Juliana and Isabelle remained as Baron Adam’s guests until the road to the Lavenham estates was passable. When the women did at last return to their home, Juliana immediately petitioned the bishop to allow her admission to Tyndal as an anchoress. At the same time she begged her brother, now Sir George of Lavenham, to give both his blessing and financial support so that she might enter Tyndal with honor.
Despite his reluctance to lose a much loved sister to such an austere life, he granted both pleas, and, when his sister was given approval to enter the priory from both Eleanor and the bishop, Sir George sent her off with tears and a generous dowry. Included with his gifts was a letter in which he sent most courteous and quite brotherly affection to Juliana’s new prioress, although Eleanor detected just a hint of wistfulness in his words.
Of the Lady Isabelle, little more is recorded, although the bishop’s register does show that she, shortly after Juliana left for Tyndal, formally took the mantle and ring of a vowess, never to marry again.
There was kept amongst the miscellaneous papers of Tyndal, however, a letter from Sir George of Lavenham to the Prioress Eleanor which was written many years after Isabelle took that vow. In it, he told the prioress that Isabelle did indeed still live. After the young widow had taken her vow of chastity, she locked herself into self-imposed imprisonment in a tower room in Sir George’s castle. She had since aged much, he wrote with apparent sadness, and was seen only rarely except by the woman who served her. On those occasions when she allowed him to visit her, he noted how bent her back had grown and how her eyes had dulled to a milky blue. She said little when he came, refusing to sit or allow him to do so, and silently gazed out the only window in her room, a window that faced toward Tyndal Priory.
Author’s Notes
From the distance of over seven hundred years, we know that 1271 was a relatively tranquil time in England, but for those living through it, peace was not a certainty. The Welsh had agreed to an uneasy truce, but many on the borders were wary about the continuation of that when the prime summer fighting season arrived. The Scots were only temporarily quiescent, and the cause once headed by the long-dead Simon de Montfort was very much alive in the minds of many ranging from the laboring classes to the ruling ones. Minor firefights, internally and on the English borders, always threatened to flare into major conflagrations. At best, any calm was a nervous one.
King Henry III was probably growing senile in the year 1271 and would die late in the following year. His heir was in Acre on a very expensive crusade that almost cost the prince his life. Nonetheless, he would survive the assassination attempt and eventually return to England as King Edward I.
Edward at this time was very much an unknown quantity. He had jumped from one side to the other on the issue of baronial reforms championed by de Montfort with amazing agility. He had demonstrated rather questionable judgment, and his behavior was sometimes irresponsible. Many questioned how competent he would be as king. Whether he would prove able or not, however, everyone knew that the ways and preferences of the new king would not be the same as those of the long-reigning Henry.
In an era of transition, the powerful and ambitious firmly plant one foot on the old path while keeping the other poised to step into whatever fork the new will take. Such times may present the aura of tranquillity, but the lull is often a prelude to chaos. Barons loyal to the monarchial line in these waning years of the old king’s reign kept the fragile peace while begging Edward to return home to keep the borders peaceful and avoid any wars of succession or the renewal of the less than civil ones.
The castle in this book may be fictitious, but Wynethorpe is intended to resemble those outposts of secondary note used by the English in their less than successful attempts to gain complete control over the Welsh after the Norman Conquest. With some notable exceptions, the post-Conquest forts were not magnificent structures and cannot be equated to Caernarfon or Harlech that Edward I built with his brilliant architect, Master James of St. George.
These older castles started out in the simpler motte and bailey, timber and earthen style. At some point their wooden walls were replaced with stone, and other modernizations were sporadically attempted over the two hundred years before this story takes place. In addition, some fortifications, especially in the north of Wales, changed hands between the English and the Welsh with some frequency, each group altering the walls and other structures to suit their own needs and tastes. Thus the architecture of some pre-Edwardian forts was a hodgepodge of projects begun, then changed in mid-plan, or never completed.
One role of any castle was military, of course, but that was not always the primary one. Keeping an armed force at the ready was expensive, then as now; thus the number of troops in residence at any given time could be quite small. Castles were also administrative centers where trade was conducted, pleas brought, justice dispensed, and plans made for running a district. They were also family homes.
As grim and formidable as these places may look today, those who grew up within their walls often thought of their castles with much fondness. Gerald of Wales in the twelfth century waxed almost poetic in his descriptions of the orchards and vineyards at Manorbier in Pembrokeshire where he had spent his youth. We might understand this affection with the later and more elaborate castles. They have survived in fair shape with evidence remaining of quite sophisticated comforts such as separated latrines and urinals. Many smaller castles, however, not only suffered the expected destruction of time, they were often dismantled for their stone after their usefulness passed. What remains often looks bleak and crude.
Part of the difficulty in visualizing life within such stark walls lies with the lack of evidence about the internal structures. Buildings inside these smaller castles, such as kitchens, stables or housing for the troops and noble family, were often made of wood and either burned or disintegrated. Few traces are now extant. Nonetheless, there is evidence that attempts were made to provide some creature comfort, at least for those longest in residence.
Although the fictional Baron Adam seems not to have installed such at Wynethorpe, glass windows were fairly cheap and often used at the time of Henry III. (They apparently had a greenish tint.) Castle walls were not just bare, rough stone. They were whitewashed and sometimes painted in colors, both internally and externally. (Henry III showed a fondness for green paint as well as star designs; his wife favored a rose color.) Painted wall hangings served to ameliorate the severity of rooms and kept drafts at bay. Rushes, strewn with scented herbs or flowers and changed with passable frequency, covered the floors of the dining hall.
Since the affluent changed residence often, in part so the castle could get a major cleaning, furnishings were few and designed for ease of transportation. Although simple in overall design, details such as the clasps on chests were often crafted with intricate and stunning workmanship. Just as we take pleasure in our homes, adding a splash of color to brighten a room or a particularly beautiful object to give us special pleasure, those of the medieval period did the same.
Indeed, our ancestors did as we do in so many ways. People of all classes and conditions have always argued with their parents, grieved over the death of a loved one, had marital spats, gossiped, told jokes to a friend and sung while washing up—or simply looked outside on a beautiful day and sighed with unspoken contentment. Records of such mundane things have survived, but these tend not to be studied with the same emphasis as power struggles, major battles, and significant documents. Perhaps this is why we forget that our ancestors were having babies, struggling to make ends meet, getting sick, and falling in love, all while trying to cope with the impact of whatever decisions those in power made—just as we do today. This lost sense of commonality may be one reason we have formed some erroneous assumptions about the way our distant kin behaved or thought.
One such assumption is that medieval children were badly treated, ignored, or, at best, considered nothing more than small adults. In fact, medieval l
aw was very concerned about protecting children, especially orphans, and believed childhood to extend to the age of fourteen. Abuses did occur, of course, and legal protections were often ineffective, especially amongst the poor who have always suffered most from lack of equity under all legal systems.
It is true that a person was deemed capable of what we would call adult behavior (getting married, taking on a business, or being found guilty of a capital crime) at an age we might think rather young. Interestingly enough, many teens coped quite well. For those who did not, the debate about how to handle the sentencing of young felons was as fierce then as now. Although the law allowed fifteen-year-olds to be hanged or burned at the stake, the recorded instances of same are few despite the perceived brutality of the era.
Although we have made significant progress over the last few decades in how we treat children born to parents without a license to have them, those in the medieval period were also quite advanced compared to, say, the Victorians. Illegitimacy was a barrier to some inheritances but not to all, and it did not carry quite the stigmas or limitations which society has sometimes imposed for whatever variety of reasons. In his own time, for instance, William the Conqueror was commonly called William the Bastard, the term having no pejorative intent and nothing whatsoever to do with what others thought of his personality.
A loving and joyful welcome by the family to a son’s illegitimate child was not unusual in the thirteenth century. Men could even bring their offspring from extramarital relationships to their wives for rearing, although wives and daughters did not have quite the same right or expectation of cheerful reception. When the inclusion was successful, both sets of children received equal respect and care. Although we could reasonably argue that this practice was unfair both to the innocent spouse and to the birth mother, the practice was an attempt to encourage paternal responsibility.
From the records we have of the elite in particular, these offspring were not only loved but also provided with honorable positions and were respected by others. King John, as one example, may not have been the best of rulers or husbands, but he seems to have been a rather good father. When he gave his illegitimate daughter, Joan, to Prince Llywelyn of Wales as a wife, the Welsh ruler not only seemed rather fond of her, he also considered her quite the marital prize. Some illegitimate sons of kings became bishops, such as Geoffrey Plantagenet, Archbishop of York and son of Henry II, or wealthy and titled, such as Robert, first Earl of Gloucester and son of Henry I.
Of course there were parents who battered or molested their children, but there were just as many that would have done anything for the benefit of their offspring, regardless of gender or disability. Henry III and his wife, Eleanor of Provence, adored their mute three-year-old daughter. When the little girl died, they both fell seriously ill as a consequence of their deep mourning. Serious illnesses, the death of a child, or a miscarriage have always been painful things. No matter how common death or the threat of it might have been, it could never have hurt less to see your child die.
Nor was it less painful then for a child when a mother or father died. With the high mortality of women in childbirth, of men in wars, and everyone due to disease, the luxury of having birth parents throughout childhood was a rare one prior to the medical advances and relatively peaceful period, at least in the West, of the late twentieth century. The most common parental relationship for a child throughout history has been that of stepparent, sometimes a succession of them of both genders. Thus our assumption that children were better off in the good old days before divorce was so easily obtained is an illusion. Such dulcet times are largely mythological. If the two adults handle the situation with maturity, modern day divorce may actually be kinder. At least both parents are alive and often available to the child. Death is never that considerate.
The misconception that medieval children were seen as mini-adults is more amusing than accurate. The impression probably does derive from the few pictorial images we have in which they are dressed in fashions similar to their parents. In fact, dress was very functional in the thirteenth century. Clothing was not cheap nor was it easily kept clean (many did care about this) or repaired. In the late thirteenth century, everyone, including children, wore comparable, practical attire. The nuances of style, appropriate to a gender or age, were minor, sometimes only a matter of robe length, collar width, or who wore the linen drawers. (And all differences were viewed with as much passion and nervousness as they are now.) In fact, we dress our own children much the same way: practically for daily activities and in miniature versions of adult styles for the obligatory family photo. These photographs, which will last longer than the memory of what children wore to playgrounds, do not reflect our view that children are tiny adults any more than it did with our medieval ancestors.
As a final note on medieval children, a favorite plaything for boys was the hobbyhorse. Even Alfred the Great mentioned one. It did not apparently get that name until the mid-1500s, presumably from “hoby” meaning “a small horse.” Prior to the 1500s, it was called a stick-horse or just a wooden horse, but I have used the term “hobbyhorse” because that brings an accurate picture to a modern reader’s mind more quickly.
Other assumptions about the medieval period involve the status of women. Indeed, the assumption that women were treated as property in the period, especially amongst the upper classes, has some justification in medieval law, although women of all classes exercised much more freedom in the rough and tumble of daily life. Women have rarely had an easy time in any period of history, but practicality has always demanded the reverse of common or legal assumptions in eras with a less than stellar grasp of the wide range of feminine competence. Such was the case during the First and Second World Wars when women took on “men’s” civilian jobs. Such was the case in 1271.
The frequently expressed view of medieval women at this time, especially by religious leaders, was that they were “weaker vessels” and incapable of logic or rational thought. Whenever men were called away for commercial reasons or during the frequent wars, however, wives or mothers were quickly put in charge of farms, businesses, castles, and nations. Even contemporary sources noted that they did rather well. Fortunately, most of us are surprised that anyone would think otherwise.
Nonetheless, it is true that medieval law could be hard on a woman. Followers of Galen’s medical theories, for instance, believed that a woman must ejaculate “seed,” much as a man did, if she was to conceive. (Pregnancy resulted from the union of male and female “seeds.”) If she became pregnant, she was presumed to have ejaculated and thus experienced the same kind of orgasmic pleasure as a man. This assumption of pleasure in the act made it very difficult for a woman to claim in a court of law that she had been raped if she conceived as a result of sexual assault. If the rapist was unmarried, she did have the option of marrying him. This was certainly not a happy choice and a woman had the right to reject such a marriage; however, refusal was often not a practical choice in the face of family pressure because of the damage done to the woman’s character.
All this may seem both boorish and ignorant to us in the West; however, we shouldn’t be too smug about how much wiser we have become. The rate of conviction for rape has changed little in seven hundred years; many continue to question whether a woman didn’t really “lead him on” or somehow “ask for it”; and the concept of date or marital rape is beyond the grasp of others to understand. Even modern societies have failed to comprehend what rape means to a woman or to develop adequate measures to prevent it.
Not all medieval laws were harsh for women, however. There is an interesting little clause in the Magna Carta, a document touted as a precursor of modern democracy in some circles. One of the tiny provisions in that charter of 1215 is the prohibition against the king extracting fines from widows who wanted to stay single or remarry someone of their own choosing.
During the reign of King John, upper class widows paid dearly for the privilege of doing either
after the death of a husband. The crown grew quite rich with the fines they paid; therefore, the barons probably added this paragraph, not to give women any real choice, but to stop the drain on the baronial wallet. In practice, widows often had few options about what they did with their lives after the death of a spouse either before or after 1215. Nonetheless, this clause did open the door to freer marital choice by widows, a concept that was even respected on occasion.
Since many widows must have been put under pressure to make another marriage lucrative to the family, there was one fairly certain way a widow could retain her independence. This was through the practice called “taking the ring and mantle as a vowess.” By taking this single monastic vow of celibacy, a woman gained God as an ally in her decision to remain single and thus comparatively independent, financially as well as legally. This ceremony and vow were not taken lightly in medieval society and took place in front of a bishop. When Henry III’s widowed sister, Eleanor, remarried after taking such a vow herself, the question of the validity of that second marriage was brought before the Pope for a decision. The fact that she had conceived de Montfort’s child prior to the wedding was of lesser concern in this instance.
Becoming a nun was a common career choice for a medieval woman, either because she had a calling to the religious life or her family decided she would. Not all nuns were strictly sequestered, however, and they were often called back to their secular homes whenever someone in the family fell ill or their services were otherwise needed. In some instances, prioresses also spent much time at court. Just as charities do today, monasteries of all kinds needed money and the court was a good place to get donations of land or other valuable items. Many women, especially those trained in running large households or holdings, opted for the religious life as one way to exercise considerable administrative talent. Despite the general belief that Adam should not be ruled by Eve, there were even a few double houses, with monks and nuns living and working in close proximity, where both genders were overseen by a prioress or abbess. Such an order was the one to which the religious in this story belong, the Order of Fontevraud.
Tyrant of the Mind Page 23
