Sara Cockerill, 2014
www.saracockerill.com
Acknowledgements
There are three people who must imperatively be thanked for their contributions to this book.
The first is Michael Prestwich, whose work on Edward I actually led me to introduce myself to Eleanor. It was his mention of the change in the character of Edward’s reign after Eleanor’s death which first set me wondering whether there was more to a woman who had appeared in most of what I had read as a very quiet, traditional queen. So without him, this book would most certainly never have been written. I also owe him immense thanks for his kindness and patience in reading through the entire book in draft and providing many insightful and helpful comments.
The second person to whom thanks are indubitably owed is John Carmi Parsons who, any reader of the notes will quickly appreciate, had done a very great deal of detailed scholarly research on Eleanor. That research provided me with a huge amount of the building material for putting Eleanor’s story together. I have been awed repeatedly by the meticulous nature of his researches. Had his work not been available I could never have done the job which he did, and the book would be immeasurably poorer for it.
Finally, unending thanks must be given to my husband Nigel, who not only brought those key copies of Edward I and The Three Edwards into my world, but discussed my early tentative theories with me; and was a model of patience in listening to the immense amount of Eleanor-related trivia which has seemed fascinating to me as I progressed with the writing process.
I would also like to thank Colette Bowie for releasing to me an advance version of the relevant sections of her book on the daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Suzanne Lewis for confirming her future approach on the Trinity Apocalypse. Thanks are also due to the very many kind people at Westminster Abbey, the British Library, British Museum, Bodleian Library, National Archives and Bridgeman Art Library who helped me to put the illustrations together.
Finally, many thanks to Jonathan Reeve and Nicola Gale at Amberley for being prepared to take a chance on an author with no pedigree in writing history!
1
The Backdrop
On 1 November 1254, a fifteen-year-old boy was married to a twelve-year-old girl in the elegant Normanesque abbey of Las Huelgas in the northern Spanish town of Burgos. The couple had been formally engaged for some months but they had met for the first time only a matter of days before the wedding. Both were unsupported by their parents at this major event; the bride’s father was dead and her mother had recently fled the country, while the groom’s parents had chosen not to accompany him, and would only see the new couple for the first time over a year later. Such a wedding hardly seems auspicious. But this unpromising start was the beginning of perhaps the most successful royal marriage in England’s history, for the bride was Eleanor of Castile and the groom was the future Edward I. As he became one of England’s greatest and most successful kings, his wife was never far from his side and his devotion to her has become a byword, reinforced by the multiplicity of touching images of her he raised to commemorate her death, some thirty-six years into their marriage.
Yet though by those images and her splendid tomb – hailed as one of the masterpieces of the Decorated style – she is perhaps the most visible of the medieval queens of England, the opposite is the case when it come to the facts about Eleanor of Castile. She leaves almost no trace in the main records. In the process of reconstructing her life I have frequently felt that she hides away among the shadows of history. So elusive is she that there has never been a full biography of her life and there are no easy answers to the obvious questions: Who was she? Why was a Castilian princess married to an English prince? Did she influence Edward at all politically? And why was that marriage such a huge success?
To answer these questions it is necessary to take a step away from the facts one can know for sure about Eleanor. There are almost no verifiable facts about Eleanor’s childhood, for example, and yet her story cannot possibly be said to start on the day she married Edward. At nearly thirteen years old she had a wealth of experience and knowledge already available to her, which must have coloured who she was. What is more, the fact that she was the daughter of one of Spain’s greatest kings, an international hero and a future saint, is by no means irrelevant to the reason why the marriage came about, or to the assumptions about the role of a king which she will have brought to the marriage and communicated to her husband.
So where does one start? Even commencing at Eleanor’s birth will not answer, for three reasons. The first is that the question as to why an English prince was marrying a Castilian princess cannot be answered without looking much earlier; although the marriage of Eleanor and Edward has come down to us as a great royal love match, the truth is that it was in all senses an arranged marriage, which existed only because it was politically the most suitable match available on both sides. The reasons which made it so appropriate derive principally from family and political factors, some of which reach back a full century before the wedding. Therefore the match itself is incomprehensible without some grounding in that backdrop.
Secondly, the importance of family to royal and noble individuals in this era must not be underestimated. Family was what fundamentally made you what and who you were. Family was what brought the privileges of rank and wealth, when the opposite was all too visible every day. Duty to family was a central part of the education and indoctrination of noble children – and particularly girls, who would be used as human links in a chain binding different family interests together, and who would be expected to bear an active role in promoting the relationship which their marriage was to facilitate. As Henry III put it, in the context of negotiations for Edward’s marriage to Eleanor, ‘friendship between princes can be obtained in no more fitting manner than by the link of conjugal troth’. In the interests of family, complex relationships developed through generations; and frequently women were the prime movers in the business of maintaining or supplementing historical family ties.
For Eleanor herself, the careful husbandry of family interests later formed a very significant part of the business of her life. Like most royal and noble women of this era, she appreciated the value of noble blood and alliance and would carry in her head the ancestry of her own family and those surrounding it – unto the third and fourth generations. She would then deploy this knowledge in forming alliances for children, friends and dependents. One illustration of this sphere of knowledge is the way in which papal dispensations would permit marriage ‘within the fourth degree of consanguinity’, i.e. with anyone who had a common ancestor four or more generations ago. Thus a common great-great-grandparent was permissible, but a common relative more recent than that was not – unless special dispensation was obtained. The number of ramifications which a family tree can gain in the intervening period can be imagined; particularly with second marriages, which were common if a first spouse died, a not infrequent occurrence given to the dangers of childbirth and battle. Yet in the world in which Eleanor moved, people, and particularly women, would be expected to know precisely such details. Ultimately one of Eleanor’s great achievements was to surround her immediate family with supporters from her wider family, and to do so in a way which avoided negative comment from interested parties. The subtlety of the job that she did in interweaving her family into England’s aristocracy cannot be appreciated without some perspective on the broader family ties that she brought with her.1
Finally, the fact that Eleanor is a woman who makes few positive appearances in the records means that direct evidence of her qualities and interests is very incomplete. We cannot unearth those facets of her without looking at the context and probabilities.
Therefore this chapter has to cover some broader family background, following Eleanor’s family through four generations. This sets the stage for the political rationale for the marriage, as well as for Eleanor’s own place in the world. It also begins the process, which the
next two chapters will complete, of gathering such material as there is about the family backgrounds and early experiences for each of Eleanor and Edward. By looking in this chapter and the succeeding ones, at the family backgrounds of each and their upbringing, it is possible to form some views about the events and interests which affected each and moulded them into the two young people who stood at the altar in November 1254.
This is a story which can best be told broadly as the story of five weddings spanning four generations. At either end stand the marriage of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, which is the blood link between Eleanor and Edward, and the wedding of Eleanor’s father, Ferdinand of Castile, to her mother, Jeanne of Ponthieu. In between lie on Ferdinand’s side that of Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of England and of their daughter Berengaria of Castile to Alfonso IX of León; on Jeanne’s side there is the marriage of her mother Marie of Ponthieu to Simon of Dammartin (the relationships discussed are illustrated in Family Tree 1: Five Weddings at p. 4). Each wedding forms part of the context for the marriage of Edward and Eleanor, and each has relevance to Eleanor’s later life and interests.
In political terms, the first marriage is key. It is possibly the most famous of all medieval marriages: that of Henry, Count of Anjou, the future King of England and Duke of Normandy, and the greatest heiress of her generation, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitou in her own right. It is key in one sense because it provides the blood link which existed between Eleanor and Edward – both were direct descendants of this marriage. But in political terms this marriage created the situation in which an Anglo-Castilian alliance made sense. It is therefore actually an understatement to say that the course of events leading to the marriage of Eleanor and Edward can be traced back to this event. In fact it is vitally necessary to go back to this date to put the later marriage into any form of context.
The Anjou–Aquitaine marriage took place a little over a century before that of Eleanor and Edward, on Whit Sunday, 18 May 1152. It was effectively an elopement, coming only eight weeks after the annulment of Eleanor’s marriage to King Louis VII of France. It had two other hallmarks of an elopement: it was celebrated in a somewhat perfunctory style, the chroniclers disapprovingly describing it as having taken place without the ceremony that befitted their rank; and it took place without the consent, which should have been obtained, of the parties’ mutual overlord – the same King Louis.
The reason no consent was sought and the marriage was rushed on was not raw romance; the protagonists had probably only met once before the wedding, albeit that some commentators considered that Henry made a noticeably good impression on the queen. It was because it changed the balance of power in Europe at a stroke. What is particularly ironic, given that the reasoning behind the annulment was Eleanor’s failure to provide Louis with an heir, was that the notable fruitfulness of the marriage ensured that it continued to do so for future generations.2
Two major political effects were created. The first was in making the English power block the primary cause for concern for French monarchs for generations to come. The marriage made the succession of Henry to the throne of England virtually a certainty and therefore linked (either at the time or for the future) England, Normandy and the Norman possessions in northern France, Anjou, Poitou and Gascony. Prior to the marriage England’s status had fallen low, with the civil wars that had followed in the wake of the death of Henry I without a direct male heir. This marriage ensured that England ceased to be perceived as of little concern; instead it became a major power. What is more, the English Plantagenet power block was, in terms of territory, far greater than that of France, and it hampered the French king’s traditional means of maintaining power by fostering dissension between his powerful vassals. From this moment on it would therefore be imperative for French kings to look at all times to means of destabilising the Plantagenet empire and chipping pieces of territory or influence away from it as they could.
The second political effect was one within the Plantagenet empire itself, and it reflected the disadvantages that came with this massive empire. Henry’s lands stretched from the north of England, west to Ireland and then south to the middle of France. Eleanor’s lands then stretched from the middle of France to the Spanish border. It followed that there were many neighbouring interests involved in such an empire, all of whom would have their own axes to grind – and most of whom would be inclined to take advantage of any weaknesses or lengthy absences. Although Henry moved fast – often faster than his enemies anticipated – the sheer distances involved, as well as the economics of warfare, meant that the iron fist alone could not provide an adequate safeguard. A journey to Gascony would take weeks – and longer if the weather in the Channel was unfavourable. Hence, as regards the southern reaches of the empire, the Plantagenet approach was to maintain the position as much as possible by alliances; principally by marriage alliances. Each generation of Plantagenet princes which followed Henry’s marriage to Eleanor would duly make a marriage alliance with a power near to the borders of Gascony. Edward’s match with Eleanor was simply the latest example of the policy. Thus Richard I had married Berengaria of Navarre, John married Isabelle of Angoulême and Henry III Eleanor of Provence.3
The first of these southern marriage alliances, and one of the most significant politically, was the second marriage, which forms the background to Eleanor of Castile’s story. This was the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter and namesake Eleanor of England to Alfonso VIII of Castile. The idea of this marriage was to bring Castile, the dominant power in the Iberian peninsula, into harmony with the Angevin interests and avoid the need for too much attention to the southern border, since Henry had much with which to concern himself elsewhere. Conceptually the plan was sound, and on one level at least the alliance was a great success. This was the personal level: the marriage was famously harmonious, with Eleanor actively ruling alongside her husband, who actually specified in his will that she was to rule alongside their son in the event of his own death. In the event, Eleanor of England died only twenty-eight days after Alfonso in 1214, and was buried at his side. Their graves were and still are in the Abbey de Las Huelgas, in Burgos, where, just over forty years later, Edward and Eleanor of Castile were to renew the alliance between England and Castile.4
On a political level, however, the marriage may be said to have been less idyllic. This is because the most important single issue, which later drove the marriage of Eleanor of Castile and Edward I, is the Castilian claim to Gascony which arose from the earlier Anglo-Castilian marriage. While the marriage of Eleanor of England and Alfonso was performed to secure the Gascon frontier, Alfonso was too canny a politician and too ambitious a monarch not to capitalise on his advantages. During the lifetime of Eleanor of Aquitaine he held his fire. Her control over her own patrimony was always significant, and her relationship with her daughter and son-in-law was apparently very good – she stayed with them for a long visit in 1201 and helped arrange the marriages of their daughters. But following her death in 1204 King John of England was troubled elsewhere by French advances on Anjou and Normandy, and this was too good an opportunity to miss. Alfonso launched an invasion of Gascony, citing a claim to Gascony which derived from Eleanor’s dowry – the validity of which claim is still debated.5
However valid or tenuous the claim, the invasion was a fact and although it was ultimately abandoned, this was not formally done until 1208; in the intervening four years Alfonso had at times actually held most of Gascony except Bayonne and Bordeaux and had issued charters styling himself ‘Lord of Gascony’. As a result the claim raised by Alfonso was very much in play between the two countries and was not formally relinquished until Eleanor of Castile’s marriage nearly fifty years later. As the English Crown progressively lost the vast bulk of its French lands under John and failed to regain them under the decidedly un-martial Henry III, the importance to England of the remaining territory, Gascony, increased – and so did the question as
to the English throne’s title in the area.6
The marriage of Eleanor of England and Alfonso is also important in the influence which the achievements of their reign had over Alfonso’s effective successor, Eleanor’s father, Ferdinand III. Those achievements therefore form the background to the situation and culture in which Eleanor was brought up, which is considered further in the next chapter. Principal among these were three factors: the resumption of the fight against the Muslim invaders (the Almohads), the centralisation of Spanish power in Castile and a cultural and intellectual renaissance.
So far as the fight against the Islamic invaders was concerned, most of the Iberian peninsula had fallen under Islamic control in the ninth and tenth centuries and a powerful and sophisticated caliphate had developed around the town of Cordoba. The process of winning back the land (which the Muslims had called Al-Andalus and which gradually became called Andalucia by the Spanish peoples) had begun then, and was to continue until 1492, when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon conquered Granada, the last outpost of the Muslim invaders. In Al-Andalus, Iberian attempts at reconquest were initially held in check by Yusuf ibn Tashfin of the Almoravids and later by the Almohads; both Berber dynasties originally based in North Africa.
But toward the end of the century the Iberian nations had fought back against the invaders, to the extent that the peninsula was now roughly divided into the Almohads in the south and west with the Iberian nations of Portugal, León and Castile in the north (reading from west to east) and Aragon in the north-east. Until the middle of the twelfth century León and Castile had been one kingdom, with León the dominant element, but the countries split after the death of Alfonso VII, with much resultant feuding. It was Alfonso VIII who began the process which was to push the Almohads back and who also put Castile in pole position as the dominant country in the peninsula.
Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen Page 2
