From this point Eleanor’s story entered the territory of mythmaking – with some surprising results.
The first and most important influence on Eleanor’s post-mortem reputation must be the funeral commemorations. The means by which Edward commemorated her inevitably focussed attention on Eleanor the Queen, standing alone, in a way which she had resolutely avoided in life. And those tombs and monuments are beautiful, gracious items of artistic endeavour, embellished with elegant figures which are almost interchangeable with representations of the Virgin Mary. There are, to the knowledgeable, a number of features which invoke Eleanor’s temporal power and suggest a more assertive person; but to the majority of the viewers the picture is clear – a gentle and gracious lady. This impression is even more likely to communicate itself to anyone viewing a cross or a tomb only in passing, and to later viewers to whom the artistic references of the time are lost. The funerary monuments therefore offer a massive piece of disinformation echoing down the centuries.
Nor was there a contemporaneous verdict of the chroniclers to pass down with the more solid memorials. Aside from the throwaway characterisations which have been mentioned earlier, there is silence on Eleanor’s character until Matthew Paris’ successor in the St Albans Chronicle. This work, known as the Opus Chronicorum, is dated to 1308; that is, eighteen years after Eleanor’s death – and during the reign of the son who quartered Eleanor’s Castilian arms with his own. Its tone as regards Eleanor is adulatory, describing her as surpassing ‘all women of that time in wisdom, prudence and beauty; indeed except that it would appear to be flattery I would say that she was not unequal to a Sybil in wisdom’. Assessing her in connection with the account of her death, he goes on to say that ‘her passing was tearfully mourned by not a few. For she was a pillar of all England, by sex a woman, but in spirit and virtue more like a man … As the dawn scatters the shadows of the darkness, so by the promotion of this most holy woman and queen, throughout England the night of faithlessness was expelled … of anger and discord cast out.’
Parsons considers the account to be astonishingly positive – to the point of rewriting the record. So far as the tone is concerned, this may be true. But the account of Eleanor of Provence is equally cloyingly approving, and there was now no call to reinvent Eleanor of Provence, whose retreat to a convent for the last five years of her life had already whitewashed her reputation. The tone is likely simply to be one adopted to gain the approval of the new young king by referring to his family with unqualified approval. But the substance which lurks under the thick veneer of flattery is not without interest. Firstly, consider what is not said. It is not said that Eleanor was a gentle, pacific queen, a reconciler of arguments and a stayer of her husband’s hand – the queen Pecham urged her to be. Secondly, there is interest in what is positively chosen to be said. Three points are made. First, she was wise. Here, we may see some knowledge and recognition of Eleanor’s intellectual attainments. Secondly, she was more like a man in ‘spirit and virtue’ than a woman. Here, we see a tactful allusion to both her active role in business, her implacable tendencies and her rejection of a traditional feminine intercessory role as queen. Thirdly, her role in religious foundations (and possibly also her wider encouragement of prayer chanting) is acknowledged, as it was not at the time of her death. In essence, therefore, the author, while sugar-coating the message thickly, does suggest that some picture of the real Eleanor had permeated England’s premier abbey, which had considerable ties to the royal court. But one might say that, for the readers of this description, ‘if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know’; a familiar would see the glimpse of the real woman, but a stranger would take a fairly formulaic positive impression away.5
The process of movement to that impression can be seen in an updated version of this account written in 1327, also at St Albans, which was repeated in Thomas Walsingham’s Historia Anglicana (after 1392). This starts the transformation of Eleanor into what might be termed the rosewater version:
She was the most pious, modest and merciful woman, a lover of all the English, and was like a pillar of the entire realm. In her time foreign favourites did not afflict England. The people were not troubled by royal officials, if the slightest suggestion of oppression came to her ears in any way. As her rank permitted, she consoled the afflicted everywhere, and wherever she could, she reconciled those in discord.6
So by the time that Eleanor’s friends were dying out, the process of development of a myth was well under way. At the same time, the negative publicity in the areas where Eleanor held her lands in the wake of the inquest into her business dealings, and the litigation which sometimes followed, fizzled out into nothing. There may have been a few families for whom the version of the loss of their lands told among themselves involved wrongdoing on Eleanor’s part, but they were few and far between, and frequently proved wrong when put to the test in litigation. The Camvilles, for example, having failed to pursue any claim at the inquest, alleged in 1341 that Eleanor took against Robert de Camville when he refused to sell Westerham to her, trumped up charges of failing to answer a military summons to serve in Wales and imprisoned him until he made the conveyance. Poetically, in this version (his health doubtless shattered by imprisonment) he died nine months later. In fact, as was proved in court, he lost his lands through his debts to the Jewry, conveying them to Eleanor quite voluntarily; and he retained Westerham until his death – some seven years later.
So Eleanor’s memory passed into the unreliable hands of the chroniclers and the loaded images of the crosses and the tombs. Within a few more decades, Eleanor had receded back into near-total obscurity, with one rare mention of her misidentifying her as Alfonso’s daughter rather than his sister.7
The decay of the crosses echoes the falling away in recollection of Eleanor. By the 1530s, John Leland could not identify the queen remembered at the Hardingstone cross and other reports in the sixteenth century speak of decay to the crosses at Stony Stratford and elsewhere, with tops in particular showing a tendency to go missing.
As for the historians, no one seems to have paid much mind to Eleanor’s character. Some accounts mention her travels to Palestine and Gascony with Edward, while others confine themselves to her coronation, death and children. With Polydore Vergil came the misapprehension that Eleanor brought Ponthieu as her dowry. Later, in Elizabeth I’s reign, came the translation of Walsingham’s eulogistic description of Eleanor. A highly coloured Spanish version of the Acre legend, which gave full credit for Edward’s recovery to Eleanor’s love, followed in 1579.
By the end of the sixteenth century, Camden, in his 1605 book Remains of a Larger Work Concerning Britain, links the Acre story to the crosses:
This good Queen Eleanor his wife who had accompanied him in that journey endangering her own life, in loving affection saved his life and eternized her own honour. For she daily and nightly sucked out the ranke poison, which love made sweet to her, and thereby effected that which no Arte durst attempt; … so that well worthy was shee to be remembered by those crosses as monuments, which in steade of Statues were erected by her husband to her honour.
Here we find, therefore, the source and the essence of that picture which has transmitted itself – ‘good Queen Eleanor’, the rescue of her husband from the assassin’s poison and her deserved immortalisation through her husband’s loving tribute.8
One might imagine that the story of Eleanor’s reputation effectively stops there, and that this view simply became tradition. However, before this was to happen, Eleanor’s reputation was to take one further, rather unexpected turn, scrupulously unearthed by John Parsons and traced out in the latter part of Queen and Society.
At more or less the same time as Camden’s Britannia, a dramatist called George Peele, now best known as the possible author of parts of Titus Andronicus, was penning his play Edward the First. The first version of this, written in the early 1590s, is now effectively lost, later accretions having formed the more popular, and therefore
long-lived, version of the play. This first version appears likely to have presented a rather endearing picture of Eleanor and Edward (‘sweet Nell’ and ‘sweet Ned’ between themselves). However, the more popular version is given a very different flavour. This version features a haughty Eleanor, who delays the coronation by a desire for Spanish-made gowns which will need over twenty weeks to make and says she will keep the English in a ‘Spanish yoke’. And these are simply her milder faults; her more appalling crimes include demanding that the women of Britain be ordered to lose their right breasts, the murder (by serpent) of the lady mayoress of London and confession to adultery with Edmund of Lancaster and a French friar.
Why, one may ask, was Eleanor suddenly traduced in this remarkable manner? The answer appears to be partly a question of politics and partly a question of facility. So far as politics are concerned, there seems a real likelihood that, while there may have been a mischievous desire to play flat against the saccharine picture of Camden, the main reason behind the reworking was a serious suggestion in the latter part of Elizabeth I’s reign that her throne might descend to Isabella of Spain, the daughter of Philip of Spain. When looking for candidates to take the English throne after the death of Elizabeth I, there were always bound to be those who would look back into the Plantagenet family tree, in preference to opting for Mary Stuart with her predominantly French descent and training and her poor track record as a monarch. Where the Tudors could claim male descent only through the legitimised line of John of Gaunt (the Beauforts), bolstered by Elizabeth of York, Isabella of Spain was descended from both of John of Gaunt’s legitimate daughters Philippa of Portugal and Katherine of Castile, who were his daughters by Blanche of Lancaster, heir to Edmund of Lancaster (and hence doubly royal). Thus the play appears to have been used as a means of spinning thought against foreign and specifically Spanish queens come to lord it over Englishmen – and also, it will be noted, to suggest that Isabella’s descent through Blanche of Lancaster was not all it was cracked up to be.
The story was facilitated by the existence of two ballads. The first, and source for most of these inventive fabrications, is a ballad called ‘The Lamentable Fall of Queen Elenor who for her Pride and Wickedness by Gods Judgment sunke into the ground at Charing Crosse and rose up again at Queen Hive’. Its origins are obscure, but it seems likely that it dates from the virulent bout of anti-Spanish feeling which accompanied the later reign of Mary Tudor (and her marriage to Philip of Spain). The second is a ballad called ‘Queen Eleanor’s Confession’, which seems to refer (via a confession of the murder of Fair Rosamund) to Eleanor of Aquitaine, but also has references apposite to Eleanor of Provence.9
With continued performances of Peele’s play and continued publications of ‘The Lamentable Fall’ in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, this entirely hostile portrait of Eleanor was probably more widely known at the time of the Civil War than the romantic one put together by Camden. Of course, it is likely that the war would in any case have seen the destruction of a number of the crosses, with their obvious Marian overtones, but it seems likely that the absence of a widely disseminated sense of ‘Good Queen Eleanor’ played a part in the loss of most of the crosses, which can be documented or inferred to have been lost in the years 1643–6.
The Lincoln cross disappears without any documentary record, leaving behind just one relic – a part of one of the statues of Eleanor which was found doing duty as a footbridge in the mid-nineteenth century and now stands in a flowerbed in the grounds of Lincoln Castle. The cross was definitely in place as late as 1542, when it is mentioned by John Leland, one of the first English antiquaries. Prior to that, it had acted as a meeting point for pilgrims and also a rallying point for Henry VI’s forces in 1445–6.
As for the Grantham cross, there is powerful evidence that the cross was thrown down in the Civil War. The minutes of 1646–7 meetings record the collection of stones from the cross and another cross known as the Apple cross for the Corporation of Grantham’s use and a prosecution of someone for involvement in the destruction of the cross, and using stones from it to repair a wall. It seems likely that some stones from this cross, and the other cross in the town (known as the Apple cross) now form part of the current Grantham Market cross, parts of which have been dated to 1290.
The fate of the Stamford cross is mysterious. It was reported as being in need of repair in the Stamford administrative records of 1621, and was noted in situ by the Royalist Captain Richard Symonds in 1645. But in 1646 a survey by the town clerk reported it to be in a parlous state, with the only discernable decorations being those of Castile and León, the rest defaced by ‘envious time’. By 1745, however, it had long fallen, with its remains being discovered in a tumulus, enabling Stukeley, who attended its rediscovery, to carry off numerous fragments, including a ‘stone adorned with roses’ – probably part of the pyramidal top storey which he sketched – to decorate his garden.
The Stony Stratford cross, described by Camden as ‘not very splendid’, has left practically no record of itself behind. It appears that it was long since gone when, in 1697, a distinguished traveller and chronicler of English historical remains, passing the cross site, makes no mention of it. That it would have rated a mention is demonstrated by the description given by the same traveller of the Hardingstone cross. That distinguished traveller was one Celia Fiennes, a descendant of Eleanor’s favoured relatives. Poignantly, she appears to have had no knowledge of the relationship which existed between the two of them, for when she does encounter the Hardingstone cross, she merely remarks on the statues of ‘some queen’. All that we do know of the Stony Stratford cross is that, in 1735, William Hartley, who was then nearly eighty, could recall the time when the base of the cross was still discernible. This strongly suggests destruction in or around the time of the Civil War.
Woburn cross disappears from sight without even a mention after its initial construction; and that of Dunstable, attracts only one brief mention, by Camden. It is reputed to have been demolished by troops under the Earl of Essex in 1643.
St Albans cross has no clear fate. It was described as ‘verie stately’ in 1596. Stukeley shows its location on a plan dated 1721, but it seems likely that all but the base, demolished to make way for the Market Cross in 1701, had been destroyed in the seventeenth century, probably in 1643.10
It is the London crosses whose fate can be most easily traced. The Cheapside cross in particular had become quite a controversial site. A key landmark in the later medieval period, it saw the start of races under Edward III and the start of Henry V’s victory procession in 1415. In 1441, the city denizens had considered the Cheapside cross to be in need of works, having been ‘by length of time decayed’ – possibly not assisted by the fact that it was apparently re-gilded for every event of note in the city. Henry VI gave the Mayor of London licence to ‘re-edify the same in a more beautiful manner’ and a committee was formed to decide how it should be smartened up. No precise record of their decision remains, but the later depictions of the cross, together with Stow’s Survey of London, which contains a description of the ‘improved’ cross, indicate that it had been very considerably changed and possibly entirely rebuilt. In its second incarnation, the lower layer incorporated much more religious imagery – the resurrection of Christ, the Virgin Mary with the Christ child in her arms and St Edward the Confessor. Following attacks on such ‘popish’ images the statues were replaced, with one replacement being a rather indelicate fountain of Diana the Huntress spouting river water. A cupola appears to have been added between the main body of the monument and the cross, drawing attention to the statuary.
Three objections seem to have been taken to the cross. The first was practical. Standing, as it did, in the middle of Cheapside, it was seen as a traffic hazard, and various citizens sought to have it removed on this ground. Anyone driving along Cheapside today can readily appreciate the force of this objection. Secondly, its timber cross, covered in lead – and itself r
epeatedly gilded for special occasions – apparently rotted and was considered dangerous. Thirdly, as the Reformation gained ground, its imagery was regarded as objectionable, and was defaced repeatedly in the late sixteenth century. To the Parliamentarian forces it became a focus of anti-Catholic and anti-Royalist feeling, and was the subject of vandalism and an active pamphlet campaign, during which it was even described as the Antichrist. It was therefore pulled down on 2 May 1643 by the local citizens, with the approval of Parliament and an accompaniment of celebratory bells from St Peter’s Wood Street, songs from the city waits, volleys of musketry and acclamations of joy. The great event was witnessed by John Evelyn and recorded for posterity in pictures and pamphlets, including the delightfully named ‘The Down-fall of Dagon, or the taking down of the Cheapside Cross’. One of these says that ‘a troop of horse and two companies of foot waited to guard it and at the fall of the top cross drums beat, trumpets blew, multitudes of capes were thrown in the air and with a great shout of people with joy’.
The Charing cross, which had survived in its original, unimproved form, did not attract the same level of odium, though it was apparently looking rather weather-beaten and down on its luck by 1590, when it was described as being ‘defaced by antiquitie’. It was condemned by the same vote of Parliament, but its destruction was not actioned until 1647, and was greeted with something of regret by Londoners, who joked that the lawyers would never be able to find the courts at Westminster now that the cross was no longer there to guide them.11
It is ironic that it was just at this point, when the majority of the crosses were torn down, that the tide for Eleanor’s reputation began to turn again. Sir Richard Baker’s A History of the Kings of England of 1643, which went on over the next years to become a bestseller – indeed, the front-running manual of English history of its day – brought Eleanor back into the light of popularity with its telling of the romanticised version of the Acre story. This was reinforced in 1695 by a new edition of Camden’s Britannia.
Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen Page 53
