troubled reign of Henry III, as such assemblages were often the pretext for indulging private feuds, or for carrying on political conspiracies.
No such reason existing to render such a gathering of armed force dangerous at the time, in February, 1305, Edward I being then at Bamburgh, of which castle the old warrior John Earl de Warenne had been governor in 1294-5, dispatched John the young earl, his grandson, expressly in order to attend a tournament at Guildford, a portion of the tolls of which town the earl held in capite as parcel of his barony of Surrey.[1] The wardrobe accounts of the period preserve to us the record of numerous payments made to him while thus employed in the king's service. The sums thus paid, from 40s. to £30, amounted in a short space to £79. 10s. 2d.
The earl was but eighteen, when the king arranged his marriage with his grand-daughter Joanna. Her father Henry, the third of that name. Count de Bar,[2] had married, September 20th, 1293, the king's eldest daughter Eleanor, and on March 15th, 1306, this second marriage was publicly announced, though the bride was not much more than half the age of her young husband. Discord, sorrow, and disgrace were the eventual results of this union; but the early days of welcome and festivity in the court betrayed no augury of such a fate, and the childish bride was probably too much delighted with the strains of the royal minstrels, the sports of falconry, and the pomp of her new chariot to heed the future. From her landing at Dover in April, 1306, entries of numerous large payments for her reception are recorded.
"In oblations of the king at the altar in his chapel, on account of the good news he heard from France by the Lady Johanna de Baar, viis. April 12."—EB. 2038.
"For the expenses of the daughter of the Count de Bare coming from Dover to the king, April 13, xxli.—On the 20th April, xxli.—On the 28th April, cs.—On the 29th, cs.—Again, xls.—On May 4, cs, and xlli."—Wardrobe Acc. EB. 983-1912.
All this was preparatory to the marriages of the two orphaned grandchildren of the king on successive days—Hugh
- ↑ Madox, Bar. Angl., p. 250.
- ↑ The princess and her husband are erroneously styled duke and duchess in Mrs. Wood's Lives of the Princesses, 2, 305, usually so accurate; but the county was not raised to a duchy till 1334. The appearance of the family in England was also long anterior to the date of 1290, assigned by her.
