Eleanor arrived to a considerable welcome, Henry having given orders that ‘she should be received with the greatest honour and reverence’. The king, his nobles, the lord mayor and a crowd of citizens went out to meet her, dressed in festive clothes and mounted on caparisoned horses, and she progressed through the city by Cheapside and the Strand to Westminster, along roads hung with coloured cloth in her honour. There also appear to have been illuminations, ringing of church bells, singing ‘and other displays of joy’ to accompany the procession, as well as processions of all the clergy of St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey.
Despite all this brave jollification, London is unlikely to have made a good impression on Eleanor. The dank of an English autumn will hardly have helped to add glamour to a city which boasted few of the beauties and civilisations of Cordoba or Seville – or even some fairly basic amenities such as running water. There was, of course, plenty of water flowing through the city or standing in its numerous marshy areas, but at this point in time it was generally dirty, insanitary water, fit only for industrial processes such as tanning. The wells which had recommended the city to eleventh-century chroniclers were now unfit to use and London possessed only two water conduits which were regarded as somewhat wondrous. Those who could not access these had to venture outside the city walls to find clean water. To the denizens of London, the idea of a city owning multiplicities of public baths would have seemed utterly incomprehensible. To Eleanor, the capital city of her new country must have seemed a stinking and uncivilised little town.
At Westminster Eleanor was conducted to her rooms, which Henry, advised by Eleanor’s brother Sancho, had decorated in the Castilian style, with tapestries on the walls – a mode of ornamentation then only familiar in churches. Moreover, as Matthew Paris reports in shock, ‘even the floors were decorated in this manner’ – this being the first reported instance in English history of the use of floor carpet instead of rushes. Following her reception, Eleanor made rich offerings at the shrine of St Edward, to whose cult Eleanor was introduced by the gift of a life of the saint. At the same time, Henry may well have offered a rich cope of samite at the Confessor’s shrine, seeking a favourable outcome to the Sicilian business.4
Despite the effort made, it is likely that Eleanor will have found the level of comfort available in even her renovated rooms in the palace of Westminster somewhat disappointing. The cool weather, hardly excluded by thick stone walls, will have been an unpleasant novelty; the decorations which Henry had done for Eleanor of Provence in her rooms there with the figure of winter ‘portrayed with such sad looks and miserable appearance that he may be truly likened to winter’ would seem all too apposite. What is more, while Eleanor was used to roughing it to an extent, she was also used to the luxury and beauty of the Spanish palaces. Even at their best, and with all Henry’s work, English palaces were in a different league. Again the most obvious difference to her would probably be the lack of running water. In Spanish palaces, running water was such a given that it was used to decorate gardens for fun. In England, it was more or less unheard of.
The gardens themselves, even with Eleanor of Provence’s influence, were much simpler and more functional than the ‘paradises’ to which Eleanor was accustomed. The older queen’s tastes seem to have run more to herb gardens than paradises. She had a walled garden at Clarendon and herb gardens adjacent to her apartments at Winchester, Kempton and Windsor. At Woodstock her herb garden was beside the king’s fishpond. Perhaps the best gardens were those at Everswell, within the grounds of Woodstock, originally designed by Henry II for his Fair Rosamund. Here chambers were set out in the garden for the king and queen, among the pools and the gardens, and in one of them Henry planted a thousand pear trees, which will have looked lovely in blossom in spring time. There were probably no gardens at all at Dover and those at Westminster seem not to have received much attention.5
So on arrival Eleanor had to start to deal with a new home in a new and very different country – and one where political difficulties lurked, in particular for a foreigner. In some ways, life was less difficult than it might have been. She had apparently already established a good rapport with her husband and many of his close companions. She was already fluent in French, the working language of the court. The king was minded to be very welcoming to her, as is evidenced by the trouble he took over the decoration of her rooms and the pardoning in December 1255 of a Jew for murder at the instance of Eleanor’s ayo, Garcia Martinez (evidencing the greater sympathy with the Jewish community which was apparent in Castile). Finally, her mother-in-law, with whom she would be in close proximity, would be minded to be very kind to her: she was not only a woman who was devoted to her family and children generally, she was also – by a labyrinthine route which both women would have understood – actually kin to Eleanor.6
Yet, as will become apparent, it is likely that any such cossetting by Eleanor of Provence was either of short duration, or was rebuffed – or both. Despite the natural closeness into which they were thrown, the evidence suggests that the two Eleanors never became remotely close. A good amount of Eleanor of Provence’s correspondence has survived – but none of it is with her daughter-in-law. In later life she corresponded often with her son; but her correspondence with Eleanor appears to have been confined to short notes about domestic issues. Likewise, the correspondence of Eleanor of Castile which comes down to us is not with her mother-in-law. In part the lack of closeness is not unnatural: one of them was, after all, destined to succeed the other in the exercise of ultimate power.
But also the two women’s personal styles were sufficiently different that there was never likely to be great natural sympathy between them. Eleanor of Provence was elegant, beautiful, feminine and in tune with the traditional requirements of queenship. Though in many ways a forceful woman, she was nonetheless very traditional in her style. A medieval noblewoman was valued for her looks and her charm, for her ability to provide an heir for her husband and for maintaining links between her blood family and her family by marriage. In all of these roles Eleanor of Provence played her part to admiration. Her beauty and debonairité are repeatedly mentioned in the sources, and she plainly played along with her husband in his enjoyment of creating a pageant of kingship. In short, she looked and acted the part. She also made no bones about playing the formal role which was assigned to the queen, in interceding for petitioners with the ultimate source of power. So far as her role as mother of the heir was concerned, it is plain that this was the primary role by which Eleanor of Provence defined herself. As regards her role as a bridge builder between her family and her husband, the earlier chapters will have shown clearly that in this respect she succeeded perhaps as well as any queen in history; almost certainly rather too well.
‘Our’ Eleanor defines herself to us in the contrasts which she presents to her mother-in-law. Let us start with looks. It is highly unlikely that she was anything other than, at the least, a very handsome woman: her images on her tomb and the remaining Eleanor crosses show a woman of elegant features, as would be expected of the daughter of the handsome Ferdinand of Castile and the noted beauty Jeanne of Ponthieu. There is no suggestion that Edward, who could have commanded the most beautiful mistresses had he been so minded, was ever unfaithful to her in thirty-seven years of marriage; this too suggests that she was, and remained, a well-favoured woman (even the notably devoted Edward III strayed from Philippa of Hainault as she grew older and stouter). And yet she appears never in her lifetime to have been defined by her appearance. Apart from the half-hearted report before her marriage of her beauty, no one ever describes her looks. Even on her show-stopping entry into the city, not one single word in praise of her beauty finds its way into the chronicles. From this we can be tolerably sure of one thing – that she was not the sort of woman who traded on her looks. This, of course, is consistent with her upbringing under the watchful eye of Alfonso X. The conclusion is supported by her state on arrival in England, when the view was obviously t
aken by Henry that she did not have a wardrobe remotely fitted to her position. It is unimaginable that a woman who considered appearance a priority would enter upon a period of life when others would be called upon to judge her without a suitable armoury of dresses. In other respects, too, Eleanor was not a natural companion for her mother-in-law, being much more bookish and infinitely more fond of outdoor activities.
So while the two Eleanors undoubtedly formed an adequate modus vivendi, Eleanor will not have been a daughter-in-law Eleanor of Provence could take to her heart. But most significantly, Edward stood between them. Once Edward returned, the queen wished him to remain essentially under her wing; and at this point it will have become very apparent that Edward was no longer amenable to this, and was supported in his bid for independence by Eleanor. The spectre of this difficulty may well have appeared with Eleanor herself, and the news that Edward would follow her to London, rather than going to Ireland. Friction between the two women was therefore probably present from early on, and this will not have made Eleanor’s transition into English life any easier.
Indeed, it is probably fair to say that Eleanor got off to a very uneasy start in England and that her first couple of years there were difficult in the extreme. The reason for the marriage was the treaty with Alfonso. As it was, many English people did not see this treaty (which principally concerned Gascony) as being of much significance. To make matters worse, by the time she arrived in England in late 1255, the treaty which had brought about her marriage was already running into difficulties.
The co-operation envisaged by the treaty was not proving straightforward. Pardons of those involved in Alfonso’s incursion did not proceed speedily, the proposed African Crusade was making no progress and Henry was dragging his feet over the second marriage contemplated by the treaty. It was actually for this reason, and not as a comfort to Eleanor, that her brother Sancho was in England; Alfonso had already despatched a high-level mission including Garcia Martinez to press the various issues which had arisen, and they were still trying to make progress when Eleanor returned.7
In January 1256, Henry sent Peter d’Aigueblanche and John Maunsell to Castile to talk to Alfonso, but the terms which they carried were not accommodating. Henry refused to make restorations until Alfonso threw his full weight behind the ducal administration. He also refused to progress the marriage of his daughter to Alfonso’s brother Manuel until he had details of Manuel’s endowment and was assured that Manuel had tenure of the lands covered by that endowment. Henry went on to justify the request by his concern that Alfonso might later seize the endowment – as Henry had heard that he had done to others. This apparently offensive suggestion of course referred back to Jeanne of Ponthieu and Enrique of Castile’s disputes with Alfonso, and indicated that Henry was at the very least minded to give some credence to Eleanor’s mother’s complaints of Alfonso. He completely ignored Alfonso’s request for aid against Aragon and made a very half-hearted offer to seek commutation of his crusading vow in six years’ time, to allow him to get his second son established in Sicily.8
Unsurprisingly, in the light of this response, little progress was made. In due course, the distinguished ambassadors were replaced with men of less distinction – again conveying Henry’s reluctance to accommodate Alfonso. These unfortunate ambassadors were the ones to reap the whirlwind: in the summer of 1256, Alfonso actually threatened to invade Gascony. Matters were very tense for some months in the wake of this threat, but, as Henry and his advisers had anticipated, Alfonso ultimately felt he was unable to do so – because of his sister’s marriage. It may therefore be said that Eleanor exercised her function of last resort in averting war between the two countries, even if truly congenial relations had not yet resulted from the alliance. However, the position of brinkmanship was far from the comfortable relationship which had been anticipated on both sides, and would have been an appalling extra strain on a young girl already struggling to find her feet in a new country and environment.9
To make matters still worse, aside from the international strains which it evidenced, the Spanish embassy also played into the domestic issues, namely the question of ‘aliens’. In the context of the existing problems with interloping royal relations, the Castilian marriage was already viewed with some suspicion by many; Paris makes plain that it was perceived as providing occasion for yet another group of foreigners to come to England and live off its wealth. Although the embassy actually offered little danger of this, from the outside these suspicions appeared to be well founded: Eleanor’s half-brother Sancho was instrumental in recommending Henry to prepare the lavishly decorated rooms for her arrival and Henry offered land, money and benefices to Garcia Martinez and his son. Doubtless all of this made perfect sense in the context of attempting to have Henry’s non-compliance with treaty provisions presented to Alfonso as favourably as possible. However, the appearance to a domestic audience was unfortunate.
What is more, the personal style of the envoys had also provoked negative reaction. It seems likely that in matters such as dress the Castilian envoys were very noticeable, emphasising their strangeness. Certainly pictures from this era of Castilian origin show women wearing ‘horned’ hats, which look utterly ridiculous to modern eyes and probably did likewise to Londoners, differing markedly as they do from anything depicted in English or French sources. Likewise, studies of textiles from Las Huelgas and Villalcazar show that the Castilian mode of dress frequently involved ornate repeated patterns in the textiles used, doubtless inspired by Arabic art. Eleanor’s brother Felipe’s tomb yielded a tunic with a repeated trellis-type pattern producing the effect of eight-pointed stars. That of her nephew Fernando de la Cerda at Las Huelgas is again ornately patterned, but this time with repeated iterations of his own coat of arms. It appears to have been designed for use with a biretta, also lavishly patterned with his arms. The effect is, to say the least, striking and there seems to have been no precedent for such patterning in England before this date. One can easily see that this style would have pointed up the strangeness or alienness of the Castilians, and produced even a degree of derision.10
To add fuel to the fire of the problems both of Anglo-Castilian relations and tolerance of foreigners, almost no sooner than one half-brother had disappeared (as Sancho did in early 1256), another one appeared at court. This was the dangerous and needy Enrique, who had finally pursued his rebellion against his brother to the point of defeat at the Battle of Moron in October 1255 and was subsequently banished from Castile. He had initially fled to France, where Louis IX refused to have anything to do with him. Quite where he lurked between late 1255 and August of 1256, when he surfaced in England, is not certain, but it appears likely that he found refuge with Jeanne of Ponthieu, who might be seen as an intercessor with Henry and Edward on the subject of providing a refuge for Enrique. Certainly Henry’s raising of the issue of Manuel’s prospective lands in early 1256 sounds as if it were prompted by some recent gossip from a trusted source; Henry would be unlikely to make so offensive a comment in the context of sensitive diplomatic relations without being quite sure of his ground. However it came about, Enrique arrived in England, notionally in hopes that Henry III and Edward could, through their relationship with Alfonso, bring about a reconciliation.11
However, as is perhaps not surprising, the fact of Henry III welcoming Enrique at more or less the very time that he was downgrading his mission to Alfonso, returning thoroughly unsatisfactory answers to Alfonso’s requests and refusing to go on Crusade, was not conducive either to reconciliation or the amelioration of Anglo-Castilian relations. For months thereafter, the possibility of a renewed Castilian invasion of Gascony continued to hang fire, while Henry blithely bestowed gifts on Enrique and even threatened to support Enrique if Alfonso did invade Gascony. It cannot be doubted that Eleanor’s position at this time would have been highly uncomfortable, both personally, given her fondness for both brothers, and politically.
Enrique remained more or less in situ for a
bout three years, accepting numerous grants and favours. Henry did try to find things for him to do which could act as a useful olive-branch: in 1257 he sent him to act as an emissary to the papacy on the Sicilian business and in 1259 provided him with ships for an African venture, subject to an undertaking not to molest Alfonso’s interests. But Enrique’s presence seems in truth only to have exacerbated the situation. As for the hope that there would be a reconciliation, this was never to bear fruit.
However, it seems that, despite the political difficulties which Enrique’s presence undoubtedly created, he was a likeable character, very probably having a good measure of the troubadour charm. Eleanor corresponded with him throughout her life, though, owing to his spending most of that time in prison, they never met again after his departure from England in 1259; in 1303, Edward himself acknowledged his warm feelings for him.12
As if this was not enough to complicate Eleanor’s first year in England, yet another cause of friction with Alfonso and with key players at the English court soon made itself felt – the fight for the appointment as Holy Roman Emperor. No new Emperor had been appointed following the death of Frederick II in 1250, and by 1256 both candidates had died, leaving the way open to new candidatures. Soon after, Richard of Cornwall took his first steps towards seeking the job, paying a campaign agent and sending out an embassy to the Pope to try to gain his support. His candidacy was apparently quite well received, based upon his reputation as a diplomat, his wealth (essential to buy the votes of the electors) and his commercially important English connections. By 12 June 1256, his candidacy had been officially adopted as English foreign policy and he was sending out formal embassies. In addition, he was calling in loans to Henry and borrowing money to finance his candidacy.
Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen Page 14
