Mary’s extraordinary income meant she would always live apart from her peers – her private chamber was much more luxuriously furnished than the convent dormitory in which most of her fellow novices and nuns slept, and her separate dining table was more sumptuously laid. Her connections, too, marked her out even among the other, largely aristocratic, nuns. When she was finally professed at the age of twelve, the ceremony was overseen by three English bishops appointed to the task by the Archbishop of Canterbury. At the ceremony’s conclusion, Mary stood with her peers, as gold rings set with sapphires were placed on their fingers. The rings, gifts from the king, were emblems of the girls’ roles as brides of Christ – the deep blue of the stones symbolized the girls’ purity and recalled the celestial robes in which the Blessed Virgin was clothed on her assumption.10
Even after she was professed, Mary continued to visit her parents, during which she eschewed the daily routine of prayer and quiet contemplation at Amesbury, for the rather more colourful delights of court and the exceptional freedoms that only she, among her peers, enjoyed. She may also have come to associate the emotional comfort of being surrounded by family at court with the material comforts of court. From a very young age, therefore, Mary grew up understanding that, as a princess, she could take greater licence than her peers, and that she had both the motive and the means to exert her desires.
However, alongside the special freedoms and privileges that accompanied her position came exceptional responsibilities. Later, during her adolescence, Mary was enlisted on more than one occasion to represent the Abbess of Fontevrault in negotiations with her father. The abbess was clearly seeking to maximize her direct link with royal authority through Mary, but this forced the princess into a difficult position. Aged fourteen, she travelled to court to argue before the king on behalf of the abbess and against the nuns of Amesbury; the abbess believed that her rights had been ignored when the Amesbury nuns had elected their own prioress, rather than deferring to the abbess’s authority to appoint one. The king ultimately sided with the position his daughter advanced, and issued a ruling that guaranteed the abbess her right to appoint a new prioress. It cannot have been easy for Mary when she returned to the convent, having helped deprive her fellow nuns of their autonomy. The abbess was clearly pleased though and, seeing the influence the young royal nun could wield, enlisted Mary among her regular legal representatives in England. At other times, the Amesbury community deployed the princess for their own gain, such as when Mary wrote to her father imploring his support against encroachments on the priory’s estate. This was effective, for while many landowners might have dared to challenge a convent of nuns ruled by a distant superior living in France, none would have considered making moves against the king’s daughter, and especially not while he was watching. And so, in this way, the nun-princess was, from an early age, deploying her access to royal decision-making for the gain of associates.11
This kind of intercession was perhaps the central political and ceremonial role for royal women in medieval England. Once her grandmother joined the community in July 1286, on the anniversary of the reburial of St Thomas Becket – a saint to whom the royal family pledged special allegiance – at Westminster, Mary would have had ample opportunity to learn from her. She would also have read about the art of intercession through texts available to her at Amesbury – for example, the popular Chasteau d’Amours, written earlier in the century by Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. This Norman-French allegorical poem would have been particularly meaningful to women living under a vow of chastity since it described the Virgin Mary as the ‘castle of love’ in which God dwells on earth, her strong walls the virginity that guards what is precious within from evil. But another allegorical story within the Chasteau d’Amours might have felt even more directly relevant to the young Mary; it describes earth as a chivalric kingdom ruled by God as a just and powerful king whose four daughters – Mercy, Truth, Justice, and Peace – help him to rule. As the fourth daughter of a king, Mary could hardly have failed to relate the tale to herself and her sisters. The story continues with Adam, God’s servant, cast into prison for disloyalty to the king, while each of the daughters makes a plea to their father regarding Adam’s fate: Mercy asks for forgiveness, Truth and Justice both require his punishment, and Peace cannot abide in the country until her sisters are united again. Ultimately, their brother Christ sacrifices himself to appease Truth and Justice while embracing Mercy, and to cause Peace to return to the kingdom. The story at the heart of the Chasteau d’Amours uses simple allegory to answer the question of why God sacrificed his son, but it also illustrates the common understanding of the role of royal women, including both the practice of intercession and the profound impact that such intercession can have. Mary, like the allegorical daughters of God, became adept at practising intercession in her early years at Amesbury. She would struggle more with fulfilling those other expectations of nuns throughout her life – her vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity.12
V
Growing Up
1286–9
LANGLEY
In the middle of May 1286, the king and queen, their households, and a large group of courtiers sailed from Dover to Wissant, just south of Calais. Edward and Eleanor expected to be away from their kingdom and their children for about a year, but the various matters on the continent demanding their attention were more complex than they had bargained for, and they would, in fact, not return to English soil for over three years. This time away from their parents’ influence meant different things for each of their children.
For Eleanora, now seventeen, the separation from her parents must have been difficult. Since being reunited with them following their return from the Crusades twelve years before, she had spent a considerable amount of time with them and had grown close to both. Indeed, her presence seems to have been most acutely missed by the king and queen, since her name was most frequently attached to gifts sent home from abroad. Eleanora was also the child with the most direct stake in her father’s activities in Europe: chief among Edward’s reasons for travelling abroad was his attempt to negotiate peace between his French relatives and Eleanora’s prospective Aragonese in-laws. The war between these two kingdoms was a matter of acute personal anxiety for the king, who had spent years trying to avoid getting involved. On one side was his uncle, a French count; on the other was Eleanora’s prospective father-in-law. By 1283, the situation had grown so desperate that the parties agreed to solve the matter by single combat at Bordeaux – a one-on-one duel between the competing kings, placing the lives of both monarchs in extreme peril – and Edward was asked to act as arbiter; but still he refused to be dragged in. In the years that followed, the competing forces engaged in pitched battles at sites across the Mediterranean. Matters worsened when the Pope sided with the French and, to prevent the powerful union of English and Aragonese interests, expressly forbade any of Edward’s children from marrying any of the sons, daughters, nieces, or nephews of the King of Aragon. The consummation of Eleanora’s marriage – the act that would convert her ‘proxy’ marriage of 1282 into a fully binding one, and the princess into a queen – could not proceed in these circumstances, but nor was she free to marry elsewhere. The only option that would have freed her from her contract with Alfonso would have been becoming a nun, which she presumably did not wish to do. Even worse for her father, the French king became personally involved in the war, threatening to call Edward’s knightly service that he owed for holding the fief of Gascony – refusing this would have been impossible for Edward if he wished to retain his continental holdings.1
Meanwhile, the war also stood in the way of Edward’s greatest personal ambition: to return to the Holy Land on another Crusade that would succeed where his earlier one had not, in claiming once more a Kingdom of Jerusalem for Christianity. In order to achieve his aim, Edward needed a pan-European effort, but this was out of the question while two of Western Europe’s greatest powers were spending money and sacrificin
g the lives of their men in wars with each other. In 1286 Edward decided to step in and negotiate a settlement that would not only make his crusading dreams possible but would also pave the way for Eleanora to finally travel to Aragon and consummate her marriage to Alfonso, who had become king on his father’s death in 1285.
Aged fourteen, Joanna had also been close to her mother for many years, though she too showed her self-reliance – perhaps a product of her early years in Ponthieu – by striking out from court on journeys with her household, such as that which had taken her to Rhuddlan in 1283. For her, the departure of her parents meant the end of opportunities for Eleanor or Edward to shape her character, for she married and left court soon after their return. At the age of eleven, Margaret had only travelled beyond her nursery for a few years when it once again became the centre of her existence, and her parents’ departure meant she missed out on much of the learning that her older sisters had enjoyed in the company of the queen. Instead, Margaret’s character was shaped by the governesses and aristocratic ladies who frequented the sisters in their parents’ absence, teaching them the skills expected of noblewomen, and offering advice and companionship to their charges. She would mature into the most conventional of the sisters, a fitting match for her betrothed, Jan. Heir to the famous chivalric Duke of Brabant, and Margaret’s contemporary, Jan had arrived in England in 1284 to complete his education at Edward’s court, but seems to have focused more on courtly pursuits than learning about statecraft.
Their parents’ trip to Gascony was least destabilizing for the youngest siblings at home, four-year-old Elizabeth and two-year-old Edward, as the house they had lived in since the death of their brother Alphonso two years earlier became the nucleus around which the older royal children circulated for the three years their parents were away. Located at Langley in Hertfordshire (known since the fifteenth century as King’s Langley), their mother’s new palace was set in rolling parkland filled with deer for hunting, and surrounded by a moat. Langley was well equipped with a sizable kitchen and pantry, and included a cloistered court paved in green and white tiles, with a large central hall that, in the following decade, was extensively refurbished and decorated with fifty-two painted heraldic shields and a scene of knights on their way to a tournament, against a background of vivid yellow and vermillion. Separate lodgings for the king and queen, and their children, offered the luxury of privacy, while a chapel, extensive stables that housed a camel as well as horses, gardens, and a vineyard completed the site.2
One of the king’s crusading companions was assigned to lead the household, which functioned as a kind of court in miniature formed around the tiny prince, his sisters, and their noble companions, who were mostly the wards of their parents and children of their parents’ closest friends and servants. During the years in which the king and queen were in Gascony, the palace at Langley served as their official state residence, remaining open to receive visitors. A sizable military guard was housed at or near to the palace, comprising of seven knights, nine serjeants-at-arms, and various other armed men – a small army to protect the royal children from anyone who might seek to take advantage of the king’s absence and overthrow his rule or kidnap or harm his heirs. The expense of maintaining this force was immense – over four thousand pounds were spent each year the king was away on feeding, clothing, and paying the wages for all servants and guards of the children – and yet its strength must have been a great comfort to the king and queen, so far removed from their children and unable to come easily to their assistance.3
While Mary remained at Amesbury with her grandmother, the rest of the siblings spent Christmas in 1286, the first year their parents were abroad, at Langley. Eleanora, Joanna, and Margaret’s companions were also present: the Ponthevin governess Edeline Papyot, Matilda de Haversham (a ward of the queen and a minor heiress), and three other ladies. Their cousin John of Brittany – who had been close to Eleanora since her nursery days – was frequently present, as was his sister Marie, who spent her adolescence as a companion to Eleanora. Margaret’s fiancé, Jan of Brabant, was also in attendance with his men, including a knight, a horsemaster, a tailor, a falconer, and a lute player – all the assistants a cosmopolitan young man of the thirteenth century needed to cultivate his chivalry. A messenger from Gascony brought the king and queen’s Christmas tidings to their children, while shipments of luxury foods and clothing were brought in to the royal household. In preparation for the cold winter wind, Langley was provided with furs imported by merchants from Lucca and Turin, and from the royal storehouses in London came deliveries of spices and ginger, almonds, fruits including figs, dates, and raisins, and loaves of sugar to prepare the traditional holiday confections. These included sweetmeats such as gingerbread men, spiced with saffron and decorated with raisins and orange peel; frumenty, a boiled milk dish made with honey and spices; and posset, a thick, eggy drink, laced with nutmeg. Gomage, Prince Edward’s butler, was responsible for procuring the wine necessary for the whole princely familia – the wine cellar at Langley during the 1280s must have been insufficient, since nearly seventy pounds was spent in 1291 building a new cave, more than seventy feet long – and the household clerks sourced the additional candles needed to provide light for feasts that lasted long into the dark winter nights.4
The royal children would have had new robes made from many-coloured cloths and skins – the older of them wore silken gowns encircled at the waist by pelt girdles (Eleanora’s most likely covered in silver buttons, as was clearly a favourite style of hers), under a heavy silk or velvet mantle fastened by a jewelled clasp, and topped with gold headdresses or feather caps. That Christmas, Jan ordered new white tournament saddles and several new pairs of golden spurs for himself and one of his knights. The food served at the palace would have included seasonal favourites such as venison, or delicacies such as suckling pig or swan, bones of both of which have been found discarded among contemporaneous debris at the palace.5
Amid the splendour of Christmas at Langley, Eleanora may have worn the coronet her father had sent from Paris earlier that year. This gold circlet, a gift from the king of France, was set with sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and pearls; it was a crown fit for a queen but, rather than bestow it on his own wife, Edward passed it to the daughter whose status remained intangible due to the ongoing contention between Aragon and France. It is easy to imagine that a man as conscious of the role of symbolism as Edward, might have seen some justice in giving his daughter a crown from the same man who was denying her her place as Queen of Aragon.
Ever her parents’ daughter, Eleanora spent the early years at Langley perfecting the art of queenship. Above all, she practised intercession on behalf of her loyal servants and friends. One touching example concerned a household knight named Sir Eustace de Hache who was in danger of losing his estate, because he insisted on remaining with the household guard even when his feudal lord required his military service elsewhere – as well as feeling loyal to the royal children, Sir Eustace was likely worried about losing his annuity of twelve pounds in fees and livery. He appealed to Eleanora for assistance, and found her to be a strident supporter. She wrote to the cousin her father had appointed regent, praising Sir Eustace’s loyal service and asking for royal release from his feudal obligations. While Eleanora’s letter did not, on that occasion, win the requested release for the knight, his subsequent summons to Parliament and elevation to a baronial title in the early fourteenth century indicates that his devotion to the royal household was ultimately rewarded.6
Perhaps the most fascinating instances of Eleanora’s intercession were on behalf of subjects of the Crown who appealed to her for assistance while her parents were in Gascony. On one such occasion, she was approached by Eleanor of Saint Paul, a London heiress or widow who – perhaps exhausted by the persecution she suffered or sensing there would be worse to come – had recently converted from Judaism to Christianity. Like most converts at the time, she learned soon after her conversion that her whole estat
e, including her goods, chattels, and properties, as well as all debts that had been owing to her, would now be confiscated by the king’s men, who sheltered disingenuously behind the claim that they merely wished to protect the reborn soul of a Christian from the taint of association with usury. Somehow, Eleanor of Saint Paul managed to appeal to the princess and she found a willing lobbyist in Eleanora. Among the king’s first notices relating to his children after returning from Gascony was an order to restore Eleanor of Saint Paul’s property to its rightful mistress, noting that ‘the king has given them to her at the instance of Eleanora, his daughter’. Tempting as it is to see this act of intercession as condemnation by Eleanora of her father’s appalling treatment of the Jewish population, whom he had already expelled from Gascony and would soon expel from England, there is not enough evidence to support this. She may have argued against the wisdom of punishing those who converted to Christianity, or perhaps she especially took to Eleanor of Saint Paul as an individual. What is clear is that Eleanora perceived an injustice in the case and wanted to use her influence to put it right.7
Daughters of Chivalry Page 7
