Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen

by Seward, Desmond

  The queen would meet all the great Englishmen of her day. These included magnates such as Robert de Beaumont, earl of Leicester, and Richard de Lucy, both former supporters of king Stephen who had become Henry’s co-justiciars (his deputies during his absences from England). Hugh Bigod always remained a secret enemy of the new king, and William of Warenne, Stephen’s bastard son and earl of Surrey, claimed Norfolk from Hugh. Earl Ferrers of Derby and earl Patrick of Salisbury were also among the quarrelsome, battle-scarred veterans, who can hardly have made for a harmonious court.

  Far closer to Henry — and therefore to Eleanor — were the great churchmen, not because the king was pious but because they were his chief administrators. The foremost was archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, a Benedictine monk and former abbot of Bec in Normandy of whom even St Bernard approved. Gracious and amiable, he was also learned, a product of the twelfth-century renaissance and fond of intellectuals’ company; his household contained many gifted young men — four future archbishops and six future bishops — and has been compared to a small university. Indeed Theobald was one of the abler and more interesting of mediaeval archbishops of Canterbury. Never an enemy of the queen as Bernard had been, he was on the contrary a peace-maker, and must have been a source of support to her.

  Theobald’s chief adviser was Thomas Becket, whom he made archdeacon of Canterbury (as a deacon, not as a priest). Henry took such a liking to this brilliant and impressive man that he made him his chancellor. Thomas’s successor as archbishop Theobald’s right-hand man was John of Salisbury, a dedicated scholar who had studied at the French schools. His principal duty was drafting appeals to Rome, a function that soon made Henry dislike him. Another outstanding personality was Gilbert Foliot, bishop of Hereford and later bishop of London. An Anglo-Norman noble already advanced in years, he was also a Benedictine monk and had once been prior of the great abbey of Cluny in Burgundy. The king trusted him and eventually appointed him his confessor. Eleanor must have met these distinguished clerics many times, often daily.

  Despite his hardworking routine, Henry II found time to share some of his wife’s literary tastes. This is evident in the case of Marie of France (who may have been his half sister, the bastard daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet), abbess of Shaftesbury in Dorset. Marie wrote lais (elegant narrative poems on Arthurian themes derived from Brittany) that included the tale of Tristan and Yseult. Almost certainly Marie’s charming verse found favour with Eleanor, and Henry seems to have paid tribute to the queen’s admiration in an unusually imaginative way. Near the palace of Woodstock, deep in the forest, he built a bower inspired by the tale of Tristan and Yseult; in the story the lovers communicated by twigs dropped by Tristan into a stream flowing through Yseult’s chamber, which was in an orchard surrounded by a thick fence. At Everswell, this background was recreated, complete with spring, orchard and palisade, and in the seventeenth century John Aubrey was still able to reconstruct the plan of ‘Rosamund’s Bower’. For tradition wrongly made the bower and its setting — a tower and a maze, ‘wondrously wrought of Daedalus’s work’ — the scene of Henry’s later romance with Fair Rosamund. A ballad of Aubrey’s time tells us that:

  Most curiously that bower was built

  Of stone and timber strong.

  A hundred and fifty doors

  Did to this bower belong.

  However, it is likely that Henry had Everswell built to divert Eleanor in the early, reasonably happy, years of their marriage.

  The troubadours and Marie of France were far from constituting Eleanor’s entire literary patronage. Her official court reader was Wace of Jersey, who borrowed from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain to compose a narrative poem in Anglo-Norman French that was largely about king Arthur — the Roman de Brut. For, due to Chrétien de Troyes and other poets, the legendary British monarch had become the rage of Henry’s court. Some noblemen (though not king Henry) modelled themselves on Arthur’s knights, and a search was made for his tomb at Glastonbury. Both the king and the queen clearly believed in the legend, and visited Glastonbury themselves; Henry told the monks where they ought to dig for Arthur’s bones. Eleanor also patronized Chrétien de Troyes, whose earliest romance, Erec et Enide, may possibly have been inspired in part by her own adventures. Another writer of the same sort, Benoit of Sainte Maure, dedicated his Roman de Troie to the riche dame de riche rei (rich king’s rich lady) and he, together with many other long-forgotten poets, must have benefited from her bounty and encouragement. Benoit speaks of ‘her whose kindness knows no bounds’.

  Although there is no direct evidence, one may be sure that Eleanor’s recreations also included the twelfth-century equivalent of the stage. As well as plays in Latin and French, singers, dancers, mummers, acrobats, conjurers and jugglers would all have been included in such entertainment. John of Salisbury was plainly horrified by the artificiality and bawdiness of such performers, complaining that they played in all the magnates’ houses in London, and he compared the situation to that which had once prevailed in Babylon. One cannot escape the inference that the royal palaces were as guilty of indecencies as those of the magnates. To judge from his objective observation of Eleanor and Louis in Italy, John was neither censorious nor puritanical, so it seems that even after her marriage to Henry the queen still retained her grandfather’s frivolity and was not frightened of shocking the clergy.

  Yet not all queen Eleanor’s time was spent in amusement. For thirteen years she was constantly bearing children. She had five sons — William (who died aged only three), Henry, Richard, Geoffrey and John — and three daughters — Matilda, Eleanor and Joanna. Only Geoffrey and the younger daughters were born outside England. Three of the boys became kings and two of the girls queens.

  Although such fertility was a sad reflection on Louis VII’s manhood, it also gave credence to his suspicions that Eleanor’s first marriage had been cursed by God. But there were enough ill omens for her second marriage too. The Poitevin line was thought to be unlucky, and there was the hermit’s curse on all the descendants of William IX. Moreover, the Angevins themselves were hardly an auspicious stock. Henry’s forebear, count Fulk Nerra (the Black), had been an unusually bloodstained warlord even by the standards of the eleventh century, and especially infamous as a plunderer of monasteries. He had bequeathed some uncomfortable legends. The worst of these was that he had married an evil spirit, Melusine, who was the daughter of Satan himself; she was said to have flown back to hell after bearing the count’s children. Henry’s family therefore had the distinction of being directly descended from the devil.

  Despite their lineage Eleanor was no doubt optimistic about her children. The frustrated wife was turning into a possessive matriarch. Perhaps it was because she had had to wait so long for sons that she became so ferociously maternal; but her children were also a means of regaining power. They were to grow up very fond of her, even if they would sometimes fail to obey her.

  7 The Angevin Empress

  ‘Greatest of earthly princes.’

  Richard FitzNigel on Henry II, Dialogus de Scaccario

  ‘But in my bosom shall she never come

  To make my heart her vassal.’

  Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

  Although ‘the Angevin empire’ is a modern term, it is not far from the reality. It is true that twelfth-century Christendom recognized only two emperors — the Greek basileus at Constantinople and the German king of the Romans — and that Henry was the vassal of the king of France, who always retained a theoretical overlordship. But in terms of territory, of wealth and knights, the English king was unquestionably regarded by contemporaries as the most formidable monarch in western Europe. His wife shared his pinnacle. She had more than regained the eminence lost when Louis rejected her. With Henry she wore her crown at Lincoln at Christmas 1156, at Bury St Edmund’s at Whitsun 1157 and at Worcester at Easter 1158, although the couple then solemnly placed their crowns on the cathedral altar and swore a strange oat
h never to wear them again.

  On the other hand Eleanor possessed much less power than when she had been Louis’s wife. Admittedly twelfth-century English queens were regalis imperii participes (sharers in the kingship); as queen regnant Eleanor was entitled to ‘queen’s gold’, a special payment made to her on the issue of royal charters, and when Henry was out of the kingdom any writ was issued in her name and under her seal. Yet the real ruler in the King’s absence was the justiciar. The most recent biographer of Henry II points out: ‘There were brief periods when queen Eleanor acted as regent in her husband’s absence, but she seems to have lent little more than the authority of her name to the actions of his ministers.’ Moreover Henry ruled Aquitaine himself, something that Louis VII had never dared to do. Dr Warren adds: ‘It may well be that her political marriage to Henry of Anjou brought her neither the power nor the influence she — a duchess in her own right — thought to be her due. She had to contend not merely with the dominating personality of her husband, but also, until 1167, with the influence of an even more proud and strong-willed woman than she herself — his mother, empress Matilda.’

  Always a realist, Eleanor soon realized that she would never be able to control this dynamic young man. No doubt, like most of his contemporaries, she found him as enigmatic as he was strong. So masterful a woman must quickly have tired of being tamed, but even if she resented it she recognized that she had met her match. She bided her time.

  In any case, as has been seen, up to the late 1160s Henry kept Eleanor busy with bearing children. Eight pregnancies must have sapped even her enormous strength and vitality. Probably she solaced herself with the hope that she would recover her political power when her second surviving son, Richard, grew up and she could govern his inheritance of Aquitaine as regent. In the meantime she had to be content with mere splendour.

  Eleanor’s earliest rival in Henry’s affections was not a woman but a man, the chancellor Thomas Becket, who had received his high office shortly after the king’s accession to the throne. Born in 1118, Thomas was the son of a London merchant who had originally come from Rouen; in those days the leading London merchants ranked with barons, and the lesser ones were equated with knights. In appearance he was tall and good-looking, with a hawk-nosed pale face that reddened when he was angry or excited. As quick-witted as he was observant, he was a stimulating and amusing conversationalist. Besides studying in Paris, he had been attached to archbishop Theobald’s household, whose atmosphere has been likened to a twelfth-century All Souls, but he was essentially an administrator and no intellectual. Although devout to the point of secret asceticism, he was obviously an ambitious career ecclesiastic who was thought of as a king’s man in the latent struggle between the secular power and the rights of the church.

  As archdeacon of Canterbury Thomas Becket had held the most important ecclesiastical position below that of bishop. Only a few weeks after obtaining it, he was made chancellor of England, probably at Christmas 1154. His contemporaries write that Thomas stood with the king as Pharaoh did with Joseph. As his greatest biographer has observed: ‘The eight years of his chancellorship are all but unique in the annals of the English monarchy between the Conquest and the age of Wolsey. At no other time did a minister of the Crown combine the assets of complete royal confidence and delegation of power with such talents of administration, of diplomacy and of display.’ He even organized the demolition of the robber-barons’ castles. He became a kind of grand vizier, the alter ego of the king who appreciated his fine mind and driving energy and relished his witty conversation. The pair spent whole days together, hunting and hawking and playing chess as well as endlessly discussing the business of the realm. Henry even entrusted to him the upbringing of his heir. For his part Thomas was plainly fascinated by the magic of royalty and the excitement of court life. Despite the fact that Henry was sixteen years the younger, a deep friendship developed between king and chancellor.

  This brotherly affection can only have fuelled Eleaner’s jealousy and frustration. We know that she disliked Thomas, although we have no details. As Régine Pernoud comments, ‘A wife seldom warms to her husband’s best friend’. Moreover the chancellor kept such a splendid and hospitable household that it was almost an alternative court to that of the queen, especially during the first year in England, when she had to stay at Bermondsey while Westminster was rebuilt and refurbished. ‘He hardly ever dined without the company of sundry earls and barons …. His board was resplendent with gold and silver vessels and abounded in dainty dishes and precious wines’, according to William FitzStephen, who clearly remembered it with nostalgia. Henry was a frequent guest, often arriving without warning. Such competition can hardly have endeared Thomas to the queen. Above all, he had taken the power that she wanted for herself — he had usurped her place as the second person in the kingdom. Indeed Thomas Becket possessed far more influence than abbot Suger had ever had. Nevertheless, Eleanor seems to have been too shrewd to show any open enmity towards him.

  The queen’s powerlessness is attested by the significant silence of the chroniclers. With one important exception almost nothing of importance is said about her before Henry’s death, so that she has been described, with perhaps a certain exaggeration, as ‘a figure of legend and romance, but not of history’; it is also true that we have no documentary evidence whatsoever about her relations with her husband until her quarrel with him in 1173. All the same, we know from the chronicles that she spent plenty of time with him and presided jointly over the court, as well as accompanying him on progress. We know too that she was with him in France; it is highly unlikely that so sensible and realistic a statesman as Henry did not ask her advice, both in dealing with king Louis and in governing Aquitaine, and her knowledge and experience must have been invaluable.

  The first time that the royal couple were in France together after Henry’s accession was in the autumn of 1156, when Eleanor joined him on a great progress through Aquitaine during which they held court at Bordeaux. Henceforward she was constantly crossing and re-crossing the Channel, despite the danger and discomfort of such voyages, which frequently lasted several days.

  Meanwhile, her former husband had re-married. King Louis’s new bride was a Spanish princess, Constance of Castile. Ironically, during her short marriage Constance bore Louis two more daughters but no sons. Both the French king and the English king now decided that a stable peace was desirable. Accordingly Thomas Becket led a splendid embassy to Paris in the summer of 1158. He was preceded by 250 foot soldiers and escorted by 200 knights and squires, with stag hounds, mastiffs and falcons, and brought a train of sumpter horses and eight vast waggons each drawn by five horses, which carried chests of gold and silver plate together with rich garments and silken hangings for presents. (There were also two carts containing what appears to have been brown ale, which, it was claimed, tasted much better than any French wine.) The awed French are said to have commented, ‘The king of England must be a marvellous man if his chancellor travels with such great display’. Henry himself — without Eleanor — arrived in Paris in September. A marriage was arranged between his son and heir, Henry, and Louis’s eldest daughter by his new marriage, Margaret. The dowry was the Vexin, the Norman border territory that the Plantagenet had been forced to surrender to the French king in 1152. Furthermore Louis formally gave Henry permission to reconquer the county of Nantes, which had been seized by the duke of Brittany. Later Henry took Louis on a progress through Normandy, during which the French king expressed his deep affection for him.

  The marriage was a particular triumph for Eleanor. She had, after all, borne a son who might be king of France one day, unless the two daughters she had had by Louis could make good their precedence. Princess Margaret was to be brought up in England, although her father stipulated that she must never be in the custody of Eleanor.

  By now Henry II had gone from success to success. He had subdued England and brought it peace, and he appeared to have pacified even the Welsh. He had a
cquired control of Brittany and ensured that the Vexin would eventually return to the Plantagenets. His possessions in France, including Aquitaine, were gratifyingly submissive. Understandably his ambition grew and he wanted to rule still more territory.

  Like William X and William IX before him, Henry looked hopefully at the great and rich county of Toulouse. Cut off from Capetian France by the Massif Central, Toulouse had once been part of greater Aquitaine. It was especially important in that through it ran the trade routes so vital for Aquitaine’s prosperity, the waterways and Roman roads that connected the duchy with the Mediterranean. Its possession would be the ultimate rounding off of the Angevin empire, which without it would be strategically unsound. Eleanor may well have encouraged Henry to assert the rights to Toulouse that she had inherited from her grandmother, although Henry was hardly the man to be unaware of such a useful claim. The present count, Raymond V, was weak and inept and at odds with his vassals, who included the formidable count of Barcelona whose wife was queen of Aragon; he was also on bad terms with his countess, Constance of France, who was Louis VII’s sister. In June 1159, Henry approached the French king to obtain his agreement on a campaign against Toulouse. Possibly to his surprise, after three days of discussion Louis refused; but Henry ignored this setback and at the end of the month set out with a vast army that had been assembling at Poitiers since March. The host was large enough for a crusade; as well as the lords of England, Normandy and Aquitaine, it included the king of Scots (Malcolm IV), the duke of Brittany, and even a Welsh prince, together with the count of Barcelona and many other of Raymond’s estranged vassals. So great a prize required a great army. Yet the English king — an experienced soldier who had fought in many campaigns — disliked bloodshed and had little taste for war; nor was he a good strategist.