There is a seal of her arms in Watson's Hist. of the Warrens, pl. 2, 44, and in Sandford's Royal Genealogies, p. 122. The seal is remarkable as exhibiting all the coats of England, Castile, Leon, and Bar, arranged round that of Warenne, each in a separate lozenge. Bar, "azure, semé of cross crosslets fiché, or. two barbels endorsed of the same, over all."
How little was known of her at the residence of her husband, appears by the brief and erroneous entry concerning her in the chartulary of the Lewes monks, who confused her brother Edward with her father Henry, when enumerating the Countesses of Warren, so many of whom lay under the tombs in their priory.
"The lady Joanna de Bars, Countess of Surrey, daughter of Edward, Count de Baars, wife of John, the last earl, died on the last day of August in the year of grace 1361. She is not buried in England (non jacet in Anglia)." f. 109.
The countess had probably dwelt little in England during her latter days, but before she carried to a foreign grave the title of a husband who had repudiated her, full retribution had fallen on him in a manner which must have deeply mortified the representative of so noble a line. There were no children from his own unhappy marriage with Joanna: Maud de Neirford's sons, and Maud herself, were all dead. King Edward III, esteeming him as a soldier,[1] had entrusted him with the defence of the Sussex coast in 1339, and with more covetousness than propriety, in disregard of his own cousin's rights, had strangely authorised the earl's second marriage with Isabel de Houland, though the Countess Joanna was yet living, on the condition formally expressed in the king's license, that the heir of such union should contract a royal marriage, in order to transfer all the Warenne estates to the royal family. The earl, however, had died in 1347, without any male issue, and was therefore the last who bore the title of Warenne. Edward III, by a deed dated June 30, 1359, agreed with the Countess Joanna to pay her £120 yearly, in
- ↑ The gateway tower of Lewes Castle, lately opened to view by this Society, was probably built by him in the year 1334.
