Eleanor of Aquitaine

by Marion Meade

  That unfortunate business at Toulouse began to recede from her thoughts as she plunged at once into her administrative duties. To judge from the pipe rolls, she led a peripatetic life, journeying from London to Middlesex to Southampton to Berkshire, from Surrey to Cambridge to Winchester to Dorsetshire, and everywhere she could see signs of growing prosperity. At the same time the records show that, no matter how slovenly a way of life Henry may have accepted, the Eagle believed in living well. During that winter of 1160, one of intense severity, she made numerous improvements in her quarters at Winchester; she ordered vast quantities of wine from Bordeaux, as well as incense, oil for her lamps, and toys for her three boys, now aged five, two and a half, and eighteen months. “For the repair of the Chapel and of the houses and of the walls and of the garden of the Queen ... and for the transport of the Queen’s robe and of her wine and of her Incense, and of the Chests of her Chapel, and for the boys’ shields ... and for the Queen’s chamber and chimney and cellar. 22£. 13s. 2d.” In Hampshire alone she signed thirteen writs authorizing payment to herself of £226, as well as £56 for the expenses of her eldest son, and in London she spent two silver marks on gold to gild the royal cups. By contemporary standards, she was living lavishly, even for a queen.

  During this period, her life as regent of England was one in which her husband played little real part. Essentially a person of independent temperament, she functioned most happily when left to her own devices. Although couriers bearing instructions from the king constantly traversed the Channel, the responsibility for carrying out those orders devolved entirely upon herself. Perhaps it was her obsessive need for meaningful work that made her an ideal partner for Henry.

  She was thirty-eight years old, no longer the rather frivolous girl who, in the Ile-de-France, had been more concerned with banquets and clothes than attending meetings of the curia. By now, however, she had proved herself an efficient executive, a wife of unswerving loyalty who would dedicate herself to implementing policies that her brilliant young husband had devised. The day had not yet arrived when she would be less willing to play the role of workhorse who unquestioningly carried out policies in whose making she had had no voice.

  In the meantime, Henry remained on the Continent for the third successive year. In the summer of 1160, a situation came to his attention that demanded some sort of action, although precisely what sort was not yet apparent. During the six years of Louis Capet’s second marriage, Constance had conceived only once, the little princess Marguerite now under the care of the Plantagenets. Nobody knew quite so well as Eleanor how infrequently Louis made use of the marriage bed, and perhaps this accounts for the fact that both she and Henry had lulled themselves into believing that the Capetians would remain heirless. Now, however, came an unexpected and alarming piece of information: Queen Constance was expecting a child shortly. Not content to wait until the birth had taken place, Henry took steps to deal with all contingencies and in September he issued a frantic call to Eleanor, insisting that she drop everything and hurry to Rouen with young Henry and Princess Matilda. For a change, Henry’s attention was focused, not on his son, but on his daughter, whom he intended to betroth to the house of Capet in case their latest issue should be male. If his son could not sit on the Frankish throne, then his daughter would. One way or another, he planned to emerge the victor. In the end, though, all his furious preparations and precautionary measures turned out to be useless.

  On October 4, Louis Capet was struck by a double calamity, one that even the farsighted Henry could not have predicted. After a difficult confinement, Queen Constance was delivered of a second princess and then, as if determined to avoid facing the fresh catastrophe she had inflicted on the royal family, closed her eyes and “passed from this world.” The effect on Louis was immediate and decisive. In this crisis, he was forced to face some painful truths: At the age of forty, he had four daughters, no son, and now, no queen. There was no time to waste. Within days of Constance’s death, he arranged to marry Adele of Blois and Champagne, the youngest sister of his future sons-in-law, Henry of Champagne and Theobald of Blois, thereby renewing the possibility of his having a son and abruptly rearranging the chessboard of twelfth-century European politics. That Louis should form an intimate alliance with the house of Blois, from which King Stephen had come and from which a possible pretender to the throne of England might arise someday, provided a grave threat to Henry’s security. Despite his rage at Constance, who had the effrontery to die in childbirth, and against Louis, who was behaving with uncharacteristic common sense, he never allowed himself to become the victim of circumstance if he could possibly help it. To retaliate, he countered with a move as ingenious as Louis’s had been peremptory.

  On November 2, while Louis was busy preparing for his wedding, due to take place the following week, the Plantagenets celebrated a marriage of their own; the Princess Marguerite, fetched from her guardian, Robert of Newburgh, was transported to Rouen, where she was quietly, one might even say sneakily, married to Henry’s son, “although they were as yet but little children, crying in the cradles.” Although they were hardly infants—Henry was five; Marguerite, two—the marriage of two such very young persons was, nevertheless, highly irregular, so much so that special dispensations were necessary. Fortunately for Henry, two cardinals seeking his support were residing at his court at that very time. After Pope Adrian IV died in 1159, schism rent the Church again as rival popes claimed the Chair of Saint Peter, and even though Henry had already assured one of the papal candidates, Alexander III, of his support, emissaries were still pleading his cause. Thus, when Henry needed a favor, they were only too eager to be of service. Henry did not invite the bride’s father to the nuptials, although he was careful to conduct the affair strictly in accordance with the canons so that Louis would have no cause for complaint. A king who was to be married within the week had many important matters on his mind. He should not be distracted or inconvenienced by minor considerations. Since the bride was not yet of an age at which she might have demanded her father’s presence, indeed it is doubtful whether she fully understood what was going on, Henry proceeded on fairly safe ground; immediately upon conclusion of the formalities, again without notifying Louis, he claimed Marguerite’s dowry from the Order of the Templars, who had been holding it in trust for the princess. Having satisfactorily demonstrated that he had fulfilled the terms of this treaty with Louis, he received from the Templars the much-disputed buffer zone of the Vexin and immediately began to fortify Gisors and other principal castles.

  In spite of Henry’s precautions, it cannot have been long before Louis learned of what had happened. Coming so quickly on the heels of all the other racking upheavals he had recently suffered, he can be forgiven for overreacting to the indecent haste of a marriage that should not have taken place for at least another ten years and that neatly deprived him of Marguerite’s dowry. Once again, Henry had made a fool of him. In reprisal, he expelled the untrustworthy Templars from Paris and, with the aid of young Theobald of Blois, fortified his future son-in-law’s castle of Chaumont on the river Loire in an attempt to threaten Henry’s territory of Touraine. Having anticipated such a counterattack, Henry immediately rushed to the scene of the action, where he dramatically relieved Theobald of his castle, a piece of real estate that he had been eyeing for some time. By this time, it was late November, and the season’ for fighting was at an end. Extraordinarily well pleased with themselves, the Plantagenets withdrew with their children and new daughter-in-law to Le Mans, where they celebrated an extremely exuberant Christmas. So clever had been Henry’s moves to checkmate Louis that any lingering resentment Eleanor might still have harbored from the Toulouse war now largely evaporated. She could not be angry with a man of his genius, and that December she conceived again.

  In April 1161, Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury died. If Eleanor and Henry owed their throne to any single person, it was to the old man who had faithfully supported Empress Matilda and arranged the Tr
eaty of Winchester by which Henry was assured as Stephen’s heir. It was he who had safeguarded the empty throne after Stephen’s death, he who had brought about England’s peaceful transition from the house of Blois to the new regime of the Plantagenets, and he who had bestowed upon the young king his much-beloved chancellor, Thomas Becket: Perhaps the aged archbishop was not expecting too much by feeling that Henry owed him, if not a huge debt of gratitude, then at the least a small amount of appreciation. During the illness preceding his death, he had sent a number of letters to Normandy, pleading and then ordering, with the king’s permission of course, Becket’s return to England before he died. Henry flatly refused. Thomas, he declared, was indispensable and could not be spared at that particular time. But behind these official protestations, Eleanor would have detected the symptoms of jealous paranoia that she now knew to be part of Henry’s temperament: Those in his family and household could have no other affections, no matter how innocuous, and all interests must be subordinated to his needs. In a last pathetic letter to Henry, Theobald had written, “My flesh is worn, my limbs wearied by age and toil, and long and grave illness warns me that the end of my days will soon be upon me. I was hoping that I might once more look upon your face, so long desired, before I die.” But Henry had other things on his mind that did not permit a visit to England.

  At this time, a phenomenal building craze seems to have broken out all over Europe. In the Île-de-France, Louis madly built new churches, while Henry threw himself into a program of modernizing his castles, adding stonework to their facades and constructing more comfortable living quarters within. “He strengthened and repaired nearly all of his castles which were situated on the borders of Normandy and he made a royal park and a royal residence near Rouen. Near Caen, he built a house for lepers, an astonishing structure.” Not only in Normandy but in England, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine he either repaired old castles or built new ones. Taking advantage of his new passion, Eleanor made certain that a goodly share of building funds went to Aquitaine, and it was probably at this time that she prevailed upon her husband to restore the city of Poitiers. New walls, bridges, churches, markets, and shops transformed her ancestral city into a showplace, a very model of the latest in urban development. In the refurbishing of the ducal palace can be seen the hand of the queen, who, if she did not supervise the construction, at least made sure that the rebuilding proceeded according to her own specifications. Unlike Henry’s other castles, here was no drafty feudal fortress suitable for dogs and falcons and soldiers lolling on a straw-strewn floor, no milieu in which only a man would feel comfortable. Instead, the spacious hall was adorned with graceful arcaded walls and with windows opening out to an enchanting view of the valley and rivers below; small private chambers were added to the palace, intimate rooms where a lady might retire to be alone with her thoughts and desires, memories and fantasies. Although Henry’s construction focused on the secular, two new churches were planned for Poitiers: the ornate Notre-Dame-la-Grande, whose sculptured facade resembles a gingerbread dollhouse, and the immense Cathedral of Saint-Pierre with its domed vault over a crossing of pointed arches, a style that would be known as Angevin, or Plantagenet, Gothic.

  The summer passed pleasantly, and in September, Eleanor gave birth to her second daughter and sixth child by Henry at Domfront, in Normandy. The princess was given Eleanor’s name and baptized in a showy ceremony by Cardinal Henry of Pisa, the same papal legate who had married young Henry to Marguerite. A few weeks later, Henry met with Louis at Fréteval. where they concluded once and for all their ten-year struggle over the Vexin. Louis, aware that Henry was too strong an adversary at this time and in any case having no alternative, agreed to his occupation of Marguerite’s dower. The conference at Fréteval ushered in one of those rare interludes of peace for the Plantagenets. With no major crises threatening their security, they could turn their attention to more pleasant duties, such as their growing family, which, in many respects, suffered from periods of benign neglect. Young Henry, nearly seven years old and a married man, had reached the age when he should have begun his formal education. The fact that he had not and, furthermore, still lived with his mother, shocked some people, one of them being the archbishop of Rouen, who sent a polite reproach to Henry: “Although other kings are of a rude and uncultivated character, yours, which was formed by literature, is prudent in the administration of great affairs, subtle in judgments, and circumspect in counsel. Wherefore all your bishops unanimously agree that Henry, your son and heir, should apply himself to letters, so that he whom we regard as your heir may be the successor to your wisdom as well as to your kingdom.”

  There was no question in Henry’s mind with whom the boy should be placed for his education in letters and knightly accomplishment. Becket, the most well-bred man in the empire, already had under his care a number of noblemen’s sons, and now the prince was added to the group. While this move made sense to Eleanor, she could not have been completely enthusiastic, not when she heard Thomas referring to the prince as his adopted son. By this time, however, she had had ample opportunity to accustom herself to Becket and his relationship with her husband. Whatever resentment she had felt in earlier years had weathered into a sort of resignation by now, but even though the queen coexisted with the chancellor, she did not like him and never would. At any rate, ever since the Toulouse war she had noticed subtle changes both in Henry and in his affection for Thomas. In retrospect, their quarrel before the walls of Toulouse had marked a turning point; since then. there had been further differences, some of them fairly serious, and even though Henry won the arguments, the tenor of their relationship had gradually shifted from the social to the plane of pure business. The fact was, Henry had matured. At twenty-one, he had been a brash young man who needed a boon companion, someone with whom he could drink and hunt, a confidant for his youthful escapades. At twenty-eight, no longer so youthful or brash, his waistline thickened considerably, he had outgrown his boyish need of a buddy. Thomas’s slightly tutorial manner, which he had accepted before, now chafed him. None of this was lost on Eleanor.

  We may be sure, therefore, that it was with some astonishment that she heard Henry mention that he was thinking of appointing Becket as a successor to Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury. What first gave Henry the curious idea of transforming his worldly chancellor into the highest prelate in England is impossible to say. In an especially good humor after Christmas court at Bayeux, he had sent to England for falcons and falconers and spent most of his time engaged in his chief pleasure. Perhaps while hawking one amber afternoon along a stream in Normandy, the image came to him full-blown; more likely he was influenced by the fact that a similar arrangement was working well in the Holy Roman Empire, where the archbishop of Cologne also served as chancellor. However unaccountably the seed was sown, he seemed in no rush to do anything about the idea, one reason being that while the see of Canterbury lay vacant, its revenues accrued to the crown and thus enabled him to recoup some of his financial losses from the Toulouse campaign. Even though he tested the idea on Eleanor and other intimates, he deliberately refrained from speaking to Thomas, instead pondering the plan, weighing the advantages and, to a lesser degree, the disadvantages. As Eleanor knew, Henry never did anything without a good reason, and she could not argue with much of his logic. While he had not been seriously dissatisfied with the working relationship between State and Church during the first eight years of his reign, nevertheless he had experienced some opposition, particularly over taxes, and in the future he anticipated more problems over the question of ecclesiastical courts. Combirring the offices of archbishop and chancellor seemed a perfect solution, and Becket the obvious choice; he had served the king loyally, and they had always been of one mind as to how the empire should be run. With an archbishop sympathetic to the crown, Henry could build an even more dominant monarchy without the threat of parallel leadership from the Church; not only that, he could also strengthen his courts at the expense of the increasingly ind
ependent Church courts. What better way to accomplish these aims than to install his alter ego at the head of the Church? But, of course, there were emotional factors, and to Eleanor it may have seemed, initially at least, that Henry’s scheme was just a dying ember of a foolish infatuation. The great love affair had not, apparently, run its course.

  There is no way of knowing whether Henry asked Eleanor for advice, although they surely discussed the subject on many occasions. She might have pointed out the obstacles to Thomas’s election: He was neither priest nor monk and he had no reputation for holiness. Rather, apart from his efficiency as an administrator, he was best known for his excellent table, his lavish household, and his plumaged wardrobe. These objections Henry could not deny, but he did not anticipate difficulty on those scores. After years of maintaining stiff control over her every utterance in regard to Becket, Eleanor would not have said that she distrusted Becket. She had always believed him to be riddled with ambition, a man hungry for power. In the eight years she had known him, nothing had convinced her otherwise. Of course, he was most assiduously devoted to Henry, the perfect servant, correct, obedient, loyal. Small wonder that Henry counted on a pawn at Canterbury, but even pawns, she might have told him, sometimes assert their independence. In any case, Henry did not care what she thought, and as usually happened when he desired an opinion on important political matters, he consulted his mother. Probably to his annoyance, Matilda opposed the idea, but since she could give no concrete reasons beyond vague predictions of calamity, he was able to discount her forebodings. Perhaps he felt that Matilda, old by now, engrossed in pious works on behalf of the Church, had lost her normally keen judgment. In truth, he did not want anybody’s opinion; he had already reached a decision, and now all he desired was reinforcement. In at least one respect, Eleanor may have endorsed his decision. Known to the queen and other intimates, Henry was possessed of an almost obsessive terror that his heirs would be prevented from succeeding peacefully to the throne of England. Haunted by his own struggles, he was given to periodic anxiety attacks over the possibility that Prince Henry would be deprived of his rights, a concern that Eleanor shared, since no regular principle of succession had ever been established. Even though Henry had already obliged his English barons to swear allegiance to his namesake, this failed to reassure him, and now he resolved to adopt the solution that had been devised by Charlemagne, who had crowned his sons as kings during his own lifetime. This practice had been used with no apparent ill effects in Germany and also in France, where Louis Capet had been anointed before the death of his father. It was, nevertheless, a radical departure for the English. Recalling that King Stephen’s attempts to have Eustace crowned had been effectively scotched by both Archbishop Theobald and the pope, Henry anticipated the possibility of trouble. The point was—and this surely must have been a key factor in Henry’s reasoning—that only the archbishop of Canterbury was authorized to consecrate an English king; with Thomas heading the Church of England, this delicate situation could be handled with the efficiency that Becket had always demonstrated in matters close to Henry’s heart. On this basis alone, Eleanor may have suppressed any doubts about the chancellor’s promotion.