While castles and crowns played a prominent role in supporting the legitimacy of Edward’s claim to Wales, his daughters also played a part in the conquest. The queen’s presence in Wales in 1282 and 1284 may be explained by her wish to remain near to her husband, accompanying him on military campaigns as her own mother had done during her father’s wars against the Muslim kingdoms of Spain. The presence of Joanna, Eleanora, and Elizabeth, however, requires another explanation. As they grew into maturity, the two eldest daughters increasingly travelled as companions to their mother, intertwining their households with that of the queen. But the presence of the girls at Rhuddlan and Caernarfon also operated as a piece of political theatre to any Welsh loyalists in the vicinity, testament to the royal family’s confidence in Edward’s military dominance.
By the time Joanna arrived at Caernarfon a month before her twelfth birthday, the principality was effectively conquered, and any risk to her safety was minimal. King Edward had not only defeated the Welsh princes – he also had custody of Llywelyn’s only child, a daughter named Gwenllian, born near Bangor only six weeks prior to Elizabeth’s birth. Her mother had been Edward’s cousin – the daughter of Edward’s aunt, a princess who scandalized court by secretly marrying the rebel leader Simon de Montfort – but she had died in childbirth. Nevertheless, although her parents were dead and her uncle was defeated, Welsh hopes for a resurgence may have lain in Gwenllian, and so Edward acted swiftly, sending her as far from Wales as he could, to the Gilbertine convent at Sempringham in Lincolnshire. What Edward’s own daughters – who, if their father was deposed might face similar threats – thought about his treatment of their young cousin is unknown. At this stage, they could not know that Gwenllian would subsist at Sempringham for the rest of her fifty-five years, locked away and hidden from Welsh plotters and prospective bridegrooms tempted by the notion of ruling a principality.
With Gwenllian in England in 1284, Wales was without a native prince, but once again the Queen of England was approaching confinement, and the birth of a baby boy in Edward’s new administrative capital in Caernarfon would give back to Wales a Welsh-born prince. And thus, though the rest of the castle was still only partially built, the queen and her daughters took up residency at the end of March in the castle’s part-completed, unusual polygonal tower – its upper floors unfinished and topped with a temporary roof – known for the centuries since its completion as the Eagle Tower, a reference to the birds that surmounted each of its three turrets. The tower looked directly out to sea and included a water gate that, in the event of a siege, would allow its occupants to take in provisions by boat. Caernarfon’s strangely shaped towers, the use of multi-coloured stone banding unique among English-built castles, and even its eagles, were intended to evoke the castle in the Mabinogion dream.8
The family celebrated Joanna’s twelfth birthday in their chamber as the flurry of building work continued in the castle yard. Now of an age to learn about such things, the two older girls were most likely present in the room when the queen gave birth to her fourth son, named for his father and known henceforth as Edward of Caernarfon. A contemporary chronicle recorded how Londoners rejoiced following the news of the prince’s birth ‘on the feast of St Mark the Evangelist at Caernarfon near Snowdon’.9
Joanna’s parents famously enjoyed a particularly close relationship during their thirty-five-year marriage, and were rarely apart for long. Edward had no bastard children, and there was only ever one brief rumour that questioned his devotion to his wife – this constancy was rare among medieval kings, but consistent with the examples of both his father, Henry III, and his much-admired uncle, Louis IX of France. Together, Edward and Eleanor, along with their retinues of knights, dozens of servants, elaborate wardrobes, and suites of personal furnishings for bedrooms and chapels, travelled in a constantly moving pageant across the country, only stopping for more than a few days for extended stays at Westminster. So elaborate were their usual journeys that often the full suite of the queen’s furniture could not be accommodated on her own carts, and extra horses and carriages were hired to follow behind the main train. The royal couple moved ceaselessly. They stopped at royal estates to check on accounts and servants; they visited important shrines, monasteries, and cathedrals, making offerings to local saints and giving alms to feed the poor; they spent feast days hunting in their favourite forests, the king with his prized falcons and the queen with her packs of specially-bred hunting dogs.
Everywhere they went, Edward and Eleanor performed their roles of king and queen before their subjects. Itinerancy was a political necessity for medieval monarchs: townspeople and villagers came to know the royal family, and their feelings of loyalty were engendered and reinforced when they watched the parade of glittering knights and sumptuous carriages that announced the arrival of their king and queen. Through this constant travel, Edward and Eleanor’s public selves – actions carefully choreographed, roles cleanly delineated, costumes perfected – were displayed one village at a time to the whole country, all the while highlighting their vast wealth, their power to command large retinues, and the divine right by which they ruled England. This was the court that Joanna and her siblings joined at around the age of eight, and where they learned from their parents how to play their part in the spectacle of kingship. Edward’s ‘court’ was not at all like the great courts anchored to particular palaces that would predominate in later centuries – at sites such as Versailles – but more like a travelling circus of state surrounding the king and queen.10
This perpetual travelling prohibited the royal children from attending court until they were old enough to handle its rigours, and also restricted the amount of time their parents could spend in their children’s company. However, once they were around seven or eight, the children were considered old enough to ride long hours in the saddle atop a palfrey horse (favoured by ladies of rank for its narrow back and smooth, ambling gait) and to understand their roles in projecting regality. From then on, they frequently joined their parents and, by 1284, the households of Eleanora, Joanna, and sometimes Margaret, were travelling with the court. With her daughters by her side, the queen was able to ensure that in their learning, the royal sisters outstripped almost all their contemporaries, and perhaps in time even their husbands.11
Eleanor of Castile was educated to an exceptional degree, even by the standards of Norman England. Noblewomen of the time were taught (like their male counterparts) to read in their native French, as well as basic Latin – at least enough to recite from the psalms and perhaps to understand stories from the lives of saints. Eleanor’s brother, Alfonso X ‘the Wise’ of Castile, in whose court she was raised, believed so strongly that royal daughters should be taught to read, that he included a directive explicitly encouraging this in his code of laws, the Siete Partidas. Once Eleanor became the Queen of England, she established a private scriptorium at Westminster, where two scribes and an illustrator were charged with copying books for her personal use, implying an ability and an appetite for reading that was well above the norm, even for a noblewoman. Eleanor’s interests were varied, and offer evidence of what she considered a well-rounded education might entail: among the works copied by her scribes were the Libro de los Juegos, or ‘Book of Games’, a Castilian translation her brother had commissioned from an Arabic chess manual, and the De re militari by Vegetius, a Roman text on military tactics that she gave as a gift to her warlike husband. On her marriage, her parents-in-law gave her a copy of the Life of St Edward the Confessor, the English royal saint in whose honour Henry had rebuilt Westminster Abbey, a book magnificently illustrated with images of the saintly king and his queen – whose piety, virtue, and beauty showed her to be an ideal courtly lady. We know that Eleanor also read romances: the poet Girart d’Amiens credited the ‘beautiful and wise’ queen with creating the story for his romance Escanor, which features a Northumbrian princess who inspires heroism in Arthur’s knights, and she gifted a copy of Meliadus (the romance Edward had commis
sioned) to her brother. She and her daughters would have also had access to the many Arthurian romances owned by her mother-in-law, Eleanor of Provence, who was a dedicated reader of them (although she probably did not write the Provençal romance Blandin de Cornouailles, with which some nineteenth-century historians credited her).12
Given her evident enjoyment of reading, it is not surprising that the learned queen ensured that her own daughters were educated. Once they had joined court, the sisters and other young female companions, including their cousin Marie of Brittany, were introduced to popular texts via informal reading groups, in which books were read aloud by an accomplished reader, before being discussed within the group. In the king’s hall, travelling minstrels might sing to knights of conquest and epic battles, but romances and devotional works were more frequently read in small groups in the upper chambers, and the audiences largely consisted of women. A later Middle English dream poem, The Parlement of the Three Ages, records scenes of ‘lovely ladies dancing in their chambers, reading glorious romances which tell the true tales of warriors and conquerors and noble kings, how they won worship and wealth in their lives . . .’ while knights ‘revel in hall singing songs and carols’. Before learning to read on their own, therefore, the princesses would have come to know the most popular tales of the time, stories like Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot and those about the star-crossed lovers Tristan and Isolde. Episodes from these stories, of the struggles between passion and allegiance, likely burned particularly bright in the girls’ imaginations, especially as they frequently also appeared on the woollen tapestries and ivory caskets, mirrors, and combs that furnished their chambers. In fact, the stories of noble knights beloved by virtuous princesses were so firmly engrained in the minds of Edward’s daughters that (as we shall see later), during a fierce argument with her father as an adult, Joanna reached intuitively for their example. In addition to these secular texts, the sisters would have been familiar, as their mother was, with liturgical texts such as the psalms and stories from the lives of saints, among them the virginal princesses Katherine of Alexandria and Margaret of Antioch – two royal women held up as examples for choosing painful deaths over forced marriages to unbelieving men.13
The actual process of learning to read began before the children left their nursery. They were taught using techniques that may even now be familiar to anyone who has taught a child to read: first, they learned the alphabet, before trying to sound out letters and pronounce words aloud. The first words they read were probably in Latin, and they practised using those passages of liturgy that they would have already memorized, with a focus on books with large, clear lettering, such as psalters and books of hours, collections of prayers, and Bible readings intended to be recited throughout the day. To support her children at all ages in their studies, the queen purchased a psalter and seven books of hours on a visit to Cambridge, the fenland university town that was filled with learned copyists who produced manuscripts by the dozen. The princesses may have learned some basic Latin grammar and vocabulary from these (or from specialist textbooks designed for that purpose), but more likely their attention at this stage turned to using the skills they had acquired in lettering and pronunciation to begin reading in Anglo-Norman, a variant of French and their native tongue.14
At least one of Eleanor’s daughters, Eleanora, had mastered reading well enough by her teens to practise a skill very rare among the medieval aristocracy, and one even her father may have lacked: writing. Though nothing survives written in her own hand (the letter confirming her intention to marry Alfonso of Aragon was, like all public letters, written by a professional scribe), Eleanora’s tailor, Peter, purchased some writing tablets and a small leather chest in which to keep them for her, while he was in London to buy silks for her dresses. These tablets were made of wood overlaid with wax and could be written on with a stylus, the primary means of medieval note-taking, as well as practising to write. In subsequent years, further such tablets were purchased for Eleanora, although it is unclear from the records if the princess had taken to making extensive notes or was simply engaged in a prolonged-if-dogged attempt to master the precise penmanship of a medieval scribe – an art form akin to calligraphy. In either case, her purpose in learning to write was likely to enable private correspondence, but she may also have dabbled in composition. Eleanora’s younger sister Mary seems also to have inherited their mother’s love of books: a chronicle of her family’s rule over England, written by the Dominican friar Nicholas Trivet early in the fourteenth century, was dedicated to Mary and was likely commissioned by her. Later, following in the tradition of exceptional female learning, Elizabeth’s daughters were known to read Latin and even Greek.15
Reading was, however, only one aspect of a princess’s formal education, and the queen also ensured that her daughters practised other skills expected of a noblewoman in medieval Europe. These included the art of embroidery, an aspect of their education advocated by their uncle, the King of Castile. Surviving wardrobe accounts provide evidence of frequent purchases of silks in many different colours, and a spindle purchased for Margaret implies that she, at least, also practised weaving. The princesses also rode and hunted; Joanna had three hounds for her own use by 1285, and there are numerous payments made to houndsmen for the maintenance and transportation of animals for the girls’ use. They seem to have followed their mother’s preference for hunting with specialized hunting dogs such as greyhounds over falcons, and it is probable that the queen herself instructed her daughters in this, her favourite pastime. Music also featured in their education: the princesses lived surrounded by musicians and minstrels and may have had tuition from them – they certainly learned to appreciate listening to it. As an adult, Elizabeth expressed a strong interest in newly fashionable polyphonic choral music – a rainbow of sound compared to the dull monotone of traditional chant. In addition, they likely received tuition in elementary Christian theology, as well as in logic and basic arithmetic from the Dominican canons their mother promoted at court. Eleanora, who expected to become Queen of Aragon, undoubtedly also took the opportunity to learn Iberian phrases from her Castilian mother, which would help her navigate her early days at the Aragonese court.16
The education of princesses was not, however, solely about acquiring the right skills; in order to succeed at sophisticated foreign courts, the sisters also needed to learn how to conduct themselves. From their mother and governesses, and from the cautionary tales of feminine excesses they would have heard and read, Eleanor’s daughters learned to present themselves as serious and composed young women, demure yet steadfast, who always employed manners appropriate to their station. In the vernacular of the time, they learned ‘courtesy’.
Their broad and immensely privileged education was designed to produce young women who could act as patrons, advisors, and, if necessary, regents, and who would exemplify the height of chivalric sophistication to foreign visitors at court and – after their marriages – to foreign courts, their knowledge and skills reflecting well on the cultural refinement of their native England and their family. As contemporary romantic heroines, such as Felice from the popular thirteenth-century romance Guy of Warwick, or as holy virgins such as Katherine of Alexandria demonstrated, with their renowned knowledge of astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry, these elite women were expected to be impressively educated.
Joanna and her sister Eleanora left Caernarfon near the end of summer, with their mother, Elizabeth, and baby brother Edward, heading inland to Chester and then south towards Bristol. Having safely delivered another prince, the queen seems to have turned her mind once again to planning for the future of her eldest, Alphonso. A few months earlier, she had commissioned a psalter to be presented to him on the occasion of his forthcoming marriage to Margaret, the daughter of the Count of Holland. The sumptuously illustrated psalter was too ambitious a project for the queen’s own scriptorium and was most likely produced by a specialist London atelier. Its parchment pages were filled with decor
ations of personal significance to the young prince: surrounding the psalms were vivid drawings of birds and a man on horseback directing a falcon hunt, suggesting that he shared his father’s special interest in falconry; images of knights in victory against beasts and giants; and depictions of the heraldic arms of the heir-apparent of England intertwined with those of Holland. Efforts were also made to ensure that the book would appeal to Alphonso’s intended wife, including the addition of delicate illustrations in the margins of a woman hunting with hounds and a mermaid breastfeeding her baby. However, work on the manuscript stopped suddenly, with only the first eight folios complete; on 19 August 1284, ten-year-old Alphonso – the first of Edward and Eleanor’s sons to survive the dangerous early years of childhood – died suddenly. The Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to the king, not in the usual Latin of clerics but in the more intimate Anglo-Norman that they would have spoken to each other:
Sire, by the power of reason that God has given you, you understand well that no accident comes about on Earth that does not pass first before the judgment of the Emperor of Heaven and His court. From there are allotted all of the good things and the suffering of all ills, because by these ills He often brings about the good things. And because of this, sire, we are firm in the belief that the terrible accident that came about, which resulted in the death of the child who was a hope to us all, happened so that the malice of the present day did not taint his goodness . . .
The sadness expressed in the archbishop’s words to the king – words of comfort that Alphonso had been saved from the evils of this world – shows the compassion he felt for the king’s sudden and unexpected loss of his son and heir. The queen was so affected by Alphonso’s death that she had his heart removed before he was buried at Westminster, so that it could one day be buried with hers at the London house of the Dominican preachers whom she particularly favoured. Alphonso’s younger sisters, Margaret and Mary, must also have been devastated by his death, as they had spent much of their lives with their brother in the royal nursery.17
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