Joan of England, Queen of Scotland

Joan of England
Joan of England
Queen consort of Scotland
Tenure	21 June 1221 – 4 March 1238
Born	22 July 1210
Died	4 March 1238 (aged 27); Havering-atte-Bower
Burial	Tarrant Abbey, Dorset
Spouse	Alexander II, King of Scots; (m. 1221; "her death" is deprecated; use "died" instead. 1238)
House	Plantagenet
Father	John, King of England
Mother	Isabella of Angoulême

Joan of England (22 July 1210 – 4 March 1238), was Queen consort of Scotland from 1221 until her death.^[1]^[2] She was the third child of John, King of England^[3] and Isabella of Angoulême.

Life

Joan was brought up in the court of Hugh X of Lusignan who was promised to her in marriage from an early age, as compensation for him being jilted by her mother Isabella, however on the death of John of England, Isabella decided she should marry him herself and Joan was sent back to England, where negotiations for her hand with Alexander II of Scotland were taking place.

She and Alexander married on 21 June 1221, at York Minster.^[4] Alexander was twenty-three. Joan was ten, almost eleven. They had no children. Joan died in her brother's arms at Havering-atte-Bower in 1238, and was buried at Tarrant Crawford Abbey in Dorset.^[5]^[6]

Henry III continued to honour Joan’s memory for the rest of his life. Most dramatically, in late 1252, almost fourteen years after her death, Henry ordered the production of the image of a queen in marble for Joan’s tomb, at the cost of 100s. This was one of the first funerary effigies of a queen in England; the tradition developed in the early thirteenth century, but the tombs of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Berengaria of Navarre were in France. Nothing now remains of this church; the last mention of it is before the Reformation. It is said that she is now buried in a golden coffin in the graveyard.