-law Thomas Nichols (husband of daughter Rebecca).
From Edith Wessler's Josselyn genealogy: On his arrival in New England, the ship docked at Boston. Thomas went first to Watertown, Mass. The settlers there heard the glowing reports of the Musketsquid valley, the long lush meadows, the tall swamp grass, the rolling hills with timber. The fish were plentiful in the stream. The natural clearings could be planted without the drudgery of stump-pulling and wood cutting. As shipload after shipload of immigrants arrived from England to settle in the seacoast communities, the inhabitants at Watertown were feeling the need of more meadow. Consequently, in 1637, the greater part of the Watertown inhabitants petitioned the General Court that they "might leave to remove and settle a plantation upon the River which runs to Concord." Thomas became an original proprietor in the new settlement which in 1639 was given the name, "Sudbury." . . . Samuel Maverick, probably the town clerk in 1660, wrote - "They plant and breed cattle, and gett something by trading with the Indians." In 1640, the first Sudbury Church was organized, Congregationalist in government, and Calvinist in doctrine. It was called a "Meeting House." So bitter were the New England Colonists against the Anglican Church, that the word "church" was forbidden and excluded from common usage for a full century. Like all the puritan houses of that day, we may assume that Thomas' first house in this new land was built on what we would term the medieval pattern; with huge chimneys, casement windows, sturdy doors, and many gables. He was a man of substance, and men of substance, especially Englishmen, did not live in log cabins in that particular period. It appears that his sons, Abraham and Joseph, joined their parents between 1637 and 1645. Joseph probably remained in the family home in Sudbury, and Abraham went to Hingham, a town southeast of Boston, at the southern end of Boston Bay. We find Thomas and his family in Hingham in 1645, where he was a proprietor and Selectman (town officer). He had bought land of his son-in-law Thomas Nichols. Since a number of the descendants of Thomas Josselyn grew up in Hingham, a few remarks about this town would not be amiss at this point in our narrative. Hingham is one of the oldest towns in Massachusetts. There were settlers there as early as 1633. The town consisted of perhaps less than one hundred homes, and a half dozen streets such as North Street where the Josselyns lived, South Street, Main Street, Spring Street and Bachelor Row. These were not the kind of streets we have today. They were unimproved; merely grassy lanes with deep-cut ruts from farm wagons and other vehicles. There were no sidewalks. Paths led from house to house and from farm to farm. All the families were large. The women wove the cloth that made their garments. We would say their clothes were homespun. Farming seems to have been their chief business at that time. Commercial relations were not always carried out by payments in money, but sometimes wholly or in part, in produce. Thomas is listed in the Colonial records as "husbandman and pioneer;" as a man of "business ability and generous disposition.
By a deed dated 29 September 1613, Thomas's father Ralph and uncle Simon conveyed ten acres of farm land to Thomas's brother Ralph Jr. and to a John Jude, yeoman, of Radwinter, Essex.2 After the death of Ralph senior, the land was to go to Thomas Josselin and Rebecca Jude and their future heirs "lawfully begotten." If however Ralph senior's executors paid Thomas and Rebecca £100 within a year of Ralph's death, the conveyance would be voided. Evidently Ralph Josselin senior had borrowed £100 from John Jude, probably Rebecca's father, and the conveyance was part of a marriage settlement in anticipation of the marriage of Thomas and Rebecca.3 This deed explains why Thomas's father, in his will of 1626, left him only £5.
According to a tree located at http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~hdevoe/FamHist/site/p1232.htm, Ralph's lineages goes back to a Sir Gilbert Josselyn, the son of a knight who came to England from France with King Edward in 1042. He lists his sources as Edith S Wessler's Josselyn Family.
According to an article by Elizabeth French in the July 1917 issue of The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Sir Gilbert was a wealthy Norman knight who came into England with William the Conqueror, married the daughter of a Saxon thane (a free retainer of an Anglo-Saxon lord), and settled in Lincolnshire. https://archive.org/details/josselynfamilyen00fren
A thirteenth-century manuscript stated His father was born in Normandy, his mother a lady of Sempringham. His father, as they say, was a Norman knight which came to this land with King William at the Conquest and married the lady of Sempringham (translated from the Latin original into English by John Capgrave in 1451, and retranslated into modern English by Eric W. Iredale in 1987).