The influential Lady Mohun and her daughter.

In his book The Court of Richard II Father Gervase Mathew stated that Joan, Lady Mohun was one of the more influential ladies of Richard's court. This seems likely to be true, if only because the Appellants banished her from court in 1388 - they'd scarcely have bothered if she'd just been sitting there quietly producing embroidery, would they?

One of Anne of Bohemia's last acts was to grant Lady Mohun Leeds Castle, in Kent. Not a bad Christmas present you may think! Yet there are some dunderheads around who believe that medieval noblewomen were all powerless nonentities. True, they didn't have the vote, or the right to sit in councils and parliaments, but they had influence, direct and indirect, and some of them knew how to use it.

Lady Mohun had been granted a jointure in all her late husband's lands. To finance her comfortable life at court she sold the reversion to the Lutterell family (of psalter fame) and thus disinherited her three daughters.

The youngest of these was Philippa, who most improbably became the wife of Edward of York around 1397. She was at least 10 years older than her husband - Pugh is unkind enough to suggest that she was old enough to be his mother.

Philippa had been married twice before, but had no children. It seems odd that Edward, the heir of York, should have chosen a wife who was most unlikely to give him a son. Moreover, a woman who was not an heiress, merely in possession of a life interest in her modest Fitzwalter and Golafre dower properties. The explanation seems to be that Edward was not a conventional thinker, and he simply loved her. This is one of his more endearing qualities. Some of you may find (lack of children apart) some congruence with the tale of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville a couple of generations on.

Although Edward and Philippa were certainly married by 1398, in which year, at the height of his power as Duke of Aumale, Lord High Constable, etc., etc., he procured from the Pope a Plenary Indulgence to cover them both - a buy yourself out of purgatory card. Apart from this Philippa is rarely mentioned in the early years of their marriage and did not, for example, get Garter robes as his consort until 1408. I've often scratched my head over why this might have been, but am forced back to the conclusion that medieval clerks made as many mistakes as modern computer operators.