King Henry VI and his nurse

Last November I wrote The Coronation of King Henry VI in 1429  about the 595th anniversary of that event at Westminster. In addition to the clergy and the peers, and the other great men of the realm we can I imagine be reasonably certain that amongst those thronging the abbey and palace that day was the young monarch’s former nurse, Joan Astley.  

Many royal servants in the medieval period are often no more than a name, and sometimes they are bereft of even that. However we do know a little more about the life of Joan Astley who was nurse in the 1420s to the infant king, and who would have moved on to other duties by then. She has however left some evidence of her existence in the public records, and these have been made more visible in the British Library exhibition Medieval Women In Their Own Words. The royal nursery was a substantial, and obviously female, unit and Joan herself well-connected within the Lancastrian establishment. In 1424 she petitioned for a salary increase. Not only was this granted but it was made a life-grant. The young King was clearly well cared for and grew up to be physically healthy, whatever the debates about his mental health after 1453. Joan’s later years were lived at in a house with a garden at Smithfield and in 1446 she was a co-founder of a chantry and fraternity at St Bartholomew’s priory. She appears to have lived until some date after 1463, which suggests she achieved a good age for the time. One wonders what she thought in those last years when the King she had nurtured was forced from his throne and into exile. She is probably interred at St Bartholomew’s.

The article about her life can be read at Requesting a raise: the petition of Joan Astley