John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter Kent by his wife Joan of Kent, "The Fair Maid of Kent", daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, a son of King Edward I (1272–1307). The Earl of Kent was a title that was created multiple times, including once for Edmund of Woodstock and once for –Thomas– Holland. Joan later married her cousin Edward, the Black Prince, the eldest son and heir apparent of her first cousin King Edward III, by whom she had a son King Richard II, who was thus a half-brother of John Holland. Early in King Richard's reign, Holland was made a Knight
Edward the Black Prince burnt, and that 3,000 persons of all ranks and ages were massacred. However modern scholarship, including the historian Richard Barber writing in 2008 in the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", and drawing on a wider range of evidence, places casualties much lower than Froissart did—around 300 garrison soldiers and civilians in total. The prince returned to Cognac; his sickness increased, and he was forced to give up all hope of being able to direct any further operations and to proceed first to Angoulème and then to Bordeaux. The death of his eldest son Edward, which happened at this time, grieved