Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

by Sara Cockerill

  Real war was now unavoidable. Montfort struck back against the royalist supporters at once, sending his sons to attack Mortimer’s own castles in concert with Llywelyn – with some success – Mortimer’s main castle at Wigmore (held by his family since 1075) was taken and his lordship of Radnor was ravaged. It seems likely that this attack also involved direct confrontation between the attackers and Mortimer’s wife, Maud de Braose, who, as lady of Radnor in her own right, and a descendant both of King John’s bête noire Maud de Braose and William Marshal, would be likely to be assertive in her own interests, and prone to resent insult. Certainly, in the longer term, this attack seems to have given rise to very unpleasant consequences for Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265.39

  Within weeks, the entire region was up in arms. Edward himself, moving to support Mortimer, came close to capture at the key town of Gloucester following an incursion into South Wales, Hay and Huntingdon but was saved by making a truce with Henry de Montfort – which he then disregarded once Henry was out of reach.

  Meanwhile, Montfort’s position was strengthened by the rejection of Mise of Amiens by the Londoners and commonalty, as well as by Gloucester. It is perhaps worthy of note that much of the blame for the Mise was put at the door of Eleanor of Provence, who had been actively campaigning on the Continent and was the sister of Louis’ queen. Beyond a doubt, at this stage Eleanor of Provence had a good claim to be the most unpopular queen in the history of England.40

  However, the royalist cause was managed well – one suspects by Edward rather than by Henry or Richard of Cornwall. Under cover of preparation for a campaign against Llywelyn, a gathering of royalist barons was called to Windsor in late February. This force then marched on 8 March to Oxford, the royalist headquarters up until the Battle of Lewes.41

  Meanwhile, London had settled under baronial control, with Montfort and Despenser in residence preparing the citizens to defend the city and to attack their chosen targets. Among these was Richard of Cornwall’s manor of Isleworth, and properties of Pembroke and Philip Basset which were invaded by a mob led by baronial justiciar Hugh Despenser (Basset’s own son-in-law).

  In early April the royalist army moved from Oxford to Northampton, where the baronial forces had their headquarters. The French prior of the Cluniac house of St Andrew, who was a royalist sympathiser, allowed Edward’s army to effect an entrance and take the baronial army by surprise. Numerous barons, including Simon de Montfort the younger and Peter de Montfort, were taken prisoner and subject to ransom. Edward saved Simon, his old tourneying friend, from royalist troops who would otherwise have killed him. Some of the prisoners were sent south to Windsor, where they were held, effectively in Eleanor’s custody. The town was then sacked and the army moved on for more of the same at Leicester and Nottingham.42

  The news of this victory would probably have been accompanied by the news of the grant to Eleanor by Henry ‘at the Lord Edward’s instance’ of a manor at Ashford in the Peak – the first royal grant of lands to Eleanor since her dower assignment, and a thoughtful one as it was situated within the ambit of the castle and town of the Peak – the one remaining part of her dower which had not been granted elsewhere as a quid pro quo for the return of Edward’s supporters. This was a key point in Eleanor’s life – her first actual grant of lands, which meant her first acquisition of her own revenues. The grant was probably intended to assist in her maintenance while Edward and Henry were on campaign. But it seems possible that some of the revenues were immediately diverted by Eleanor to her pet interest – books. Either at about this point or in early 1270, she commissioned the production of the beautiful illustrated apocalypse known as the Douce Apocalypse, possibly inspired by a Castilian Beatus apocalypse which it is thought likely that she brought with her to England on her marriage. As with later commissions, her own interests and instructions are manifest – some of the earliest illustrations completed show the forces of the Beast prominently including Montfort – and Gloucester.43

  Meanwhile, from Nottingham, the royalist army was forced south by news of the baronial attack on Rochester, which was being held by John de Warenne and Roger Leyburn. Having relieved the siege of the castle, Henry and Edward moved on to Lewes, arriving on 11 May 1264.

  The baronial army had tracked them there, rendezvousing with Montfort. A last-ditch offer to settle was firmly rejected, Henry sending a letter of defiance, and Cornwall and Edward one of challenge – making clear that on their side at least no quarter would be given in the future: ‘From this time forth we will do our utmost to inflict injury upon your persons and possessions.’ Montfort withdrew his allegiance the next day, as did his supporters.44

  All was now ready for battle, and on the next day – 14 May – the two sides, numbering perhaps 7,000 men each, met. From Eleanor’s perspective, the battle is significant in two respects. First, during the course of it Edward made a classic military blunder, pursuing the fleeing contingent of Londoners far from the field of battle. As Vegetius says, ‘He who rashly pursues a flying enemy with troops in disorder, seems inclined to resign that victory which he had before obtained.’ The truth of the maxim was amply proved by the event. When Edward returned some considerable time later, it was to find that the rest of the battle had taken a decidedly different course. Cornwall and Henry of Almain had been trapped in a mill on their right flank, and Henry III’s horse had been slain under him in the baronial charge.45

  The second significant point is that the result (by a process which is extremely unclear in the sources) was that Henry was effectively trapped in a priory, and Edward went with his Marcher companions to join him – at the cost of his own liberty.

  At close of play, therefore, Montfort had the following credit/debit balance. On the credit side, he had definitely won the battle, and he had Henry, Edward and the Marchers trapped in the priory and Richard of Cornwall in his custody. On the debit side, he could not storm the priory, and a siege was almost as morally undesirable, as well as carrying the risk of attracting other royalist troops to oppose him. Also on the debit side were his own hostages in Eleanor’s custody at Windsor – including his own son Simon, as well as those taken by Edward during the battle.46

  The only way forward was compromise. Much of the night of 14–15 May was therefore spent in thrashing out a settlement, known as the Mise of Lewes. Montfort’s gains in the settlement were the really big ones – custody of Henry and Edward, and the subjection of Henry to a council which would rule on his behalf. However, what he had to let go was the Marchers – for him a horrendously risky concession, given that they were now implacably opposed to him. Also released were the Northern and Scottish lords – whose presence was needed to forestall incursions on the border. Once terms were agreed, Henry was brought by Montfort to London at the end of May to be the figurehead of the Montfortian regime, and Edward and Henry of Almain were transferred first to Dover and later to Wallingford, where Richard of Cornwall was also transferred.47

  This marks the beginning of what must have been a truly terrible period for the twenty-two-year-old Eleanor. Edward’s capture was a disaster – Montfort was king in all but name and soon disregarded the provisions of the Mise of Lewes. Even historians with the perspective of hindsight tend to the view that Montfort seems to have regarded the Mise as no more than a ruse by which to get his hands on Edward and Henry, and this must certainly have seemed the case to the royalist faction at the time. This may well have been enough to raise suspicions, which gained credence as time passed, that he meant to move towards a formal claim to the crown. If he did so, Edward’s continued existence would undoubtedly have been regarded by him as a danger which must be avoided. Eleanor would therefore have had very real fears for Edward’s life. Certainly Henry seems to have considered that Edward was in danger; in one letter to Louis he speaks of his ‘inestimable peril’. Further, at the time when news came to her, Eleanor was approaching the end of the first trimester of her second recorded pregnancy – she expected to give b
irth around the end of the year, the baby apparently having been conceived just before Edward commenced the Northampton campaign in April. As it was, however, Eleanor faced the entirety of this pregnancy alone.48

  To make matters still worse, Edward’s capture effectively left her all but destitute. Despite her notional dower assignment, she did not actually have the immediate right to any of this property or its revenues – these remained Edward’s and she was effectively granted by him an annual allowance equivalent to the value of her dower. However, once Edward was in captivity, his lands passed into Montfortian control. Thus her one source of revenue was the manor at Ashford in the Peak granted to her earlier in the year. Whether she was able to collect these revenues or not, it is plain that what she received in the next year was inadequate to her needs – Henry III had to pay for medicines for her, and she was driven to borrow money from the Montfortian justiciar Despenser in April 1265.

  It has been suggested that Eleanor’s later behaviour in acting so assertively to acquire property can be traced to psychological scars caused by this period of poverty and powerlessness. This is probably a considerable exaggeration and oversimplification; Edward and Eleanor had been in financial difficulties ever since they married, and would continue to be so until her death. Furthermore, her later property acquisitions were not done entirely at her own instance, but as part of a concerted plan hatched with Edward. However, it is highly likely that the considerable financial difficulties of this period were never entirely expunged from Eleanor’s recollection.

  Her immediate concern, however, would have been the terms of her husband’s captivity, and what her own actions should be. Once the terms of the Mise became clear, she would have understood that she held one of the major bargaining cards left to the royalist cause – the baronial prisoners. It was incumbent upon her, therefore, to hold them and Windsor as long as she could. This also appears to have been the instruction disseminated to other royalist strongholds, presumably via the released Marchers – Nottingham held out until December and Bristol (fortified by the Tonbridge garrison) until April 1265.49

  Thus Eleanor remained at Windsor, faithful to her husband’s orders despite his capture, with her young daughter Katherine, and Pembroke’s pregnant wife Joan. Inevitably, as the senior person resident, she was also at least involved in the defence of the castle, which held out against the baronial forces for over a month after the defeat at Lewes, in order to maintain as strong a negotiating position as possible. However, in mid-June 1264 the castle was surrendered and she was ordered by Henry to leave Windsor, along with Joan. Further evidence of her active involvement in the defence for that month is suggested by the facts that the correspondence indicates that Henry and Edward left the castle specifically under her control, she refused to leave without a safe conduct and that, ultimately, she only went on positive orders from Henry, who promised to excuse her to Edward for her action: ‘the king undertakes to excuse her to Edward her lord’.

  The flavour which emerges is that she regarded herself as Edward’s deputy in command of the castle under his orders – and that she had every intention of obeying those orders to the letter. As such, Eleanor acted very much in a small but significant tradition of militant English women: King Stephen’s wife, Matilda, who summoned and commanded troops while he was captive; Nicola de la Haye, the defender of Lincoln Castle against Louis of France in 1217; and the two Mauds de Braose – the defender of Painscastle in 1198 and the current Lady Mortimer. One would, of course, expect nothing less of her father’s daughter, but it shows once more that Eleanor was prepared to stray far from the paradigm within which she, as a princess, would be expected to operate.50

  Where Eleanor went from Windsor is unrecorded – very possibly to Canterbury initially, where Henry III was then being kept in genteel captivity, and thence to London, where Henry appears to have spent the remainder of the summer, a supposition supported by the fact that Henry paid her expenses in November and for medicines for her in January. Certainly she was kept within the scope of close baronial supervision, and this fact also suggests that the barons did regard her as being untrustworthy and a threat in and of herself – Joan of Pembroke was simply ordered to withdraw to a nearby religious house and await her delivery. In part, concern to keep her close will doubtless have been due to the rumours which were current that Eleanor of Provence was raising an army abroad and that this army included Castilians, ‘as Edward had taken to wife the sister of the King of that land’, along with any rumours which also seeped out that Eleanor of Provence had obtained funding from, among others, Enrique of Castile. However, this approach also reinforces the probability that Eleanor had indeed taken a noticeably active role in the defence of the castle – to move a pregnant princess, and her young child, and send her any distance in the middle of the year was a fairly shocking thing to do, particularly in the unhealthy summer months.51

  Whether either of these factors in fact influenced events, we can obviously never know. However, what is certain is that by 5 September 1264 Katherine was dead, aged around twenty months. She was buried around the end of the month and Eleanor was in such financial distress that she had to borrow the money to pay for the funeral. Eleanor (and Edward when he came to know of it) would hardly have been human if she had not laid this death at the door of the barons, as yet another item to be brought into an eventual reckoning.52

  Nor did matters improve. With Eleanor now also in the hands of the Montfortians, the effective resistance to Montfort was left to the Marchers, with backup from the Savoyards abroad. In October they duly obliged, the Marchers sacking Hereford and taking castles in the South West, while some of Edward’s knights attempted to free him from Wallingford. The latter aspect of the plan backfired spectacularly. As the would-be rescuers were held up in the inner bailey, Edward was seized by the guards, who threatened to hurl him from the castle on a mangonel. He was forced to order his friends to withdraw. Following this attempt, Edward and Henry of Almain were moved to the more secure Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, and Montfort, in alliance with Llywelyn, caught the Marchers in a pincer movement, forcing them to submit by mid-December. The price for this season of rebellion was the exile of the Marchers to Ireland for a year, and the annexation by Montfort of Edward’s central lordship of Chester. Although notionally this deal was to involve Edward’s release, it is unlikely that anyone on the royalist side now thought that a true release would be on the cards.53

  At this low point, Eleanor was preparing for her next confinement. Her daughter Joan (presumably named after her mother) was born very late in December 1264 or very early in January 1265, as can be seen from the fact that Eleanor’s churching was imminent on 3 February 1265. To add to the difficulties which Eleanor was already experiencing, it seems likely that the birth was not an easy one: medicines for Eleanor’s use were bought (by Henry) on 25 January 1265, nearly a month after the baby was born. Incidentally, the birthdate provides further cogent evidence of Edward and Eleanor’s devotion. The birth would indicate a conception date of early April – just days before Edward set off from Oxford for Northampton, and within the period when the royalist army was notionally stationed at Oxford. It therefore appears that Edward had sneaked off from camp to spend time with his wife in the last few days before the war finally began.54

  Nothing had improved when Eleanor emerged from seclusion. In January, Montfort summoned a parliament to endorse the settlement of affairs following his defeat of the Marchers and to agree terms for a ‘release’ of Edward. Ironically, this parliament is celebrated as the first to which ordinary people were summoned, but it was at the time notable for the way in which Montfort utilised it to enrich himself and his family. He effectively annexed much of the vast wealth of Richard of Cornwall and took over a huge section of Edward’s lands, also effectively removing Eleanor’s sole property and means of support from her. He also took a further five royal castles as hostages for Edward’s good behaviour.

  A settlement to en
able Edward’s notional release was in place by March, and he was brought to London and officially handed over to the king in a grand ceremony at Westminster Hall on 11 March. The release, however, was a stage-managed farce. Edward remained in Montfort’s custody, and following the ceremony Montfort left London with both King Henry and Edward in his train. And ‘train’ it very much was: Montfort had by this stage acquired a huge retinue of armed knights who formed his household – a greater number than was ever maintained by Edward as king.55

  It is possible that Eleanor and Edward may have seen each other at this time – Eleanor had thus far been largely kept with Henry III, who had been brought to London to seal the deal, and it appears that she was at Westminster in January 1265 when she interceded with Henry to gain an exemption from jury service for a petitioner. Moreover, the agreement reached does seem to have had some regard for Eleanor’s financial position. On 20 and 29 March, she was granted the revenues of three manors via a wardship of Cecily, daughter of William de Fortibus – one in Cambridgeshire, one in Somerset and one in Surrey. But certainly Eleanor will not have joined the Montfort party when they moved off; it was effectively a campaigning party. Therefore, if there was a meeting it was a brief one.56