There was, however, a much less pleasant side to this nose-to-the-grindstone approach, and it is this which has considerably tarnished Eleanor’s reputation. On her death, an inquest into her property affairs took place, and this turned up a number of complaints, some of which were held to be justified. However, the inquest and its results have to be kept in proportion. The holding of such an inquiry was not unusual; Eleanor of Provence instituted one in her own lifetime. Nor can it be considered surprising that such an inquiry, which involved hearings in four locations, designed to be convenient to the bulk of Eleanor’s tenants, should turn up justified complaints over such a substantial and complex landholding. Nor that, when such an inquest was announced, a large number of complaints were made, some of them on a rather speculative or even dishonest basis.
The problem is that, of the contemporaneous records which survive of Eleanor, these are the largest in volume and the most cohesive. There is therefore a danger of inflating the importance of what was found simply because it is material which survived when other materials did not. Furthermore, just because a complaint was made does not mean that its validity should be accepted; while a number were overtly dismissed – for instance on the basis that those complained of were not in Eleanor’s employ at all – a greater number of complaints (including some of the most damaging allegations) seem to have been withdrawn or abandoned. In such cases it may be inferred that these complaints probably were not soundly based. An example is the case of John de Wauton, regarded by Parsons as a fairly damaging accusation against Eleanor. De Wauton alleged that he was brought into Eleanor’s council by her staff, that he asked for help in paying loans he had incurred to Aaron son of Vives without losing his lands and consequently entered into agreements with Hagin son of Cress, who collusively sold the debts to Eleanor – who then took the lands. While the charge was not formally dismissed, the implausibility of the story is apparent; and the fact that Edward granted the land in question to one of the members of the council named in the complaint indicates forcibly that it was considered unsustainable.
Having said that, what the records do show is that the bailiffs and reeves acted harshly on numerous occasions – there are any number of tabloid-worthy examples, of which perhaps the best is the case where one of Eleanor’s reeves seized a house from its owners, falsely procuring their imprisonment and abandoning their baby in a cradle in the middle of the road. Another striking story is the family who were ejected from their home so that the local bailiff could use it to entertain a prostitute.21
One facet of the picture which emerges, which has modern corporate resonances, is that reeves and bailiffs in Eleanor’s employ did not want to convey bad news up the line to a demanding superior. So when Eleanor took possession of properties and a review had to be made of what it would yield, sometimes stewards inflated the rents and services due from the properties, or overstated the size of the property. Thus at Overton a property was reported as nine acres, where previously it had been described as seven, and rents were stated to be 7d, not the 6d previously charged. Thereafter it seems that, under pressure to make good on the figures they had declared, bailiffs pressured tenants into paying the increased rents. In one case rent was exacted in what had been previously agreed as a rent-free period, in another case rents were extracted in full even though Eleanor had agreed to reduce them on account of the tenants’ poverty. In yet another, previously free pasture was made subject to an annual charge of 1d. These are not isolated examples and show that Eleanor’s team were keenly after every penny and often far from scrupulous.22
Another important fact which emerges is that a good deal of this can be put down to venal and opportunistic employees higher up the food chain, who took advantage of their own immunity from prosecution while on the queen’s business. Archbishop Pecham – albeit no friend of Eleanor and her business practices – described them as coming of the followers of the devil, rather than of Christ. Walter de Kancia, for example, is considered by Parsons as notorious for his venality and viciousness. It may be that he was behind a number of sharp practices, such as the one where Richard Cole sued a certain Robert Baldwin, who owed nothing to the queen, having him fined £13 6s 8d, to cover which fine six of his oxen were seized and sold, and grain to the value of £20 was also seized. He then procured de Kancia and another authority, John de Budesthorn, to uphold him (presumably for a cut of the profits). Eleanor’s decision to take Kancia’s estate into her own hands on his death (his family only received its value after her own death) may reflect some suspicion on her part that he was salting away sums due to her.
Other examples which can be traced to Kancia include charging the Bokland family in the New Forest rent for eighteen years for a farm which had been surrendered some time before Eleanor took over the New Forest, and charging Richard de Burele 30s rent for a cow pasture he no longer needed, having lost his cows more than a decade before in the Barons’ War. He also falsely asserted that another New Forest tenant had died intestate, seized goods worth £35 10s 8d and kept them himself, though he claimed to be acting in the queen’s name. In a number of cases at the inquest it was found that Walter had acted dishonestly, that even his own colleagues had little to say in his defence, and the jury frequently found that sums had come into his hands and ‘not to the profit of the lady queen’.23
Another example is Eleanor’s own auditor, John de Lovetot. He was in her service by 1273–4 and became a justice of Common Pleas in 1275. This did not, however, stop him presiding on occasions when the queen’s business was before the court; an approach which would somewhat surprise a modern judge. He also acted as a member of Eleanor’s council in the 1280s and witnessed a large number of her acts, reflecting a considerable working closeness and degree of trust. He acted on commissions on her lands and audited Ponthevin accounts. His perceived influence is illustrated in a case where her bailiffs wrongfully sued someone on the orders of Lovetot, whom, they said, ‘they dared not refuse’.
Lovetot seems to have been involved in the shady practice of inflating the amounts claimable on lands for rent and services. When defalcations on his part were proved, Eleanor did not defend him: he was one of the justices disgraced during inquiries against the justices in 1290. Nonetheless, in his case in particular, a degree of complicity or constructive knowledge on Eleanor’s part may be suspected, in that employing an auditor who was so embedded in her administration seems to have run contrary to normal or at least best practice, which, even at the time, was to employ ‘eminent men from outside the lord’s entourage, men whose station commanded respect and whose lack of affinity to the lord’s stewards and bailiffs postulated a capacity to do impartial justice to those … who might complain of the lord’s officials during the audit’.24
This brings us to the crucial question: to what extent was Eleanor actually aware of or complicit in these misdeeds? Not entirely, we can be sure, since one example of her officials’ wrongdoing involves the charging of rent to William and Iseut le Bruyn, former members of her personal household, who had actually been given lands in the New Forest by Eleanor herself; Eleanor had to certify in writing that she had remitted the rent when she made the grant before the bailiffs would desist. Nor was she likely to be aware of those examples given above, where Walter de Kancia abused his power to enrich himself, or similar cases where another bailiff ejected a tenant and had him jailed on the false accusation that he had broken into the house, or a reeve compelled tenants at Overton to give half of all their catch to the reeve’s wife, who sold it and kept the proceeds. Nor would she be likely to know the facts underlying the inflation of rents and services (or the mirror image, withholding of rent from those from whom the queen held her manors); active as she was in her business, she will probably not have been able to master the minutiae of each property.
Further, on every occasion when injustices or hardships were drawn to Eleanor’s attention, she acted to assist the person in distress. So, in 1289–90, one of Eleanor’s team was told th
at a certain John de Folebourne owed money to the queen, and his lands were consequently taken into her administration. He proved he actually owed nothing and Eleanor restored the lands to him. Similarly, John de Budesthorne’s lands were seized after his death based on information that he had been her bailiff, but were released when his wife proved that he had not been. In two cases which can be traced, Eleanor ordered repairs to be made to properties: one which she was granting to a dependant and another where her men had done damage to the property. Likewise, two different tenants at Overton were protected from the unjust actions of the queen’s bailiff, and on Anglesey she reduced the rent of tenants who explained to her that they were reduced to poverty. The evidence suggests that, well before her death, Eleanor was keen not to act unjustly by her tenants – where injustice was brought to her attention.
However, tempting as it is to try to clear Eleanor entirely, the facts do not really permit it. The habit of inflating rents coming in and skimping on rents going out was probably not one which was profitable to her staff (unless a number of them were complicit in skimming profits from her, which is of course possible), and yet it was plainly common practice. Add to this the fact, noted by Parsons, that the only cause for which Eleanor dismissed or prosecuted her officials during her lifetime was for failure to produce revenue; and while Walter de Kancia’s peculations in the New Forest were outed in 1277 and he lost his stewardship there, he was her gold keeper and overall steward until his death in 1283. Other malfeasant officials likewise kept jobs in her service.25
It therefore seems that these common wrongs were ones done, if not with Eleanor’s knowledge, then at least in keeping with the fairly hard line being taken as to the need to maximise income, without much attention being given to the little people caught in the meshes, unless those little people actually managed to find a route to make representations personally to the queen. Eleanor can therefore probably be held guilty of at least some Nelsonian knowledge of her administrative staff’s misdemeanours; and indeed, such knowledge would be consistent with her insistence on her deathbed that her estates’ affairs be looked into, in case injustices had been done.
That there were doubts among those fairly close to her about her business practices is wonderfully illustrated by the story of Hugh Despenser ‘the Elder’ (in the sense of being the father of the Despenser famous under Edward II; he was, however, the son of the Despenser featured earlier who died at Evesham). A man with close ties to the royal family (his step-grandfather was Earl of Warwick, his stepfather was Earl of Norfolk and he was married to a sister of a later Earl of Warwick) he found himself owing Eleanor 1,000 marks in 1287 after he married Isabel Beauchamp, whose lands were under Eleanor’s wardship, without royal licence. To secure the debt, he pledged a manor at Soham in Cambridgeshire – which was, of course, very temptingly close to Eleanor’s own holdings there. He was obviously not entirely confident that this temptation would be withstood, since he asked for formal confirmation that the manor would be restored to him after he paid the debt. There is even a sting in the tail of the story: Despenser did indeed get Soham back, but he ended up surrendering lands at Macclesfield to Eleanor instead.26
It is actually in providing for her team of clerks that the greatest questions arise over Eleanor’s own actual knowledge and approach. The principal means of providing for her clerks appears to have been via benefices in her gift or the gift of others she could influence – a route also explored by Eleanor of Provence, but with less success, owing to Henry III’s tendency to grant her wardships while keeping the associated advowsons (rights to present the clerical benefice). So the invaluable but disreputable Walter de Kancia held a stall at Lichfield and at least six churches, including ones within Eleanor’s property empire at Great Bowden, Macclesfield and Prestbury, as well as Little Billing (near Eleanor’s holding at Kingsthorpe), presented to him presumably at Eleanor’s behest by Henry III in 1270, and Taxal (near Macclesfield), presented by Edward. This need to provide for a department of hard-working clerks explains Eleanor’s more than careful acquisition of advowsons with new properties whenever possible and the purchase of other convenient advowsons. In this way Eleanor provided for Edmund de Loundres, John de Caen and John de Berewyk among others, including her chaplain William de Windsore, who obtained St Peter’s Northampton, with the chapels at Tring and Upton. Thus, too, Geoffrey de Aspale became one of the country’s most prominent pluralists, holding fifteen benefices – including one described by Archbishop Pecham in a letter of protest as ‘fat’ – simultaneously.
However, some of the methods employed in making such provision were at least questionable. The records show a habit of usurping advowsons which were alleged to appertain to properties which she acquired, sometimes with success; though, again, she may not have received the accurate information from her clerks. She was also sometimes involved in collusive dealings to get others. So, having obtained lands from Robert de Camville in Fobbing and Shenfield in Essex via his debts to the Jewry, Eleanor agreed to make common cause with the prior and convent of Romilley in recovering various advowsons (including those of Fobbing and Shenfield), which Camville had detained from the convent. They then granted the advowsons to her for 250 marks in ready money. Another similar agreement was reached with St Osyth’s Abbey regarding advowsons connected to the lands of William de Montchesny, which Eleanor was busy acquiring in her later years. Such an approach to litigation is certainly less than creditable, although it would appear that the priories were in the right and the underlying land transactions were not hostile; de Camville’s son was in the royal daughters’ household, and Eleanor paid for candles at his funeral, dowries for his daughters and made provision for his wife and daughter-in-law.27
But it is certainly the case that, in procuring such preferments, there is some evidence that Eleanor was very hard-nosed indeed. The classic tale – and, it should be noted, the sole case in the post-mortem inquiry where evidence emerged which implicated Eleanor directly in deliberate administrative vindictiveness – is that of Richard of Stockport. This gentleman had obliged Eleanor by presenting the egregious Walter de Kancia to his local living of Stockport and also that of Prestbury. On Kancia’s death, Eleanor then required him to present another clerk, John de Caen, to the Stockport living. Stockport, however, had already given the living elsewhere. He was tormented, apparently on her orders, by her men for seven years, being sued and having property unjustly seized. The evidence implicating Eleanor personally came from her own bailiff at Macclesfield. While that alone might simply indicate an attempt to shift blame, the complainant asserted that Robert Burnell also knew the truth. There is no record of a finding in Stockport’s favour and one can easily hypothesise circumstances which would excuse or mitigate the offence – for example if Stockport had sold the living to Eleanor, or was somehow in cahoots with the venal Kancia. However, there is no evidence for those possibilities and, at the very least, Eleanor’s direct involvement in some fairly rough behaviour appears to be indicated by the fact that this case was ordered to be heard in camera once the accusation against her had been raised.28
But while it is the only case which ties Eleanor to actual wrongdoing, it seems to have been far from the only case where Eleanor made herself rather unpleasant in the search for good preferments for her men. In 1283, Bishop Godfrey Giffard of Worcester (a close connection of Eleanor’s) advised the prior of Deerhurst to give a preferment to the queen’s nominee, even though he had already given the nomination elsewhere; and Eleanor had not merely enlisted Giffard herself, she had also got Robert Burnell to take up the case. In another case in the early 1280s, the Bishop of Winchester was warned by Pecham not to run contrary to the queen’s desire to have her Spanish physician presented to the church of Crondall. But in this sort of matter it would seem that not even close associates were exempt. In 1290, Giffard himself was concerned about his position with the queen when she asserted that he owed her £350. He sought assistance from Burnell, who reported back
to him that the queen was indeed unhappy with him, and advised Giffard to meet her only in his (Burnell’s) presence. The subtext is that Burnell might be able to speak a word to turn away the queen’s wrath.29
A further story which reinforces Eleanor’s own reputation for hard dealing is that of her acquisition of the two parts of the barony of Haverfordwest inherited by Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, in 1286–8. It appears that young Hereford had been driven to distraction by that notorious robber baron, his guardian William de Valence, self-styled Earl of Pembroke. That Hereford sold the barony to Eleanor suggests that he and she considered that she was capable of dealing with the senior surviving Lusignan. And rightly so. Eleanor sent in her experienced and objectionable servant Hugh de Cressingham, a man whose reputation as a fat bully has survived to this day. The result, predictably enough, was litigation. Eleanor did not simply leave the matter to Cressingham, but superintended the dispute by correspondence. Despite complaints about Cressingham’s behaviour, which involved ignoring royal mandates, and which Edward I described as ‘unprecedented’, Eleanor won the action.30
The conclusion to which one is inevitably drawn in considering Eleanor’s business dealings is that, while she was scrupulous as to individuals who came to her attention, in general in business she played very hard, and occasionally overstepped the mark. Was this approach anything out of the way in the context of her times? There appears very little to suggest that it was. Certainly Eleanor of Provence’s administrators were considered no better than Eleanor’s and Pecham reprimanded other landowners, such as Earl Warenne, for similar shortcomings. Furthermore, while Edward was scrupulous as to matters of justice, his own approach to land gathering was very much on the ruthless side (or, as Prestwich calls it, ‘devious and grasping’) – his acquisition of the valuable honour of Aumale in 1278 and the Isle of Wight in 1293 still attract accusations of collusion and fraud. Nor, interestingly, do Eleanor’s actions seem to have made her actively unpopular. It is true that the two contemporary summaries of her life focus on her land gathering, but in a factual way. As Parsons notes, comment would be likely to be generated by any lord who in the space of twenty-five years acquired lands worth £2,500 per year. Nowhere in the chronicles is there the sort of negative comment which Eleanor of Provence routinely attracted, or any protest directed at Eleanor. All in all, she was an active landlord, and to our perspective not a particularly model one; but to her contemporaries, the conduct of her affairs was not seen as particularly remarkable – save in the scale of her operations.31
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