Margaret Wake, 3rd Baroness Wake of Liddell

Margaret Wake (c. 1297 – 29 September 1349) was the wife of Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent.

Biography

She was the daughter of John Wake, 1st Baron Wake of Liddell, and was descended directly from Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd. Her mother was Joan de Fiennes, making her a cousin of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March.

Marriage

Margaret married John Comyn (c. 1294-1314) around 1312, son of the John Comyn who was murdered by Robert the Bruce in 1306. Her husband John died at the Battle of Bannockburn, and their only child, Aymer Comyn (1314–1316) died as a toddler. She married for a second time, to Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent. They received a dispensation in October 1325, and the wedding probably took place at Christmas.

Through her marriage to Edmund (who was executed for treason in 1330), she was the mother of two short-lived Earls of Kent, of Margaret and Joan of Kent (wife of Edward, the Black Prince). The pregnant Margaret and her children were confined to Salisbury Castle, and her brother Thomas Wake was accused of treason but later pardoned. When King Edward III of England reached his majority and overthrew the regents, he took in Margaret and her children and treated them as his own family. She succeeded briefly as Baroness Wake of Liddell in 1349, but died during an outbreak of the plague that autumn.

Depictions in fiction

Margaret is a supporting character in the Karen Harper historical fiction novel The First Princess of Wales, which gives a fictional depiction of her daughter Joan of Kent's life at the English court.