More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
Women make up just 0.5% of recorded history, according to English Heritage, with many women's stories being overshadowed by their male counterparts.
For International Women's Day, we look back in history to the influential Kent women who are often overlooked.
Queen Bertha (539-612)
Queen Bertha of Kent was tasked with converting her pagan husband to christianity, a historical first step in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and England becoming a christian country.
Bertha was the daughter of Charibert I, King of Paris and moved to Kent to marry King Æthelberht in her early teens.
It is thought she was allowed to continue practising her christian faith in the Church of St Martin in Canterbury, despite being married to a pagan King.
In 597, Pope Gregory sent the monk St Augustine to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons to christianity. He began this mission in Kent, where he spoke to King Æthelberht.
Pope Gregory praised Queen Bertha's role in welcoming St Augustine and convincing her husband to allow the monk to preach in Canterbury. It was thought she also played a role in the King's later conversion to christianity.
In a letter to Bertha, Pope Gregory suggests the Queen had been negligent in not converting her husband sooner. Instead, he said, she could rectify her mistake by working to convert the whole country.
Not much is known of Queen Bertha, as her story is rarely told from her own perspective. However, a statue of Queen Bertha now stands outside of the gate to the King's School, Canterbury.
Eleanor de Montfort (1252-1282)
The Countess of Leicester was a key player in the Second Baron's War of 1264-1267 and held Dover Castle in a siege during 1265.
Her husband, Simon de Montfort, was the party leader of the anti-royal side and became the unofficial ruler of England in 1264 when Henry III and his son Edward I were captured.
His influence came from his marriage to Eleanor as she was the King's sister. She also took an active role in the war, becoming a communication hub for her family as they rallied supporters across the country and took control of key areas.
In 1265, she fled to Dover Castle for security. After the devastating death of her husband and eldest son, Eleanor became a target of the opposing side due to her influence in her husband's regime.
True to her strong and assertive character, she refused to surrender Dover Castle when the cavalry came, and was ready for battle after preparing a siege engine - a large wooden device used in wars, often a catapult or battering ram.
She also used the castle's location on the Dover coast to protect her family, sending them and 11,000 marks to France. In the following months, rather than buying supplies such as food they were obtained in raids by her men.
When the castle was attacked from freed prisoners on the inside and Edward I's men from the outside, Eleanor's hold of the castle was taken.
She negotiated a settlement in which her supporters were pardoned and she was exiled to France, where she lived as a nun in Montargis Abbey until her death in 1275.
The Fair Maid of Kent (1326-1385)
Joan Plantagenet became the Countess of Kent after her unconventional marriage to Thomas Holland. She was born in 1326 to her father Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, and mother Margaret Wake, 3rd Baroness Wake of Liddell.
In 1340, when Joan was 12 years old, she married 26-year-old Thomas Holland in secret without acquiring royal consent. This was extremely controversial, so when Thomas left to go to war she kept the marriage a secret.
Historians speculate Joan was afraid her husband would be executed for treason if discovered, especially seeing as he was not from a particularly wealthy family.
The next year, Joan's family arranged her marriage to William Montagu, 2nd Earl of Salisbury.
When Thomas returned from war in France, he confessed everything to the King and appealed to the Pope for her second marriage to be annulled to get his wife back.
William kept Joan captive, refusing to let her testify and return to her first love. But the Church later ordered him to release her and annulled her marriage to William, after which she returned to Thomas.
After the death of her siblings, she and her husband became the Countess and Earl of Kent. In her later position as the Queen's Mother and a royal dowager, she gained admiration and influence through the lands.
The French historian and poet Jean Froissart said she was "the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving" and she was dubbed 'The Fair Maid of Kent.'
Though she remarried after Thomas' death in 1360, she ordered in her will to be buried next to her first husband, proving her life-long love for him.
Her second husband, Edward of Woodstock, had ceiling bosses sculpted with the likeness of her face in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, where he was buried after his death.
Sister Edith Appleton (1877-1958)
Sister Edith Appleton is one of the most important figures in the history of World War I nursing.
She was born in Deal in 1877 and joined the Civil Hospital Reserve just two months after the war broke out in 1914, serving as a nurse on the western front for the whole war.
During this time she kept a written diary, which was published in 2012 and has become a huge insight into day-to-day the life of nurses at the front lines.
She not only detailed the horrors of poison gas, but also her time off work while she took long walks or drew ships drifting across the French coast. Where the technical side of nursing is often recorded, Edith provides an emotional telling of her part in history.
In one entry, published online by her great nieces and nephews, she wrote: "Tonight has been quite a revelation of what war can be like. I think I have told you that we are in a horse shoe shape of guns all round us. Tonight all the guns round us have been going without ceasing.
"It has been a panorama of vivid flashes of light from the guns and the huge bursts of fire where shells are bursting and the rumble, thud, rumble, roar the whole night. I shall be surprised if we are not very busy after this."
Upon hearing the war was over, Edith wrote: "Peace! Thank God for that! It feels very queer too – kind as if your elastic had snapped.
"Evidently the folk everywhere had heard the news. French girls were embracing Tommies and French children blew kisses to us as we passed."
After the war in 1919, she was awarded a Military OBE for bravery, which is the highest honour for a serving civilian, as well as the Royal Red Cross and Queen Elisabeth medals.
Emily Juson Kerr (1857-1928)
Emily Juson Kerr was one of the first women to be appointed as a Justice of the Peace, despite being a militant suffragette in Deal.
During her early involvement with the suffrage movement, she staged more passive protests. For example, her name does not appear in the census of 1911 despite her husbands household having a lady's maid, suggesting she boycotted the survey in protest unequal voting rights.
The same year, she won the principle cup of a sea-angling competition in Folkestone, and wore a 'No Vote, No Tax' badge, raising awareness of the suffragettes arguing they should not have to pay tax without the vote to decide how it is distributed.
Later in 1913, Emily joined a Women's Freedom League (WFL) protest outside 10 Downing Street protesting the foul treatment of suffrage prisoners. She was arrested and bound over to keep the peace, but refused, spending several hours in a police cell.
In 1920, to protest the price of staples such as tea and sugar, she threatened a housewives strike. She also opened her own dairy in Deal to offer a cheaper alternative to the households in the area.
Just four years later, despite a history of civil disobedience and protest, she was made a Justice of the Peace in East Kent and remained a WFL member.
