Lady Joan 'the Fair Maid of Kent' , suo jure Baroness Wake of Lidell and Countess of Kent
Joan Plantagenet, "The Fair Maid of Kent," so called from her extraordinary beauty. This distinguished woman inherited the Earldom of Kent and Earldom of Woodstock, honours of her father, and the Barony of Wake, a dignity of her mother, from which latter peerage she styled herself "Lady of Wake." She was celebrated as one of the most beautiful women of her time and is said to have been the heroine of the episode upon which the "Order of the Garter" was founded. It was when King Edward III (her first cousin, their father's, both being sons of Edward I), picked up a garter she had dropped on the ballroom floor and uttered the famous words, "Honi Mal," "Evil to him who evil thinks." She was married three times:
4816. Edmund de Holand , 4rth Earl of Kent, Baron Wake, Woodstock and Holand
Edmund Holland, Duke of Kent, 2nd son of Thomas and Alice Holland, had by Constance Plantagenet (daughter of Edmund, Duke of York, 5th son of Edward III, and was created Earl of Cambridge by his father in 1362, and Duke of York by his nephew, Richard II, in 1385. He married Isabel, daughter of Peter, King of Castile and Leon), a daughter, Eleanor.
© 2001, Saul M. Montes-Bradley. All Rights Reserved